Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
This PA31 crash is truly sad, but I believe that there is much more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps a PAN call was made. Why did he land on the road, when the open space of the school oval was next to the road? Let's wait for the ATSB investigation.
When doing my multi-eng training, for EFATO I was taught, fly the a/c, get it to the blue line, the phase one actions (mixture up, pitch up, power up, gear up, flap up, dead-leg, dead engine, confirm with throttle, fix or feather-FEATHER, raise the dead), to check performance, look for fire, if able to declare emergency.
I was flying a BE76 Duchess from Parafield to Kingscote many years ago, day private VFR (ca. 1998). I was over the Gulf of St. Vincent in controlled airspace before the halfway point of the trip. I had the alternator on the left engine fail, engine still going OK. I went through all the trouble shooting but couldn't get it back online. I first of all aviated, navigated then communicated.
Call me conservative, I called a PAN to Adelaide Approach and returned to Parafield, for many reasons, I didn't know if was something more seriously wrong with the left engine about to happen (i.e. the alternator going might have just been the start) also, I wanted to reduce electrical load, so I turned off all but one radio and the transponder, plus I wanted to have enough electricity to get the gear down and operate the flaps. Obviously, I was in controlled airspace and wanted to change the direction I was going too (thought I had better let them know..).
The ATC guys were great, they asked if I was able to maintain altitude and I was cleared to track back to YPPF via PAL, they asked me to report crossing the coast. And when I was ready to descend.
Handed over to YPPF tower no worries and given a straight in approach.
Subsequently found that the voltage regulator had blown.