Photography by Chris Rose
The power-off landing is a subject that can touch off some intense conversations. In some circles, the concept of killing the power on downwind and gliding to a landing is not only controversial—it’s borderline heresy. Why force yourself to land an airplane power off, when there is a perfectly good engine in front of you ready and willing to help you execute a flawless power-stabilized approach? And besides that, the FAA prefers stabilized approaches. So, why the debate?
Why indeed. You don’t have to go too far back in flight instruction history to find that there was no argument about how landings in light aircraft should be taught. Abeam the threshold (or your intended touchdown point), the throttle went to idle, and the hapless student was left to fly the rest of the approach with no horses to help him fix mistakes. He had to control his speed and ground track so as to put the airplane on a given spot.
At the time, this kind of instruction was felt to be necessary so that, if an engine were to quit, the pilot would know how to use what energy his altitude gave him to reach safety on a field or back road. It seemed logical then. Why do some think it is illogical today? What can—and should—be done about it?
The primary goal of making a majority of your landings without power is to make dead-stick landing skills a part of your psyche. In other words, so you don’t have to think about the visual and intellectual references that tell you where your airplane is going to go at any point in the flight, should engine power vanish. The instant those skills and references are needed, they are there. And that is critical because, when an engine is lost, for an instant or two you can’t depend
on your brain to work normally—or at all.
If you ask anyone who has lost an engine what their initial reaction was, the answer usually will be “disbelief.” For a few dangerously long seconds, your brain has trouble accepting the situation. The shock is so profound, and releases such a rush of adrenaline, that it really messes with your ability to think. In fact, part of the thought behind habitually doing power-off landings is that, when your engine quits, you don’t have to think. Your power-off instincts already are well honed. You know what the airplane is going to do and how you can control the outcome.
This, of course, assumes at least part of your brain has another power-off habit: You’re continually scanning the surrounding area looking for places you could put the airplane if it quits right now. On cross-countries you’re looking ahead and to the sides and, in effect, flying from one possible emergency field to the next. At your home field, you’ve scoped out every logical landing places around the airport that can be safely reached from a given altitude. In the pattern at unfamiliar airports, part of your visual scan includes identifying viable landing spots.
THE SHORTCOMINGS OF POWER ON. It is easier to learn to land an airplane when power is part of the equation. A whole lot less thinking and judging are involved. Just keep an eye on the numbers and, when the threshold or runway numbers are moving away from you, the throttle follows them. When they’re coming at us, indicating that we’ll be high, pulling out the throttle will lead them back. It’s a simple way of landing an airplane. And that’s one of its several shortcomings.
Good training isn’t necessarily easy. In fact, the easier it is, the less the student is learning. The goal should be mastery of the skill, not just being able to pass a checkride. The FAA’s practical test standards establish minimums, and meeting those means you’re just barely able to fly the airplane.
The result is that because you’re used to operating close to the minimum required, when skills degrade over time, it doesn’t take long before you slide out of the acceptable range and become borderline dangerous. Making your normal landing a power-off landing means at least that portion of your judgment is continually being challenged, and those skills are more likely to stay at an acceptable level.
There’s another downside to always having power in during the approach: the distorted view you develop of glideslope. It generally takes very little power to help an airplane on glideslope. In fact, in a lot of popular light aircraft, carrying just enough power that you can feel it will greatly increase the L/D (or glide) ratio—sometimes by 100 percent! What this means is that when the power is pulled completely back, or there is a power failure, the airplane won’t behave even remotely as it did during power-on approaches. It will come down faster and at a much steeper angle. So, if the only time you do a power-off approach is when the engine has quit, you’ll be on a test flight because you won’t have a clue where the airplane actually is going to go.
BACKED INTO A CORNER. One of the absolute requirements of a power-on landing of any kind is that the airplane has to enter final far enough out that it can’t make it to the runway without the assistance of power. To put it another way, if the engine quits while you’re setting up for a power-on landing, every direction is down and you’d better have your emergency landing spot already picked out.
It’s believed that most engine failures happen during a power change, so, if making a power approach, set it up so the throttle only goes one direction: back. Enough altitude should be maintained so that, unless doing a specialty approach—for example, short or soft field—the throttle is being gradually retarded. We don’t want to paint ourselves into a corner by getting too low and needing power that isn’t there.
PLAN FOR POWER OFF. First, just because it’s planned to be a power-off approach, we don’t slavishly adhere to the power-off doctrine. If power is advisable to maintain safety margins, it’s used. However, while setting up the approach we aim to be high enough that making the runway isn’t a question. The only question is getting the airplane down on the spot we’ve selected, presumably within the first 500 to 700 feet of the runway. If we do that, we can easily turn off at the 1,500-foot mark (in most airplanes) with minimal braking.
There are several methods of maintaining glideslope during a power-off approach. The first is the placement of base leg, which may be the most important factor. Turn too late and you’ll have no choice but to add power. When adding power, do it as early in the approach as possible. Base is the perfect place.
When the turn is made toward the runway, fixate on the threshold or the numbers and make that the point at which the glideslope visually hits the runway. Your float will carry you 500 feet or so past that point during flare. If the numbers move toward you (or down the windshield), you’re high. If they move away (or up), you’re low. You want them moving toward you. You can steepen the glideslope by increasing flaps, or by slipping. The flaps make gross adjustments. The slip (assuming they are allowed, when flaps are down) makes fine adjustments.
Power-off approaches require more finesse in terms of basic flying skills. Energy management and conservation are the keys. Every time you let the nose move enough to take airspeed off the number established in the pilot’s operating handbook, you lose altitude unnecessarily. Every time you let the ball slide off center, you lose more valuable altitude. Glide efficiency is determined by efficient control of the airplane.
ENGINES ALMOST NEVER QUIT. Many reading the foregoing are saying, “This is all fine and dandy, but modern engines almost never quit.” Thank goodness that’s true. But, the operative word in that statement is “almost.” How many times do they have to quit for it to be a serious problem? Once is plenty. I have had four failures over a long lifetime of aviating, and two of those—in two different airplanes—occurred within 18 hours of each other.
We have to prepare for what fate might have in store for us. Part of that preparation is power-off landings (whenever possible and practical) and getting good at some basic, old-school type of flying. When the propeller stops propelling, those are the only skills that count.
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