Illustration by Charles Floyd
The simulated engine failure is ubiquitous in aviation. Every pilot applicant has been through the drill. We rehearse for the big event until the steps are centered in our heads, thanks in part to the frequency of the repetition, and in part because our flight instructors require us to be able to repeat the checklist items on command. Pitch and trim for best glide speed; pick an emergency landing spot; head toward it; troubleshoot and attempt a restart; make a Mayday call; review the emergency checklist. Fly the airplane.
The practical test standard is a bit more specific. The FAA wants to know you will exhibit a satisfactory level of knowledge relating to the various elements of an emergency approach and landing. The agency wants to be sure you can appropriately analyze the situation and select a reasonable course of action. The FAA’s standards for airspeed allow for up to 10 knots above or below your airplane’s best glide speed. It will test your ability to plan a pattern that avoids obstructions while putting you in a survivable setup to land—and that you’ve considered your altitude, the wind, the terrain, and even the possibility of a field full of livestock. Finally, your examiner wants to see you use the appropriate checklist.
Beyond the PTS. Is that enough for an actual engine failure? Maybe not. Designated pilot examiner Frank Gallagher would like us to think beyond the PTS, envision a more realistic scenario, and prepare for it before we ever get into the aircraft. When it comes to engine failures, he says, “It’s either an inconvenience or a disaster.”
The key to a successful outcome may be as simple—and as difficult—as the thought processes of the pilot experiencing the failure. That’s the challenge inherent to emergency training: working successfully with the least-reliable and most accident-prone component in the aircraft, the human element.
Although the causes of engine failures deserve our attention—because many are easily preventable—Gallagher is focused on more than the question of what made the propeller stop spinning. “You need to think about yourself and how you’re going to react if an emergency like this occurs,” he warns.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, Gallagher’s flight experience spans careers in the military and civilian worlds. He’s held positions as an instructor and a test pilot. He’s flown fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, single engine and multiengine—and he’s lost an engine in all of them over the years. While most of us claim a total experience of zero in real engine failures, Gallagher is working on recording his second dozen in his flight log.
During a presentation at the Emil Buehler Center for Aviation Training and Research in Melbourne, Florida, Gallagher fleshed out his personal experiences losing power while airborne in everything from a Cessna trainer to a Vultee BT-13 to a multiengine military helicopter. “Let’s talk about panic,” Gallagher says. “Panic is an out-of-control situation. The way to prevent it is training.” To simulate an engine failure, he advises pilots to pause for at least four seconds after closing the throttle. That pause will mimic what is likely to happen should you ever experience an actual engine failure.
According to Gallagher, that first four seconds is critical. Your airspeed will fall rapidly while you briefly go into denial. The first thought that most likely will go through your head is This can’t be happening to me—not lower the nose and trim for best glide. Training to deal with emergencies is valuable if it is continuous and realistic. When confronted with the real-life situation you will react as you were trained to react. Hence, if your training is sporadic or unrealistic, your reaction to the real thing may very well be insufficient to the event.
Stress is part of your reality in an engine failure. You are a human being, and you will react as human beings react when confronting a potentially dangerous situation—which is to say, not very well—unless you train for the experience. “Deep breathing works really well,” Gallagher says. He encourages new student pilots as well as veterans to learn calming techniques that can help us work through our problems when airborne. Gallagher teaches his students to talk out loud as they react to the emergency. “One of the most soothing things for you in this type of situation is to hear your own voice.”
“Your reaction has to be automatic and correct,” says Gallagher of the engine-out scenario and your response to it. The basics of the PTS serve us well on this point, but Gallagher encourages pilots to go beyond the generic task the PTS sets out for us, a task that far too many CFIs take at face value and present to their students without any additional context.
The real thing. In real life you may have a passenger sitting beside you who is a nervous flier. “How is your passenger going to react?” Gallagher asks. “Are they going to be calm and quiet or will they be a distraction?” Gallagher’s advice is to give your passenger a task to do. Have him pull out the pilot’s operating handbook and flip to the emergency procedures section. If you thought ahead, you might have tabbed that section to make it easier to find. I tab the emergency section of my POH with a red plastic flag. Making that section easy to find in a stressful situation eases my mind, and hopefully it will occupy my passenger’s mind if we ever need to flip to those pages.
In an emergency, “You fly as you fly,” Gallagher warns. If you’re used to left traffic patterns with moderate banked turns, set yourself up to make left traffic and use moderate bank turns. Don’t give way to your impulse to maneuver radically in order to get down quicker or stop shorter. Don’t set yourself up for a long straight-in approach if you don’t have a lot of experience judging altitude and sink rate in long straight-in approaches. “If you’ve never done it before, why are you doing it now?” Gallagher says.
In those last minutes in the air, take time to acclimate yourself to the area in which you are preparing to land. Are there houses? Is there a road? If you need to leave the airplane, which direction will take you toward the help you may need? These questions may be lifesavers in a scenario that puts you down in a short field filled with rocks. Similarly, the newly mown field that looks so attractive from 2,000 feet msl may turn out to be on a hillside with an unexpected 20-degree slant to it.
Often we think of the engine failure scenario as concluding when the airplane comes to rest at the end of its ground roll. That may be the case. Then again, it may not. “Now you’ve landed and you’re hanging around. Who’s coming looking for you?” Gallagher asks. “Who’s even going to know you’re there?” Those questions may be the best argument for filing a VFR flight plan. You may survive the forced landing only to find yourself lost and disoriented on the ground. That advice to fly the airplane doesn’t stop with the stick and rudder. You are the pilot in command, after all. Whether you’re airborne or in a field several miles from town, your passengers will be looking to you for guidance and assistance. Make sure you are in a position to give both in a way that genuinely benefits your precious cargo.
We imagine that when faced with an engine-out scenario we’ll simply land the airplane, walk to the road, and get a ride back to town. That’s not necessarily the way an emergency landing is going to work out. “The longest I’ve ever been in a field is two days,” says Gallagher. He asks the audience how many carry emergency rations when they fly, or clothes that will protect them from the sun, wind, mosquitoes, or chilly nights.
There is far more to the emergency landing than the PTS might suggest. That slender book presents us with a good starting point, but it is up to us to flesh out the scenario and give it realism when we practice. This is the time to envision what happens after the wheels touch the ground, and to plan for making the best of that situation for ourselves, our passengers, and those at home worrying about us. When the engine coughs and the prop comes to a stop, that is a lousy time to start thinking, I wonder what I should do now?
The real thing
Senior Editor Dave Hirschman was ferrying the Commemorative Air Force’s SBD Dauntless from Deland, Florida, to its home near Atlanta, Georgia, in 2004 when the airplane’s Wright 1820 engine started coming apart.
It started with a few loud knocks and a noticeable loss of power, but the engine kept running and gauges were reading normally. Hirschman initially suspected a blown cylinder and turned back toward Deland, 25 miles to the south, intending to land and diagnose the problem there. In fact, a connecting rod had broken, and a piston was disintegrating.
Six miles from the airport, the situation deteriorated. As Hirschman relates in an article originally published on AOPA Online:
“Black smoke spilled from the exhaust stacks, and the oil pressure needle was flickering and falling. Engine power was set at 30 inches of manifold pressure, but the engine was clearly in agony and indicated airspeed dropped from about 150 knots to 120 knots.
“A straight-in approach would mean flying directly over the town of Deland, and I was trying to decide whether to do it when the engine made the decision for me. It lost power all at once, and we were too far away to glide to the airport.
“Fortunately, there was a grass strip, Lee Airport, a sleepy place mostly used by gliders, just off our left wing. The wind was blowing about 20 knots out of the southeast, and I maneuvered sharply to enter a right downwind and base turn.
“I lowered the landing gear handle and the two main gear free-fell into position. Even though this was a grass runway, it was a runway, and I saw no reason to make a gear-up landing.
“ATC asked if I wanted emergency equipment sent to Lee Airport and I nearly shouted, ‘Send it!’
“During a close-in right base turn, the airplane felt like it was trying to stall and spin to the right. It took nearly full left rudder and left aileron to prevent the airplane from overbanking. I later learned that the turning moment was caused when the engine seized and the spinning prop abruptly stopped, twisting the crankshaft like a Tootsie Roll.
“Fighting off the turn ate up energy, and on short final, the airplane appeared too low. I was sure the wheels would hit a group of greenhouses at the approach end of the runway, but that was better than making the fatal error of trying to stretch a glide and stalling. To my astonishment and great relief, however, the wheels cleared the obstacles. I hauled the stick full aft over the runway, and the airplane touched down firmly—very firmly—about 100 feet from the threshold, then rolled to a stop in about 1,200 feet. It was my first and only no-flap SBD landing.”
Fellow CAF volunteer Charles Burcher, who was in the Dauntless with Hirschman, ran to the front of the airplane with a fire extinguisher as soon as they were stopped. Twenty gallons of oil were sprayed on the sides and belly of the Dauntless.
