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Engine Failure in Flight

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Joined
Sep 5, 2004
Posts
113
...I have always been taught to immeadiately pitch for Best Glide when the engine fails, and then start looking for a place to land and turning. After you have that under control, you start running your restart checklist, and then your shutdown checklist.

Now I am at a school where they want you to immeadiately run your checklist, and then if it wont restart pitch for best glide, and look for a place to land and turn.

How were you guys taught? How would you do it in an emergency as PIC?
 
Id pitch first. If you dont get it restarted then you may have wasted precious time looking at the checklist. I use ALARMS. Airspeed (Best glide), Landing spot, Air restart, Radios (121.5/7700), Mayday, Secure (shut off fuel, master, pop doors, etc.)
 
I was taught how you were. I think that a lot of accidents are caused by the pilot not maintaining proper airspeed after an engine failure and the resultant stall/spin. In my opinion, it is important to trim the airplane for best glide, figure out where you are going to put it and set yourself up for a forced landing, then worry about restarting it.

Maybe your school is figuring that you need to slow from cruise speed to best glide speed anyway so you might as well be doing something. To that I counter, but what if the engine fails in the climb? You need to immediately pitch it over and establish glide speed or you will get to do a stall recovery with the restart checklist in one hand.
 
For a single, this is what I taught -
Airspeed (Vg)
Best landing spot
Checklist following a flow if you haven't hit the ground yet.
 
TEXAN AVIATOR said:
For a single, this is what I taught -
Airspeed (Vg)
Best landing spot
Checklist following a flow if you haven't hit the ground yet.
Thats what I will teach.
 
TEXAN AVIATOR said:
For a single, this is what I taught -
Airspeed (Vg)
Best landing spot
Checklist following a flow if you haven't hit the ground yet.
I do it in this order. If I knew what caused the failure i.e. carb ice, forgot to adjust the mixture on climb/descent, need to change fuel tanks, I'd do that action before pitching for best glide.
 
I was taught to think. Viper has the correct answer. Why go through all of the monkey motion if you just forgot to switch the tanks or turn on a fuel pump? If the problem is obvious then what Texas Aviator said.

'Sled
 
You only have one basic duty in that airplane, and it never changes, and never goes away.

Fly the airplane.
 
ABC's

Airspeed Best field, Config. the airplane
 
viper548 said:
I do it in this order. If I knew what caused the failure i.e. carb ice, forgot to adjust the mixture on climb/descent, need to change fuel tanks, I'd do that action before pitching for best glide.
I'd do that =while= pitching for best glide.

The idea is to have an automatic initial reaction that will =always= work. Engine fails - pitch for best glide always works. And it only takes a second.

(Avbug? You've flown enough different aircraft; certainly far more than me. With my limited experience, I have never come across a single that didn't approximate best glide by simply putting it into a cruise level pitch attitude. Have you?)

Anything else can kill you. You want to troubleshoot as your first step on an engine failure on takeoff?
 

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