> I would have attempted a controlled crash over gentle mountainous terrain like this. You want to dump the aircraft's kinetic energy rapidly but not suddenly -- gliding into the side of a cliff will kill you, but keeping the airplane pointed forward while shearing off the wheels and crumpling the nose is fine. It looked like there were several areas where this would have been relatively safe to attempt. You don't need a nice flat field for a survivable crash.
This sounds pretty scary though… If you were an experienced skydiver, with your gear on, don’t you think you’d be tempted to jump instead?
No, even then it’s the wrong call. You’re forgetting what happens when you land after jumping out of the plane if it’s not staged. No cell service, no epirb, no flares, no first aid kit, etc. One broken leg because you floated into the dense trees and you’re dead.
Experienced sky divers get to choose their jump points and landing sites. They don’t get thrown out of the plane at an arbitrary time with no preselected landing side.
>you were an experienced skydiver, with your gear on
You would controlled crash the plane because you would know that jumping over mountainous terrain with vegetation is a great way to break a bone which is going to make getting the heck out of there really, really suck.
A plane like pictured is going to stall at like 40mph so that will be your approximate crash speed, which is really damn survivable in an aircraft with a 4pt belt to keep you off the hard bits of the cabin.
Risk of some bruising and maybe a concussion beats risk of broken ankle any day.
This sounds pretty scary though… If you were an experienced skydiver, with your gear on, don’t you think you’d be tempted to jump instead?