DFC said, in response to my earlier post:
Does anyone have any statistics on how many "modern" piston engines suffer engine failure on the approach? I've never heard of it happening, and I'd guess that the statistics would be very very low. And in any case, most (but admitedly not all) approaches have some reasonable forced landing sites if the engine did quit
There are lots of reports relating to things like - added power but engine failed to respond - carb ice suspected etc
Sorry, DFC, but that is not an engine failure on the approach. That's an engine failure on the go-around, and as Classic said, it is more likely with a glide approach, because of the increased chance of both carb icing and shock cooling.
I still maintain, after reading all the posts on this thread, that pracitcing glide approaches is important, and in some classic aircraft where visibility is very limited or the engine is particularly unreliable it may be useful to do a glide approach on most occassions, but in today's aircraft, including "spamcans", I do not consider a glide approach to be "normal".
The one thing which has become clear after reading the thread, though, is that this is yet another subject with two distinct camps, and that it is very difficult to persuade someone to change camp in either direction!
FFF
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