Wino:
Yes, passengers and crew have walked away from off airport landings in transport category jets! You saw the earlier photo of the Varig 707 crash landed outside Paris where the crew survived and lived to fly another day. (My message on previous page).
In the following photo you see the 737-300 put down in a farmer's field outside New Orleans after dual flameout. Everyone survived. With only superficial damage to the landing gears, the airplane was subsequently stripped of cabin seats and galleys, defueled to minimums and flown off by Boeing test pilots.
I'm sure that somewhere in your AA flight manual you've come across a little known paragraph that says something to the effect: That these emergency or abnormal procedures do not cover all cases or events, but are designed to provide guidance for most inflight emergencies and abnormalities. These published procedures are not intended to limit the crew's good judgement and common sense....
In other words, sometimes you've got to think "outside the box" and do what's unpublished in order to stay alive.
click it
