Planning for an Emergency

If you're like most pilots (I used to fit into this category as well) you get your pilot's license and you give up on practicing emergencies. Why bother? You've already proved you can do it hundreds of times to your instructor(s), to the examiner(s) and you know you'll have a chance to prove it again when you next take your BFR. Why waste time on "training" when you've already proven yourself time and time again. An emergency is so unlikely with modern aircraft that you'd have a better chance of dying while driving to the airport! Some of you are nodding your heads in agreement with this outlook while others are shaking their heads with disgust. My former attitude is dangerous and so amazingly easy to acquire. Even if you do have a lot of respect for the aircraft and the Earth's gravity, even if you do intend on getting up with a CFI and practicing all of those things you were once proficient at-it's so easy to procrastinate and put it off until it's too late.

I've made a personal commitment to myself to make to never succumb to that way of thinking ever again. I'd recommend that everyone spend at LEAST 10% of their flying time practicing for all kinds of emergencies. It's not just a "good idea" like brushing your teeth after each meal or getting your car's oil changed every 3,500 miles-it could make the difference between life and death! Think about it this way, for every hour you fly, spend 6 minutes and practice one emergency procedure.

After reading hundreds of NTSB accident reports and "Never Again" AOPA articles, I see a constant pattern in a majority of the cases. Something went wrong with the airplane and the pilot either over or under compensated for the problem and the rest is history. Some pilots will hear the engine start to run rough and immediately overreact and put the aircraft in a field without even thinking to switch tanks, try some carb heat, try checking the mags etc. After dozens of engine-out procedures done during our training, a lot of us have a hair trigger on the commitment to ditch the plane. Other pilots however will ignore obvious signs of a dying engine and press on to their destination while passing up perfectly good airports to stop and checkout the problem. Has the reliability of engines led us to believe that they'll always be there when we need them?

Training will help you keep a lucid mentality during an emergency allowing you to stop and think it through but you can't just land with your engine off a few times a month and expect to be ready for anything the flying gods will throw at you. Unfortunately, I believe that the Private Pilot curriculum will only prepare you for the best of the "worst case scenarios" out there. Most CFI's will only teach what the FAA requires and what he knows the examiner will test you on. I don't mean to blame anyone here except YOU the pilot. If you're able to read this, it's not too late for you.

Most of the instructors I've encountered have pulled the engine on downwind, or over a field or near a big lake. It's always a complete engine loss. The decision is quite easy. "If I have the time I'll try a restart or if I'm too low I'll just land." I always landed safely and I felt confident that I could handle an engine failure. That is where we have a false sense of security. Read through the NTSB reports and see how many pilots died while mishandling a lost engine while on downwind. You're not going to find a lot of them. Accidents happen because of failures at all phases of flights and because of all sorts of problems-not just a full engine failure!

What do you do if you have partial engine failure on takeoff? Full engine failure on takeoff? Do you know what altitude you need before you can safely make it back to the runway? What do you do if your aileron or elevator gets jammed? What if your door opens in flight? What if your main gear won't come down? What if your nosewheel won't come down? What if you have a stuck throttle? It's not just mechanical failures either...What if you have a bird strike and you lose a windshield? What if your passenger becomes violently sick? What if you're getting an ice buildup on the wings? What if your landing light is out at night? A pilot can get so nervous reading the "what if's" that they become terrified of flying. Not one of the things I've mentioned will definitely result in a fatality and very likely, every single situation can result in a normal conclusion of flight with little to no damage to either the plane or its occupants. There's stories of people landing normally with an entire wing missing!

These are all situations that you can practice for. There's no excuse for any pilot to not know what altitude they can successfully turn around and land on the runway should the engine fail on takeoff. It's very easy to practice...Just takeoff and climb to a safe altitude and use that as your "hard deck." Overfly the airport (or any usable visual marker) then add full power and climb up to about 1,000feet and pull your throttle. Try to make a 180 degree turn and make it back to your marker before reaching your "hard deck" altitude. You might be surprised (either good or bad) to see how much altitude you need to make that turn.

When the pattern is empty, try flying with no ailerons. Just use your rudders to make your turns and align yourself with the runway. If you're in a Cessna 152/172, try opening both doors and pushing them out on either side. You can steer the plane with the drag from the doors! Trying adjusting your pitch with just trim and power changes. If you don't feel comfortable with this, do it at altitude!

How much power do you need to hold altitude? If you're in a warrior and your throttle gets stuck at 1300RPM do you have enough power to get you to the airport that's 7nm away or should you take the field that's right below you.

These are all very very easy things to practice yet most people don't! Some are afraid to think about the "what if's" while others are confident that "it'll never happen to me." I personally try not to think about it as "if something goes wrong" but rather "when something goes wrong." Most of my patterns are flown without power. Once i reduce the throttle, i do my best not to touch it again. It's as if every one of my landings are engine outs. It's greatly improved my judgment.

The bottom line is this...There's a million things that can go wrong and we're only officially trained for a handful of them. Very often, when something goes wrong, it's not the failure that kills people, it's what the failure does to the mentality of the pilot-in turn causing him/her to make a poor decision. There's very little that can happen to the airplane that will render it un-flyable. I once read that airplanes are a lot like escalators. Escalators don't break, they temporarily become stairs. Airplanes don't break, they temporarily become gliders.