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Old 18th Jun 2008, 08:03
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Centaurus
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Australia
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The captain once commented that if his airline had given him just one practice dead-stick landing during simulator training he would have felt more confident of pulling off the real thing when it happened. Instead he had to take an educated guess at how the aircraft would glide with no engines.

In Australia at least, airline managements and regulators disregarded his advice (if they ever saw it of course) and to this day, the risk of loss of all engines (although minimal, thank goodness) is what worries most pilots - be it flame-outs in severe weather conditions or volcanic ash penetration. Simulator practice at a dead stick landing following loss of all engines, is almost unheard of - despite documented evidence that the real thing has happened on other occasions, as well as the 767 Gimli Glider.

Where the sequence was thrown in during spare time in the simulator, the vast majority of pilots I observed either crashed well short of the 10,000 ft runway or misjudged their approach so badly they hopelessly overshot the far end. Surely there is a lesson to be learned there?
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