Water Over Trees

Stats may say trees are just as safe, but I’m going for the soft stuff.

After reading your article on ditching vs. going into the trees [Risk Management, May], I got to thinking about the choice I had over Bull Shoals Lake a few years ago. I was on an extended approach to Gastons’ Resort in Lakeview, Ark., from the north in our Cessna 140 when the carb began to ice up a couple of miles out at about 500 feet above water level.

Those 60-foot oak trees to the left looked pretty unforgiving compared to a ditching, and I remembered my answer a couple of years prior to the instructor at Arlington, Wash., during a C-172 checkride from Boeing Field.

He pulled the plug over the bay, after all hope of a return to Boeing was gone, smiled at me and said, “What are y...