Originally Posted by
mary meagher
Yes....BUT he walked away from that tree arrival because his aircraft was under control! No point in belabouring all his stupid mistakes, he got the important one right.
EFATO? steep turn back to the tarmac, nose a tad high...surprise! you got the important one wrong. End of your story.
What she said
One of the problems with flight training is that a lot of the exercises are not evidence based, just a result of myths, historical prejudice and flight school isms mindlessly passed down through the years.
The whole forced approached exercise as taught by flight school is a particularly egregious example of this in that
- The fact that the majority of engine failures are caused by the pilot is not represented anywhere in the training
- The fact that a partial engine failure is more likely to occur than a total engine failure bit this scenario is almost never discussed let alone practiced
- And with particular reference to this thread, despite the emphasis placed on field selection in flight training the accident statistics clearly show that the fatal accident are almost never about choosing the "wrong" field they are due to either loosing control of the airplane while maneuvering to a field usually resulting in the stall/spin/die trifecta, or they totally miss the field and hit a solid object at flying speed while still well above the earth.
Yes not causing the engine to stop and if it does get it going again is very important, but as Step and others pointed out judging the glide so that the airplane arrives at the desired spot is what really matters if the engine becomes un-interested in further toil.
The good news is you don't have to do PFL's to get good at judging the gliding flight path, you just have to, when practicable, close the throttle on a regular landing at various parts of the circuit. That plus regular inflight review of the immediate vital actions in the event of engine failures
and paying attention to the preventable engine failure causes will be all the preparation you need
