Kevin Clarke wrote:
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.

It doesn't matter how much AOPA tries to educate, there's a huge portion
of the general public they would never reach. I don't blame the witness
for speculating, I blame the reporter for irresponsibly including that
SPECULATION in the article (although 8 gallons in 2 tanks isn't much
fuel). That's the NTSB's job, and at least *the reporter* should know
that.

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.

As a pilot, I'm always glad to see these "pilot makes safe off-field
landing" stories reported in the news vs only seeing the many that end
tragically. It confirms that it *can* be done, and there might be some
little bit of info that you can take with you that might help, faced
with that situation yourself. A friend and I recently went through an
engine failure/emergency off-field landing, and comparing notes
afterwards about our thoughts, it's amazing in those VERY brief moments,
how many things we'd heard/learned about others' emergency landings came
to mind while doing the trained procedures and flying the plane.