Certainly some great piloting to get it down safely. But like the pilot
said, we are all trained to do that. Indeed. More of the death avoidance
culture of flying, which turned out to be a good thing.

A couple of other impressions.

1)AOPA spends lots of time worrying about image and lobbying Congress on
behalf of GA. They need to spend more time with the general public. The
comment about "he should have bought $10 worth of gas" is an example of
the ignorance surrounding GA. $10 worth of AvGas will get you to the
runway but that's about it. With AvGas running at $4+ per gallon that
sure isn't a lot of fuel. Anyway, they said he had 8+ in the tanks so it
was not a fuel starvation problem in the classic sense. He might have
lost something else in the engine. That's NTSB's job.

2) People will always have a fascination with flying. Partly because
reporters report on things like this. If a car driving on the Cross
Bronx Expressway had an engine failure and pulled over, it might make a
traffic report. Maybe. In the last couple of days I've seen 3 non-injury
events on the news. This one, the Archer II in France and a Bonanza that
landed ok in a field in OK. All non-events and yet reported in the
news. I'm not blaming the press here. They do it because people are
fascinated with these danged flying machines.

We all (at least those of us that are pilots, ie: not sims) see this all
the time. Our family and friends telling us how crazy we are for our
avocation. We tell them how transcendent it is and that there is nothing
like it. In some ways we have to be the advocates for our passion.

KC

Bill Michaelson wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/nyregion/15plane.html