Aviation is loaded with homilies, but none is more accurate or important than "Fly the airplane." In an emergency, maintaining control of the airplane takes precedence over everything else. Even if your kids have set fire to the back seat, you must fly the airplane first and put out the fire second. Of course, that's easier said than done.
The exact cause of panic is hidden deep within the recesses of a mind that is losing control, but one major component is the fear of what's about to happen. If the engine quits, for instance, you're not scared because you're gliding. You've done that before. You're scared because of what might happen at the end of that glide. Another major component of panic is confusion-not knowing what to do in a terrifying situation. If you know how to minimize the danger, then you can concentrate on doing it. If you don't know what to do, your mind immediately focuses on the potential disaster staring you in the face.
Fear is unavoidable in a situation such as an engine failure. Panic is fear raised to the level that it shuts down your mind. With training, it is something you can prevent or at least manage.
Training for a given situation removes many of the unknowns. It lowers the fear level because the situation has been practiced, and while it still has terrifying consequences, it's not totally unfamiliar. You've been there before, so your mind stands a much better chance of staying online.
One of the most important benefits of training, especially for the engine-out scenario, is that it builds references, thus eliminating the guesswork. (More on that later.) Another important gift of training is that it builds instincts: If you practice something often enough, you won't have to think about it when it comes time to do it. You will react instinctively. In a bad situation, muscle memory and instinct will help compensate for a pea-sized brain. Bad things can happen in an airplane, and your best defense is training, practice, and more practice.
So, what should you train for? Train first for those situations that are most likely to happen or are most serious. The most serious emergency situations are engine failure and weather. The array of other possibilities includes everything from control system failure to knocking over the chemical toilet that your spouse (of either gender) made you install.
Weather emergencies are avoidable, period. A pilot who finds himself caught in bad weather (assuming a VFR pilot, not an IFR pilot with equipment failure) put himself there through lack of planning, lack of understanding and awareness, or lack of common sense.
A major problem that occurs when weather forces a pilot to descend too close to the ground is that get-down-itis sets in. In the worst sort of way, that pilot wants to be standing down there on that rain-slicked road. The urge to land becomes overwhelming. Oddly enough, the urge may not be as dumb as it sounds. When the situation is obviously getting out of control, an off-airport landing is preferable to slamming into unseen objects. The bottom line is that keeping panic under control is easier to do while conducting an off-field landing than it is when hurtling toward ground that's obscured in fog and rain.
Weather is a much-discussed subject. There are thousands of books on it. Videos, courses, symposiums galore teach pilots about weather and how to deal with it. It comes down to this: If you don't want to have a weather-related emergency, either get your instrument ticket, keep it current, and fly the best equipment available or resolve to avoid potentially bad weather situations altogether. It's that simple. Weather doesn't suddenly leap on you. You know it's out there. You know it's a potential problem. You are responsible for raising the probability that it will become a problem by pushing into questionable situations.
Perhaps you're trying to beat the weather and you cut the margins too thin. Or maybe you ignore the fact that weather could be a problem and don't plan alternate routes or destinations. Or, worse, you just don't get a briefing and blunder blindly ahead.
All of these situations are fully preventable if you use a combination of planning and common sense. Don't push into lowering ceilings. Turn around or grab an alternative the instant the situation approaches your limits. For that matter, know what those limits are before you take off. Don't fly VFR on top unless there is no doubt that your destination is clear and points along the way are, at worst, broken. An on-top flight puts you at risk of finding that you can't get down at your destination and makes every other type of emergency a thousand times worse.
In questionable weather, fly from airport to airport, and, when passing over the last one with lowering ceilings ahead, land. If nothing else, give yourself a few minutes on the ground to give your brain a rest. The tighter the situation becomes, the more faulty your judgment is likely to be. Work out alternatives on the ground.
But what about those times when you do find yourself scud running-one of aviation's more foolish endeavors? How do you train for that?
First, much of the panic involved in finding yourself trapped under 500-foot ceilings has nothing to do with the weather. It has everything to do with not being able to see and not knowing where you are. The good news is that GPS has solved much of that dilemma; the bad news is that GPS has solved much of that dilemma.
It's good because the GPS lets you know where you are and where you want to go. It's bad because having that information can tempt you to push weather that much harder. It's vitally important that you set visibility and ceiling limits for yourself that you absolutely won't violate. That's hard to do when the GPS says your destination is just 12 miles ahead. You might think you can make it, but the truth is that you might not. And this assumes that your GPS doesn't quit on you.
The best training you can do for this type of situation is to set up a phony low-level cross-country with a friend. He picks a small, hard-to-find destination (tiny town, road intersection, etc.) that's about an hour out, and he marks it on a map. But he doesn't give you the map until you've taken off and are in the pattern climbing out. You're going to fly the entire trip at 500 to 1,000 feet depending on local conditions and common sense. By not knowing where you're going and not gaining altitude, you're simulating getting caught under the klag. Oh, yes, one other thing: the only navaid you can use is the compass.
There are a lot of little tricks to be used here. For instance, in lieu of having a plotter, you can form your course line on the sectional by pinching the chart at your present position and your destination and folding the map be-tween the two pinches, then rubbing the folded edge with your pencil. (You do always fly with a pencil in the cockpit, don't you?) Roll the pencil parallel to the crease until it hits a VOR rose: that's your magnetic heading. To time how long it takes to fly from one checkpoint to another, put the point of your pencil on one checkpoint and mark the other on your pencil with your thumb. Then see how many of those lengths of pencil lie between you and your destination (example: six minutes per pencil length, seven lengths to destination, estimated time en route 42 minutes).
Of course, being trapped by weather isn't the only situation that can give you a bad case of get-down-itis. Imagine how you'd feel if you lost your engine. Engine failures very seldom happen. But how many times does it have to happen to make it serious? Just once
There are four aspects to dealing with an engine failure, the first three being fly the airplane, fly the airplane, and fly the airplane. Once you have that under control, you can move to the fourth step-trying to figure out what caused the engine to stop (change fuel tanks, turn the fuel pump on, apply carb heat, etc.).
If the engine quits, the key to fighting panic and keeping get-down-itis under control is having practiced it a lot. The result is a good set of references for what the airplane does without power. You know exactly how the airplane reacts and what you have to do to land safely. The power-off condition be-comes a known situation, and, being in a known situation, you're much less likely to let panic take over.
Here too, planning is a major part of the training. In this case, it consists of constantly being aware of where you'd put the airplane down should something go wrong. During takeoff, identify how high and how far down the runway you could be and still be able to land on it. Then have sites selected around the airport that look good. En route, entertain yourself by selecting safe havens and updating them as you fly past.
Part of this kind of training is doing enough normal power-off approaches that you develop a feel for where the airplane is going to go without power. This includes establishing an initial point from which such an approach would be flown on downwind. Once you have that reference set in your mind (probably 800 to 1000 feet, a given distance off the intended touchdown point), when the engine quits all you have to do is head for that point, planning to arrive at the right altitude and speed.
Another kind of training exercise involves cutting the power, making 90-degree turns, and noting how much altitude is lost in each. Then you just have to count how many 90-degree turns it will take to get down from altitude so that you reach the initial point for the field you've picked out.
Above all, don't forget to include the forward slip in your training. The slip is the ace that you'll use to get rid of excess altitude. That way you can plan on being high enough to ensure making the field, then slip off the excess altitude.
There's an old axiom that says, "If you ain't never been there before, how you gonna know where you are once you find yourself there." That's what this training is all about. It's about putting yourself in as many emergency situations as possible, on purpose. If the real thing occurs, your brain may still try to shrink to pea-size, but enough of it will remain functioning to keep you on top of the situation.
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