An Airbus A300 crash lands at Baghdad International Airport after sustaining a shoulder-fired missile (Department of Defense).

‘Ever since the beginning of flight, pilots have been taught to keep in some small corner of their aviator’s toolbox the thought that maybe, just maybe, something will someday require them to land in a way and at a place not of their choosing’

US Airways Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s remarkable ditching of his Airbus A320 in the Hudson River is undoubtedly the most famous forced landing of all time. But ever since the beginning of flight, pilots have been taught to constantly keep in some small com­partment of their aviator’s toolbox the thought that maybe, just maybe, something will someday require them to land in a way and at a place not of their choosing. Fixed-wing pilots even practice it, though unless an actual runway is available it’s a kind of emergency interruptus exercise, never carried to its conclusion. (Helicopter pilots practice autorotations to the ground, an adrenaline-pumping maneuver.)

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Here are Aviation History’s nominations for the best-ever airplane emergency landings, big and small, heroic and embarrassing, skillful and just plain lucky.

Navajo Save

On a late afternoon in June 1993, air taxi pilot Edward Wyer, a 45-year-old ex-RAF Tornado pilot, took off from Birmingham, England, on a flight to Norwich, about 130 miles due east. Aboard were seven passengers—a load that, in his eight-seat Piper Navajo, made even a low-rent charter airliner seem spacious. The two back-row fares sat with their knees in their faces, and Wyer had a traveler next to him in what normally would have been the copilot’s seat.

Some 40 miles west of Norwich, as Wyer slowly reduced power to begin his descent, there was a huge bang, the airplane shook like a soggy Labrador and both engines went silent.

The right engine, in fact, went away—tore itself from its mounts and fell off. It had shed one of its three prop blades, and the huge rotating imbalance ripped the engine loose. Nor was that the only damage done by the big aluminum blade. Flung with incredible force through the Navajo’s nose, it flew out the other side and into the left engine’s prop, killing that engine.

Meanwhile, the sudden asymmetry had snapped the Piper into a tight spin to the right, which Wyer managed to correct after only two turns—nice work even if you’re fully prepared for a practice spin in an intact airplane. Wyer tried his best to reach a satisfactory glide angle, but at anything less than a steep descent at 130 knots, the airplane began to roll uncontrollably.

Coming down fast, Wyer spotted an open field to his left and without hesitation turned toward it, even though the approach path was complicated by powerlines. It took two hands on the yoke and all his strength to manage the airplane, so there was no way Wyer could hand-pump the flaps and landing gear down with the emergency handle, but he managed to get over the wires and put the Navajo down on its belly so gently that the sole injury was to a passenger who later claimed whiplash.

Accident investigators were able to verify the exact place where the Navajo’s tail had first brushed a tall stand of crops, and the neatly cut swath showed that the airplane had sunk inch by inch over a 2,300-foot flare and slid a smooth 460 feet after ground contact.

Snapped Wing Spar

While practicing for the 1970 world aerobatic flyoff, British champion Neil Williams felt the wing spar of his Zlin 526 suddenly fail during a pullout from a vertical dive. As he instinctively closed the throttle and tried to level off, Williams realized that the left wing was folded at nearly a 45-degree angle to the fuselage, severed at the root but still somehow held in place.

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