Training Tip: 12 stalls and a forced landing
When a flight instructor asks a student pilot, “What would you do right now if the engine stopped?”, it’s great if the student has the right answer—but the CFI’s real goal is to confirm that the student was ready for the question.
Answers depend on altitude, terrain, and whether the fight is taking place in the airport traffic pattern, among other things. But in all cases, you need a plan and it’s important to update it as the flight evolves.
Where I fly in Maine, an area tailor-made for practicing ground-reference maneuvers lies a short cruise from the airport. You can fly for miles above a straight, lightly traveled stretch of interstate highway. A student pilot faced with a simulated power loss can respond by promptly setting up for a potential highway landing in the proper direction as determined by the wind direction.
Not every flight training habitat is well hedged against emergencies, so don’t develop the habit of flying turns around a point around any old reference point that’s handy, or by strutting your S-turns across the most convenient power line that cuts a path through jagged terrain or meanders through dense woods with no open spaces nearby.
A forced landing that ended a training flight in Idaho in 2019 serves as a proper wakeup call. According to the NTSB’s preliminary account, “The flight instructor reported that they had performed about 12 power-off and power-on stalls,” but “while performing the last power-off stall, with the nose of the airplane pitched up, the engine stopped without warning.”
The CFI “pitched the nose of the airplane down” (to avoid stalling) and tried to restart the Cessna 172’s engine, “while looking for a place to land.”
Fortunately, a field afforded a place to glide to for a safe forced landing about 12 miles from the airport where the flight originated, the NTSB said.
The next time your instructor asks where you would glide if the engine stopped right now—or even if the CFI doesn’t ask—be ready with a quality answer.
