Originally Posted by
FH1100 Pilot
I see a lot of criticism of this BSO pilot on social media and YouTube. Everybody simply assumes that he screwed-up by not pulling the good engine off and autorotating into a schoolyard. The internet is chock-full of experts.
Which, to me, brings up a bigger question: Should that pilot have expected that his aircraft would fail so catastrophically and so quickly? How come we're not pointing fingers at Airbus for their plastic, junky airframes?
I agree that it is probably unwarranted and certainly premature to criticize the pilot's decisions here. But that is a separate issue from the general lesson regarding the urgency of an immediate landing when there is a fire. Dropping straight down into a median or park has its risks, going back to an airport that is only a mile away (which would seem a safe bet most days) also has risks. Even if the pilot knew how bad the fire was and had opted to simply drop out of the sky, we don't know if he could have selected a site and gotten down to it in time. It doesn't matter much what you are flying, if your airframe disintegrates 60 seconds after your first indication of a problem, that's a pretty rough day.