Which is safer, the water or the trees? Turns ûout neither one is a death-trap-in-waiting.

If you fly long enough and often enough, sooner or later you’ll face the prospect of having to put an airplane on the deck in a hurry. If you’re lucky, it’ll be due to just a sick passenger or maybe a rough engine. But it could just as well be a full-up-oil-on-the-windshield forced landing.

In the latter, you’re confronted with the sudden and unavoidable question of where to put the thing down. Is a road the best choice? An open plowed field? Settling into a dense pine forest? A nice lake, near the shore? …