Practice engine failures in SEL

[CFI'er]

Bobbysamd is right on the money. Carb heat should always be applied on the older aircraft that still have carburetors. Keeps out that nasty ice block which could cause all kinds of problems.

 

[JAFI]

Shutting down a perfectly good piston engine in flight. Several things come to mind, but lets think about this. First of all, I am not talking about turbine engines, only single piston engines.

We could forget that sometimes piston engines just don’t restart. Ask any multi instructor about having to land with an engine that won’t come out of feather or restart.

But, some of you are talking about a single engine shut down and practicing an off airport landing? I would like to hear what your insurance company’s position on that is. Or your chief pilot, head of your flight school, or better yet I would like to hear your explanation to a FAA Law judge why you decided to shut down the only operating engine to give better instruction in emergency landing. If all doesn’t go well, You have created the emergency. So what would be next? How about practicing a real engine fire? Jammed elevator? Landing blindfolded to practice a zero - zero landing? Where will it end?

If you look at the PTS is says “SIMULATED Engine Failure. Nowhere does it say shut the engine down. Some one said nowhere does it say you can’t. I’ll remind you that nowhere does it say you can’t soak your self with high-octane fuel and fly while smoking a cigar. Stupidity is not covered in the FAR’s.


If you can’t tell by now I am against shutting an engine down in a single engine aircraft unless you can step out and walk away.

 

[Learjetplt]

Off subject slightly, I know of a ME engine training flight that the Right engine was "killed" with the fuel on the downwind leg. The engine failed as the pilot flying turned base. He was in close to the runway so started his turn to final as he verified the wrong engine and retarded the good engine throttle. Make a long story short the aircraft impacted a tree burst in flames and hit the ground short of the runway on a road. Pilot flying lived but will never be able to fly again. Instructor an one other in aircraft recovered several months later after a long recouperation.
DONT ever use the fuel to shut down an engine even in a ME unless you absolutely have the runway made. The instructor in this incident had thousands of ME instructor time, you just never know.

 

[avbug]

Ah well, there's no accounting for stupidity. It hurts.

Unless you have the runway made? Teaching engine-outs only to a landing on a nice, hard, long, dry runway is criminal. Do you really want your student's first experience in realistic training to coincide with his first real emergency? I surely don't. Let the student leave the training prepared for the real world, because he or she has already experienced it.

Jafi, your published information states that you're a FAA inspector. We both know this isn't the case.

Does the FAA have FAA law judges? C'mon. You're a FAA inspector. You know this one. No? Administrative Law Judges...but not FAA law judges. The FAA takes administrative action, and an appeal may be heard before an ALJ...but an ALJ that hears administrative law across the board. Not simply FAA regulation...and not an FAA employee.

http://www.ntsb.gov/abt_ntsb/olj.htm

Shutting down a perfectly good piston engine in flight.

You're probably one of those wuffos that thinks it's cute to talk about jumping out of a "perfectly good" airplane, too. Are we talking a perfectly good engine, or perfectly good training? By your logic, a perfectly good engine is never perfect unless it's producing rated power at all times in flight, right? How ever might we reduce power to land? If we can reduce power, we can shut it down. We're not going to do that until we're certain we can get on the ground, anyway.

If all doesn’t go well, You have created the emergency.

Ah, yes. That IS the idea.

So what would be next? How about practicing a real engine fire? Jammed elevator? Landing blindfolded to practice a zero - zero landing? Where will it end?

You cloud the issue with multiple apples and oranges. How many times in your career have you experienced an engine fire? A jammed elevator? Truly landed zero-zero? Let's address that. I've had multiple fires; cockpit fires, engine fires, stack fires, etc. I believe in lighting a fuel fire and allowing a student to put it out with an extinguisher...is that good enough for you? I'm putting six students through that next week; all over a flash pan of either Jet A or Avgas, and each will get multiple chances to fact it and put it out. As for training for an engine fire in the airplane...first and foremost we make the student comfortable with the idea that it's not the end of the world, and that it is manageable. Then we must face the fact that teaching a realistic engine failure can be done safely and easily, whereas presenting an inflight fire cannot.

Moreover, a student is far more likely to experience an engine failure than a fire.

How many times have you had a jammed elevator? I haven't, personally (though I did have a frozen control at altitude, once). Can a control surface be jammed successfully and the aircraft flown? Setting aside the fact that the aircraft would be very unairworthy, the ability to do so is questionable (short of leaving in a control lock), and is not easily dealt with in flight. It can be more effectively simulated manually without the need to physically lock the control. Moreover, the liklihood of this occuring is infinitesimally small.

Conversely, the likelihood of an engine failure is much greater...much, much greater. Your reply suggests strongly that you don't have real world experience with engine failures away from the airport, or even realworld emergency experience. You could not hold that viewpoint if you did; your viewpoint is not realistic, and does not speak to realism in training, nor effectiveness in training.

Further, whereas a control jam cannot be adequately duplicated in flight, an engine failure certainly can. An instructor who cannot confidently execute an engine failure to a landing as necessary, or who doubts his or her ability to do so, is not competent to hold the certification to instruct...or to fly. The ability to perform any necessary maneuver with the outcome never seriously in doubt is universal from the earliest stages of certification. Most certainly the ability to successfully address an engine failure is an important, critical skill; absolutely a necessary one.

Comparing a jammed control surface in flight, to effectively and realistically teaching an engine failure, is a nonsensical comparison; apples and oranges. More like carrots and mangos.

Landing blindfolded? Would there be any point to that training? How does that compare in any way to the necessity to prepare the student for an engine failure? The student will face the potential for a forced landing on every flight, and during every moment of every flight for the remainder of his or her flying life. The same can in no way be said for facing the prospect of making a zero-zero landing during every flight. No comparison, and a poor example by comparing dissimiliar topics. Try again.

If you look at the PTS is says “SIMULATED Engine Failure. Nowhere does it say shut the engine down.

Ergo, during a practical test, simulate the failure. That has nothing to do with the fact that a student who is sent into the world without the experience of making forced landings and being prepared for the real thing...is a very unprepared student. Your commentary strongly suggests that you've never had the experience yourself. If not, you're not aware of the cold clammy feeling that can accompany loss of power, the hesitation that a student may feel, the indecision, the fear. That can be effectively mitigated by realistic training and exposure.

That exposure should be such that the student doesn't experience it for the first time, when it really happens for the first time. That's bad news. And a very poor commentary on a pathetic excuse for failed instruction. Either prepare the student to face reality, or do the world a favor and steer clear. Let someone else teach that student who can prepare the student...that preparation may save the students life. Don't try to sell the student on your own inheritance of inexperience...you're cheating the student and doing no one a favor.

My chief instructor? I have none. Ergo, he or she has nothing to say. What will the insurance say? That depends on the insurance, and on the operator, as well as the person giving the instruction. As someone who has spent much of his adult life landing on roads, gravel strips, and wherever will support the weight of an airplane, insurance companies specifically cover me to do it. I can only imagine the shame and potential liability after a student is badly injured or killed, if I had failed to prepare the student. I would share in the blame for the accident and the results. No thanks.

Stupidity is not covered in the FAR’s.

Actually, it is. See 14 CFR 91.13.

If you can’t tell by now I am against shutting an engine down in a single engine aircraft unless you can step out and walk away.

Ah, now on that, you and I agree. You should never pull an engine period, even if it's just with the throttle, unless you are 100% fully prepared to execute that evoloution to a landing. You had better be prepared to step out and walk away every time. Therefore, you will NOT simulate an engine failure at any time unless you are completely prepared to deal with it as an engine failure. If that can't be done, it's a competency issue.

 

[lymanm]

...

"I believe in lighting a fuel fire and allowing a student to put it out with an extinguisher...is that good enough for you? I'm putting six students through that next week; all over a flash pan of either Jet A or Avgas, and each will get multiple chances to fact it and put it out."

I wasn't sure I read that correctly. But I cut & pasted it, so I know you wrote it. Unfathomable. You are going to start a fire in flight. Wonderful. Somehow, the very 91.13 you reference in your post doesn't apply to LIGHTING A FIRE inflight??????

"...a student who is sent into the world without the experience of making forced landings and being prepared for the real thing...is a very unprepared student"

By your logic, actually making your fingers turn the transponder to 7700 is the only way to really, truly understand how that would feel. Or, perhaps, an airline captain should in fact shut off his two engines over the Pacific on his 207 ETOPS flight with 291 passengers behind him because doing it in the simulator wouldn't give him the "real life" experience of having to deal with that emergency for real.

My brother played Romeo in a highschool play. Should I advise him that he should kill himself to best understand the part? My father owns a business. Should I advise him to bankrupt himself and have his assets liquidated so he would know how it feels were it to really happen naturally? Should I eat Draino in order to recognize the symptoms just in case my crazy roommate decides to poison me? Stupid examples to illustrate stupid logic.

The point is, reducing the throttle to idle accomplishes the EXACT same thing as leaning the mixture or shutting the fuel off: you must fly the aircraft in a specific profile. Configuring for best glide speed is nearly identical whether the prop is spinning or not, and the difference is negligeable. Shooting for a feild is identical. Simulating radio calls is identical. So why go the whole way? Reducing the power to idle already addresses every component of dealing with an in flight engine failure. And you get a margin of safety that is infinitely higher to boot.

 

[nosehair]

Avbug, you are the man! My sentiments exactly! We, as instructors, should be competent enough to glide a deadstick airplane from a downwind position to a runway with the prop stopped. Every pilot applicant should have this experience. I am a firm believer that many "accidents" occur that would otherwise become "off-airport landings", if the pilot had been exposed to this mind-numbing experience during training.
Someone mentioned about helicopter autorotation training. In days long ago the Army routinely did autorotations to the ground, engine-idling, but many of the new instructors did not have a sufficient amount of proficiency, so they said "we are losing more in training than in the field, so let's stop doing them to the ground." Now they do a "power recovery" to a hover. So the new Army pilots are not trained in actual autorotation touch-downs.
Thta's bean-counter mentality. The right action would be to increase training in touchdowns to new instructors.
In Army Fixed-Winged training, long,long ago, in Multi-Engine training in a Baron, we routinely did engine failures on rotation.
The student WAS going to get an engine failure (throttle, mixture, or fuel valve) around the rotation point: right before, during, or right after while still having available runway and gear down, or just having reached the point of no available runway and raising the gear. The point was to develop the instant response to the required action. In all my years there, we never had an incident. We were well trained. That is the whole problem. No one wants to be well trained anymore. Costs too much money. And the FAA can't say anything because of "Liability".
It is criminal that we are failing in our responsibility to provide adequate emergency training.

 

[Astra Guy]

Nosehair,

I agree with you about the autos and the Baron training. Had the IP/SIP gig for a number of years in airplanes. The Baron was, in most cases, much more difficult for pilots to handle on a SE. Much less forgiving than the U-21s and C-12s that followed. The bad part about the Baron was the throttle quadrant created negative habit transfer, particularly noticeable when flying them and King Airs on the same assignment. Had a maintenance officer who was undergoing a transition to King Airs while qualified to fly Barons feather both props after takeoff. Never got above 70' before he stalled the airplane, killing all three on the aircraft. He was single pilot and not authorized to do maintenance test flights without another qualified pilot along.

Those were the days when we had training flights every 90 days and semi-annual checkrides. Nothing can make up for stupidity and ego overriding one's capabilities.

 

[bobbysamd]

SE v. ME training

In Army Fixed-Winged training, long,long ago, in Multi-Engine training in a Baron, we routinely did engine failures on rotation.
The student WAS going to get an engine failure (throttle, mixture, or fuel valve) around the rotation point: right before, during, or right after while still having available runway and gear down, or just having reached the point of no available runway and raising the gear. The point was to develop the instant response to the required action . . . .

We did the same things during ordinary civil ME training. Used mixture while the airplane was still on the ground. Used throttle after takeoff. At altitude, we shut down an engine routinely at least once during each Private and Commercial multi course, and spent time flying on one before restarting, running the shutdown checklist all the while. Although one or two times were close, I never failed to restart the "failed" one in flight.

Of course, for single-engine in the pattern, I'd pull throttle, and after the student identified, verified and began to feather, I'd set zero thrust.

I don't know of a proper multi course anywhere that does otherwise.

Originally posted by Astra Guy
The bad part about the Baron was the throttle quadrant created negative habit transfer, particularly noticeable when flying them and King Airs on the same assignment.

I got my multi in a B55 Baron, which had the same power quadrant format. It took some getting used-to when every high-performance single I heretofore had flown had the throttle on the left and prop lever in the center.

Single-engine training is a different ball of wax. Actually shutting it down in flight, as has been discussed, is inviting disaster, in terms of safety and for your certificates. Retarding the throttle to idle accomplishes everything you need.

 

[JAFI]

Avbug:


You are correct, the person sitting behind the bench is called an Administrative Law Judge. Pilots do call them FAA Law Judges or NTSB Law judges. Some times I too fall back into old habits. Both terms are incorrect, but IMO this is minor to the discussion.

I think the point of having a discussion with colleges is to present views and information to better the collective knowledge on a subject. In this forum any thing else (flaming), is a waste of time, IMO.

I disagree with your point that 91.13 addresses stupidity.


Not knowing or remembering everything, I looked this up. Not in FAR 1, or in any legal interpretation I could find. I went to the dictionary as I have seen the ADIMISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE do on several occasions.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary online


Stupidity: 1 : the quality or state of being stupid

Stupid: 1 a : slow of mind : OBTUSE b : given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner c : lacking intelligence or reason : BRUTISH
2 : dulled in feeling or sensation : TORPID <still stupid from the sedative>
3 : marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking or acting : SENSELESS
4 a : lacking interest or point

-------------Stupidity is some times confused with Ignorance.


Ignorance: the state or fact of being ignorant

Ignorant: 1 a : destitute of knowledge or education <an ignorant society>; also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified <parents ignorant of modern mathematics> b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence

FAR 91.13 does not use either term, it does use the terms careless and reckless.

Reckless: 1 : marked by lack of proper caution : careless of consequences
2 : IRRESPONSIBLE

Careless 1 a : free from care : UNTROUBLED <careless days> b : INDIFFERENT, UNCONCERNED <careless of the consequences>
2 : not taking care
3 : not showing or receiving care: a : NEGLIGENT,

Or in short:
My point:

Stupid: slow of mind, Lacking intelligence or reason.

Ignorant: lacking knowledge or comprehension

FAR 91.13

Reckless: irresponsible

Careless: negligent

IMO this is apples and oranges.


But back to the original post thread;

I do not advocate practicing emergency landings in a single engine aircraft with the engine shut down. You have just reduced any ability to go around if all does not go well. I understand that your point is that you do not land unless you have the landing made. You assume all instructors are as brilliant a pilot as you. IMO it is an unsafe practice to suggest to CFI’s.


This is probably a waste of my time, but I will make an exception here.

With out knowing you jump to the conclusion:

…your published information states that you're a FAA inspector. We both know this isn't the case…

I don’t see how “WE” came to this conclusion, or do I care how you came to your assumption.

I am an Aviation Safety Inspector (FG1825), a pilot, instructor, evaluator and I hope a safety professional.

As far as you calling me a “wuffos”, I say thank you. I will add that to my list of creative names I have been called. It is better than “Sim Wennee” and many others that I cannot list here. I will have to find out what a “wuffos” is.

You gave your opinion, I gave mine. My hope is that the readers will make up their own mind. I hope they will always err to the safety side. This will improve their chances of making it to retirement in one piece.

“There are no old, bold pilots”

 

[bugchaser]

Ok, I can't stay out of this one anymore. First, I am an active primary CFI and I have experienced the real thing several times. I also have spent a lot of my flying career landing on roads, pastures, or wherever else we could stuff an airplane into. This experience does help one realize that an airplane can be safely landed in lots of places that most pilots would never attempt. Having said that, I don't think that it is a good idea to kill the engine with mixture in flight. For one thing, I do not think that most insurance would be happy with that. If any of you own the airplane you instruct in like I do, you will agree that we certainly cannot stand to do anything to increase the already prohibitive rates. Avbug, I understand your point. Most instructors give way too little in the way of emergency procedures. This has come about because of the lack of true emergencies experienced by most pilots. Simply pulling the throttle and asking the student to run through the standard drill does little to prepare for an engine failure when it really happens. The simple fact is that suggesting to low time/experience CFIs that they simulate an emergency by using mix will probably lead to more accidents. It will probably be the first time for the instructor as well as the student. If the manuever is carried out to completion, the airplane may be damaged if a suitable landing area is not picked. If this is done, the CFI had better scout out the are before hand and make sure the intended landing area is suitable. Suitable for an emergency landing in a real situation is a lot different than suitable for a practice emergency landing. In my training I try to stress to my students that the number one thing is to continue to fly the airplane and find a spot to put the airplane where they have the best chance for the least injury. Sometimes in the real deal it is better to sacrifice the airplane if it means a better chance for them. Trying to make a road and then realizing at the last min that there are wires or other obstacles in the way is one example. In many cases it might be safer to set up in a field from the start even though it might result in damage to the aircraft. One way this could be practiced with some realism is to start the exercise over a known good landing site. I would never suggest that these be practiced on a road because of the legalities of this. Like I said, I agree that most students get little realistic training in this area, but lets be careful what we suggest to lower time instructors.