Ok, so
Ok, so
....ok, so....
As you can see by the description, this pilot's electrical system and radios suddenly went out, and he decided he had no choice but to land the plane immediately, even though there was another plane already landing directly in front of him, hoping against hope that maybe once they were on the ground a collision could be avoided somehow which as you can see did not pan out for him.
Here's the thing. Engines on older planes like this (this seems to be a 70's-ish Grumman AA-5) have an ignition system very much like car engines did around the same time - there's a thing called a magneto, which is like the distributor on a car; a shaft sticking out of the engine physically turns a magnet inside a wire coil which creates the electricity that feeds the spark plugs. The plane has TWO of these, just in case one goes bad in flight. That means that even though the electrical system that serves the rest of the plane's systems like the radios and lights went out, the engine was still running and perfectly capable of continuing to run because it was producing all the electricity it needed in a closed loop, just for itself. There was no reason, no reason whatsoever that he could not stay flying for as long as he needed until there was an opportunity to land safely.
Now there's no reason for YOU to know that. But HE had to learn at least that much about how airplane engines work in order to get his private license, so the knowledge must have leaked out of his ears at some point I guess. Now there's two nice little airplanes that are completely destroyed and neither one of them needed so much as a scratch.
