Forced Landing Poll

[dav8or]

I forgot about the time I had one engine out, the other on fire, lav smoke, cargo smoke, everything else either broken or on fire including the f/a. Take my advise never fly a sim. They are too dangerous

 

[aggiepilot87]

4000 turbine with 33 engine failures/fires........about half of those are v1 cuts. Sometimes we had smoke in the cockpit. 4 dual engine failures. Only 1 approach down to mins with the peanut gauges, all sorts of hydraulic failures resulting in split flaps, fluid leaks, and not able to get the gear down. Hmmm.........come to think about it that was all in the sim.

I was beginning to wonder what operation you flew with... had me going for a while! good one!!

 

[TDTURBO]

I am still stuck behind that stationary front returning from the Cayman Islands in Kissimee, FL. So far, 560/0, but I still gotta make it back to Chicago...knock on wood!

This **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED** line of thundersorms hasn't moved in 3 days! I am sick of staying in hotels every 100 miles.

 

[RJones]

Only one military pilot...humm. Of course, no pistons.

1800 hours single engine piston, one complete engine failure (about 800 hours since new), 3 partial, cylinders.

0 Multi-engine piston failures.

Are we going to include turbine stuff as well?

RJ

 

[Nightwing]

1300 PISTON. No failures.

 

[fly4ever]

Forced Landings

3500+ SEL

3 forced landings all in SEL aircraft, 2 back to airport, 1 on a gravel road

 

[AV1ATRX]

I haven't actually looked in my logbook, but I've got somewhere between 1700-1800 piston hours (that's all of my hours, too) and I've never had to shut one down, although I've come really close a few times. Single engine - major loss of oil on a 5 mile final to a 9000 ft runway. The windscreen was completely covered, so I had to open the door (on a Cherokee) with a student flying and give her taxi directions. The other time I wanted to shut down but made it back under power was a governor on the Navajo that decided to do it's own thing. Thankfully, all my engine out stuff has been SIMULATED, so far. I'm now knocking on my computer table, which is made of wood....

This has been a really interesting thread.

 

[enigma]

1000 hours recip. Zero forced landings

6000 turbine. One forced landing

 

[Flightist]

Thanks everyone for your responses! I'll post some perliminary results. I've used figures from 27 people that gave both their number of failures that did or would have resulted in a forced landing. I had to do a little subjective interpretation on a few. One note: I thought it would be good to limit this to piston or reciprocating craft because I assumed Turbine aircraft especially the big ones many of you fly would skew the results to fewer average failures and I was personally more interested in the risks of what I was flying. It might make an interesting Poll to assess Turbine only or combine it all.

So with 27 people so far a total of 51,500.3 hours. Average Piston time of people responding 1907.3 hrs. Average numbers of hours per failure that did or would have resulted in a forced landing: 2060.01 hrs. Keep those responses coming in. Anyone who wants to relate the details of a particular engine failure and/or forced landing, I'm sure the rest of us would find it educational, especially us rookies. Thanks Again!

 

[TurboS7]

This didn't happen to me but it happened to one of our pilots He did such a good job that I thought I would tell his story. He was in a C-206F returning from SDF to DPA. It was VFR at night about 3A.M. in the morning. He was at 4500MSL flying along when all of the sudden he lost oil pressure. He went for the nearest airport, as he got close he realized that he didn't have enough altiutude to line up with the runway. So he did the smartest thing, he figured that he would just touchdown on the airport somewhere. Remember it is pitch black out. He touched down on the runway about 70 degrees to it. Jumped the ditch on the other side and ran into a corn field. The corn stopped him in about 150 feet. With the exception of having to change out the engine there was no damage to the aircraft. The FAA gave him an attaboy on that one. The pilot excersised superb judgement by not doing any low level turning to make the runway. He did a great job.

 

[hobbsmeter]

Knock On Wood...

1725 Hours
0 Failures or Forced Landings
Pretty smooth sailing so far, knock on wood!

 

[newmei]

I was flying right seat in a C-170 climbing shallowly out of a private strip in central america. Kaboom!!!! Shook and shudered at 700 agl and I though it be a good idea to turn around towards the strip, at about that time I decided I'd let the higher time guy fly it (I had 80 hours, less than a year as a PP) I then troubleshooted while he flew and it finally gave out. Fields left and right, river straight ahead surrounded with 100' tall trees. One field was green with TALL grass (4 ft or so probably) the other was brown with what appeared was dead grass. I said go right we did and since it was a straight in approach we did see the obstructions on the field. It had 8 foot tall berms that the ag equipment used to cross and it also retained water. So we had to miss these things and time the landing. As we were coming in I saw that there was water standing in the field. I said ut oh!!! Touched down nice and smooth but it did'nt matter we bounced around on the ruts and skidded on our nose staring at the ground wizzing by, finally the left wing and gear caught a rut and over we went doing about 35-45. About a 50 ft ground roll. It knocked the left seater out for a few seconds and knocked the crap out of me. I'm sitting there hanging and saw him just lifeless, just as I went to pull at him to see what was wrong with him, he said "I'm still here" dropped out of his seat as I did right after him and we went out. We were both so confused that I went out his door and he went out mine. I ended up with the bigger cuts as I took out the overhead speaker with my head.


I have 1200 TT and that is my only complete engine failure and only crash. It also one a short field landing in my book. It was caused by a improperly installed rocker arm. While most of the time they will run on partial cylinders this rocker arm snapped and shut the exhaust valve causing a extreme pressure. My advice ony partial power failures is that they do is give you warning on the impending complete failure in most cases.

Enough Detail?

PS the engine only had 65 hours on it.

 

[c172]

forced landing

175hr/1 forced landing

 

[Salty Dog]

Way back at 230 hrs (just shy of 400 now) I was taking off in a 172 at night w/ 2 pax from a lighted 5K' field when the engine starting running extremely rough at about 450 ft on climbout. Double crammed full rich and full throttle, (already there) double checked fuel select both, mags both, and tried carb heat (alt air) no luck. Still making ~2000 rpm and climbing ever so slowly. Didn't want to do the ol' ditch straight ahead thing while there was life left in the horse so I started a slow turn to the left. (closer to taxiway anyway)

Told my pax that noise isn't right and we're making a precautionary landing (severe understatement) and considered switching to App Cont (untowered field but nearby class C) but decided against it as I now had the field made and they would only give me a lot of help I really didn't need and the engine was not getting worse - or better. (stuck to aviate and navigate only) Didn't touch to power again 'till over the numbers and actually landed smoothly.

All the while I'm guessing the pax are praying for their lives and vowing never to fly again. Taxi to only light on field to shut down/look it over and then hear the voice of the teenage girl from the back, "why did we come back here?" So much for white knuckle flyers...

Final analysis: stuck exhaust valve on 130 hr O-360. Looking back, not that big of a deal. At the time, real eye-opener! That's as exciting as I want to get, thank you very much.

Great thread.

 

[Joseph II]

260, 0 Failures, one really scarry carb ice incident in a 152 at night with my wife. It wasn't the engine's fault, but my fault for not knowing a lot about carb ice, and how to remedy it.