Choice of hard or soft runway for crash landings?
In theory, in the situation where a crash landing is inevitable and the only variables are when and where, would it be better to choose the grass as in this case, or opt for a hard runway? I read somewhere that the deceleration forces in a crash landing on soft ground are extremely high since the plane just digs in. Chances of survival are paradoxically much better on a hard runway where there is a chance of skidding along and decelerating more slowly although this has to be set against a risk of sparks setting fuel alight. This is not to criticise the pilot in this current episode who made difficult choices in the emergency and did well to ensure he and his passenger survived, and in any event we don't fully know what happened, but just thinking through what I might have done in a similar situation.