10 in-flight failures

Eventually I’ll offer, “I’ve had 10 in-flight engine failures in single-engine aircraft.” This usually prompts wide eyes, as though I admitted, “I’ve had 10 wives.”

Some of these failures were a complete power loss, others a small reduction of power or roughness, telling me to be on the ground pronto. A few had smoke and extreme vibration. The causes included fuel exhaustion, dropped valve, magneto failure, frozen injection servo, two broken pistons, inverted fuel system failure, broken intake manifold, blown spark plug, and a failed rocker arm.

When was the last time you practiced an engine-out all the way to touchdown?

Fuel exhaustion

The Zlin I used for aerobatics carried 19 gallons of fuel with a floating cork to hint at the quantity. At full throttle, it had less than an hour to dry. Despite repeated radio queries from my snap-roll coach, I failed to notice that the fuel-gauge float had become stuck at one-third full. Then, the propeller stopped. At 1,500 feet agl, I considered a standard pattern. A half-second later, I realized the two options were under or over the power lines in front of me. The Zlin has longish wings, so it was over the wires, rolling out mid-field.

Broken piston

My wife, Bonnie, and I restored a 1946 Stampe SV4C that we used for aerobatic competition. The Renault engine, when new, carried a 150-hour time between overhauls. As ours was far from new, and parts rare, we began to count our repair cycles in flights rather than hours. These beautiful French biplanes had about two hours of fuel, at 75 to 80 knots, so we were never far from the toolbox or fuel pump.

I was flying our Stampe to a grass strip northeast of Binghamton, New York. This morning the sky was blue, and cold. Leather helmet, no radio—my kind of day.

Overhead Binghampton, bang, and the airplane was shaking and smoking. Backfires blew smoke out the air intake and gaps at the rear of the Stampe’s cowling. It would hold 1,300 rpm, providing 45 knots. With a stall speed of 39 knots, that kept me moving forward, rather than down.

I banked toward Tri-Cities Airport, about six miles to my left. There was an abandoned glider field just south of Runway 34, and I knew if I could make that I could glide the remainder. I had in mind the Allegheny Airlines regional airliners, but I had no radio nor transponder.

Making the numbers, I pulled onto the first taxiway and idled toward the ramp. Two Boeing 737s were at their gates. Thick, white smoke was spiraling up from the Stampe’s cowling, while globs of oil and spare parts dropped onto the pavement. The tower was just beyond the jets, overseeing the ramp, runways, and my polluting biplane.

Passing the terminal, I expected a firetruck, but none appeared. I shut down, surveyed the mess, entered the FBO, called the tower, and confessed, “Sorry, guys, my engine blew up and I had to make an emergency landing. No radio to give you a heads up.”

“You what?”

“I just landed with a puking engine. Sorry I couldn’t contact you.”

“You did?”

“No problem, guys, have a nice day!” I never heard a word from them.

Dropped valve

The evening before had been night instrument flight rules from Las Vegas to Dallas. We flew the ILS approach into Redbird Airport (now Dallas Executive), breaking out at 1,200 feet agl, and diverted the Mooney VFR to our nearby airpark.

The next afternoon, my friend Jack and I were returning from Grayson field. At 1,100 feet agl crossing White Rock Lake just east of downtown Dallas, bang, and the airframe was shaking so badly I expected the engine to depart. I snatched the throttle back to idle, prop to minimum rpm, and took stock. A tiny bit of power seemed far better than slinging the engine off. We turned toward Hudson Airport, in a slow descent, but sufficient to make the 11 miles to the runway.

Valve rocker tower

After pancakes, Bonnie and I took off in the Stampe to return home. My turn in the rear pilot’s seat. At 300 feet agl, just off the end of the runway, bang, much shaking, but this time no smoke.

The SV4 has a ton of wing area and doesn’t weigh much. It can be banked to nearly 90 degrees, the stick back hard into your gut, and it will appear to rotate on an axis passing vertically through its center. On this day, I instantly rolled right for a 30-degree turn, then slammed the stick hard left and back. It behaved as I knew it would, with the 210-degree turn taking only a few seconds. We rolled out lined up with the grass taxiway, littered with cylindrical hay rolls. I found a path to the left, with the port wheel just clearing the runway lights. The number 3 rocker tower had sheared the main hold-down bolt. Toolbox and spare parts five miles away.

What? Why?

I dislike the term “emergency landing.” Most emergencies happen in the air. We want the subsequent landing not to be an emergency. We should ensure it will be a relaxed end to having skillfully handled the earlier surprise.

When you’re learning about loss-of-power emergencies, your instructor pulls back the throttle and asks, “What are you going to do now?” The cockpit is quiet, you’re several thousand feet up, and your instructor will have hidden a field under your left elbow. After studying the checklists, and efforts to restart, you will be asked to demonstrate an approach to the “emergency” field to which you will imagine, but not execute, a landing.

This is not how in-flight emergencies present themselves. In real life, they can be noisy and violent, or silent, ambiguous, and confusing. There is no promise they will happen only in visual conditions, or daylight. You may be over dense population, mountains, or the ocean. Your passengers may be problematic. Your attention is required, and reviewing your short-soft-obstructed landing technique is not likely to be the first, or twentieth, item on your list.

For several decades now I make every approach and landing, not otherwise interrupted by ATC or traffic, a short obstructed-field exercise. I often reduce my power to absolute minimum 10 or more miles out.

On occasion, I pull the propeller control back, lowering the rpm to minimum to test the Mooney’s maximum glide capability. This type of landing is the most practiced type of approach and landing in my logbook. These are done in all wind conditions; final will be steep, with full flaps, full slip, at short-field speed, behind the drag curve. Frankly, I get sweaty when I see someone on a long, shallow final. As a rule, I refuse to do them.

Every in-flight failure (so far) has ended on a runway, or parallel taxiway. Even when traveling farther from airports on cross-country flights, I always know where I’m going to land if it goes bang. Or silent. When my next in-flight failure arrives, and it will, I intend that what happens next will be routine. FT

Don Peterson is a flight instructor and A&P/IA with more than 40 years of flying experience.