I'm with those that consider this a positive result. Far too many variables we don't know about to comment further on the approach...

... however I didn't hear a 'mayday' or 'pan pan' call? Maybe she did call it out but wasn't part of the clip, or perhaps it's not what you do wherever this is, but that's something drilled into me - not just to use if needed, but to react to if I hear it. Not sure the word 'emergency' would penetrate quite so immediately as 'mayday' repeated 3 x etc.

Whatever, I'd be happy to shake her hand for doing a good job in the circumstances she was presented with :ok:

Maybe I am missing something here with talk about a 180 being dangerous. No argument if low level (having practised numerous in various aircraft and yes to nail it is great but chances of doing so very unlikely). But did I miss something in the clip as is that not what happened at height to return to the reciprocal ?

They walked away and didn't do any damage with that landing.

Facts are she was high and fast. However you can't judge as to why or what they should have done better as you don't have all the facts. Where were they when the engine failed, how high? Have you had a look at the area surrounding the airfield? Doesn't look they had any other real options other than return, depending on many things you might choose a tailwind.

We actually did AOC work on a C172, from an airfield where there were no options in case of an engine failure. Only way to get the CAA to allow us to operate from there was by doing turnbacks, often having to take a tailwind on landing.

Are you kidding me double_barrel? Nothing wrong with a well handled emergency. Excellent job by the pilot.

The lesson I hope you learn is a little bit of knowledge or experience - which is all you have - is very dangerous.

As others have posted, 180 degree turns etc have killed many experienced aviators.

Armchair experts like yourself denigrating another pilot after a successful emergency are the bane of aviation worldwide.

No one hurt, airplane undamaged, good result.

Lessons to learn… only bit of advice I could add here is, maybe a short side slip would have gotten her into a better touch down zone point earlier. If you aren’t familiar with side slipping on final to lose height, whilst maintaining the centreline, I suggest you go out and learn/practice it.

What I find so amazing is the bloody awful radio audio quality. The Maritime Radio Service would never accept that What we radio engineers would describe as "six parts distortion and 4 parts abortion"...

Even radio amateurs and CBers can do better than that...

I second that, it's saved an imperfect forced approach for me a couple of times. Yes, a 172 can be safely slipped with flaps extended....

For me, four complete engine failure landings, and two more where I had power available, but elected a power idle from cruise flight forced landing ('could have gone around, but did not).

That would be human nature. You would tend to be too high than too low. Too low you can't ever get back up again. Guessing here, she knew she was too high as well when she came in.

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, if you're able to use the aircraft again that's a bonus. Her approach was over a residential area in a thickly forested area, absolutely no way an undershoot would have turned out well, perhaps she kept height in hand for possible wind shear, some thing a regulatory check pilot gentle chided 30 hour me for on a check ride for a scholarship in a C150 where I planted a simulated engine failure virtually on the numbers of an airport, the forest would shield the runway from ambient wind. Bar a grilling who knows her thoughts. Sure she may have side slipped of the excess height, but if she was happy with the way things were progressing then why? Why didn't she side slip? She may have been conscious of the cautionary note in the flight manual about side slipping with more that 20°, flap and not wished to experiment if it was to be her first time. Her judgement proved to be impeccable as the results show. I'm sure she would have gone away and thought it through as to how she could have done things different, she has ticked a box that not a lot of people get to do and is far richer for the experience. Some folk could win the lottery and still complain the pool wasn't big enough.

Of course there will be lessons, we are always learning all the time! In a real emergency though it is the result that counts, and this seems to be a great result (no injuries, aircraft safely on the ground, and in fact on a runway which is a big bonus). I doff my hat to the pilot for her calm and clear radio communication as well.

I think the biggest lesson to learn here though is for you Double Barrel. Coming onto a flying forum and starting to pick holes in what clearly is a great bit of airmanship is, in my humble opinion, very poor form. I'm surprised you've not already deleted the thread because its just made you look like a bit of a plonker.

Blimey folk. I think you are all being a bit harsh on me here. I make no claim to be a sky god; I am possibly the least experienced PPL on here. But I was really hoping for some thoughts on how the margins of error could have been increased in this incident. It looks scary to me. I can't tell how high or far she was when she started her descent, but in practice engine outs I would have been very heavily criticized by my instructor for that. I do believe a better planned approach would have been safer, am I evil for asking for thoughts on that? Of course I make no claim that I could have done better. In my GFT, I was criticized by the examiner for not landing on the numbers in a practice engine fail, which I felt was a bit harsh. And most especially, I was hoping for thoughts on how to handle the situation when absolutely committed to land, but still high, with 40deg flaps and the runway disappearing behind me. To repeat. I don't claim I would have done better. I am innocently asking why a much more experienced instructor did not do better. If the group opinion here is, that under pressure and in a real emergency, that's a good job - fine, I accept that. But please don't rip into me for asking you opinions! I did look horrible to me, but I am very willing to listen and learn.

Thanks, that's the sort of input I was hoping for,

For sure they were a bit high and landed long, but given the trees around the runway I would have rather landed long than fallen short into the trees. What I find most interesting is in every part of the video and description the Instructor is referred to as ‘The Female Pilot’. End of the day it was a good job.

Personally whenever I have practiced forced landings and for one I did for real from the downwind I always start with my aiming point in the middle of the available strip that way I can bring it back with a bit of side slip or if I am a bit low I know I have a bit of margin. I have seen the result of someone falling short into trees so at this airfield As I say I would have preferred to be long. Perhaps we could argue that a bit of side slip towards the end may have increased the safety margin but it may have also been a case of at 300’ the assessment was that they would comfortably stop.

Have a look at the airfield data here: http://www.airnav.com/airport/3n6

lot’s of mentions of tree obstacles.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. A windmillimg propeller creates a lot more drag than a stopped one. If you actually have an engine failure and want to extend your glide try to reduce speed enough to stop the propeller from windmilling. And there is absolutely no need to "compensate for increased stall speed". Check the definition of stall speed, plus the slipstream from produced by a windmilling propeller of an engine running on idle power has zero effect anyway. Otherwise I have to agree that she saved the aircraft, well done.

Where's the "Like" button - if I could find I'd hit it.

double barrel,

Some thoughts from me. If you have an engine failure and turn to point at the airfield on a track that is roughly aligned with the runway the first decision is whether or not you have the energy (airspeed and height) to make a downwind 'low key' position such that you can make a finals turn to land on the into wind/take-off runway. If you do not have sufficient energy for that option then you must land straight on the downwind runway or land off airfield. There are some considerations and practicalities in these cases but please note that these are generic and are not all are applicable to this incident.

There is a tendency with the downwind/low key option of using an aim point to focus on the runway threshold or even 1/3 into the runway whereas what is required is an aim point which, worst case, allows a touchdown with just sufficient runway remaining to stop. In many cases this is well past the midpoint of the runway and unless the pilot has thought about and practised this it is not an intuitive pattern. Sadly, a frequent result of attempting such a pattern is that energy is too low and a stall during the finals turn occurs. The Red Arrows accident at Valley in 2018 is a case in point.

For the straight in approach, if high/excessive energy exists there are three potential ways of losing energy, although it may not be feasible to use all of them in a given aircraft type. First, sideslip to generate drag, and if this is feasible it is often the best option. Secondly, aggressive 'S' turns but there is a definite stall potential in doing this unless the pilot is very experienced, especially on type, and has a good understanding of the accelerated stall characteristics of the aircraft type. Thirdly, diving to increase speed such that the increase in zero lift drag causes a significant energy loss and then a prolonged flare to hold off to a normal touchdown speed, although this relies on an aircraft that has high zero lift drag anyhow and does not apply to many light aircraft. In this straight-in situation there is also the possibility of having insufficient energy to make the runway in which case an early decision must be made to pick a field for an off-airfield forced landing.

In the case of the video that you have posted, we must be careful in interpreting the energy state because upon the camera lens characteristics. The upper and lower views give a different impression of flightpath angle so it is difficult to judge the energy state of the aircraft versus range from the runway. Also, the tailwind component would have affected the flightpath and this has not been quoted. However, I would doubt if a downwind/low key option was an option. I don't know the characteristics of a C172 but I doubt if the option of diving to lose energy was worthwhile. Very few pilots have practised hard 'S' turning so it would have been unwise to attempt this if not practised. The decision on sideslipping or not may have been driven by many factors, such as Flight Manual advice and familiarity, but the key is that the approach and touchdown point must be judged with respect to the far end of the runway and not the threshold and if there is one point to take away from this incident then perhaps that is it. It appears to me that the judgement here was correct because the outcome was very successful.

My experience of single-engined aircraft engine failures is on types that are considerably heavier and faster than the C172 but the principles were the same. However, the one that sticks in my mind is when a friend suffered a catastrophic crankshaft failure, could see a suitable runway so turned towards it but decided too late that he could not reach it, turned hard to avoid the woods short of the runway, stalled, crashed and was killed. And I had flown that aircraft on the previous sortie and went to the crash site with the accident investigation team the next day. Some things stay with you very vividly for ever.

I hope that this has been useful.

I doubt that many instructors are very experienced at downwind, real engine out landings. Seems to me that she did the job very adequately, even if it wasn’t a “text book” approach to a point 1/3rd of the way up the runway. The site was surrounded by tall trees so there possibly was no option other than to make the landing downwind.

I recall my fixed wing CPL flight test (over 25 years ago, with Dai Heather-Hayes). During the PFL, being far more used to helicopter glide angles, I arrived over the runway with a lot of extra height, but managed to lose it using an S turn and side slipping and made a decent landing. I was a bit embarrassed because I was very aware, but in the debrief Dai simply said that I had arrived “in a very advantageous way”.

Honestly if this is a new student I wouldn't be so hard on them, they did a good job with their experience.

ohp, watched the video and if the "She" they were referring to is the trainer and not the trainee, then yeah definitely it's screwed up.

Why are you disagreeing? What I actually stated was "In almost any position the prop stops, there is likely to be disrupted airflow to the wing, hence increased stall speed is a further issue" . This is factually correct. So there is nothing to disagree with. I never compared the drag of a genuine windmilling propeller (ie. driving a completely failed engine which is producing ZERO power whatsoever) to a stationary propeller. However in your example of an engine / propeller at idle, almost certainly the stationary propeller creates more drag, and definitely it increases stall speed if it disrupts airflow over the wing at all, which is almost inevitable.

Regarding your false claim that "And there is absolutely no need to "compensate for increased stall speed"", you are mistaken. Of course a stopped propeller disrupting airflow to the wing will increase the stall speed! Any disruption to airflow to a wing will reduce the lift it produces for any given angle of attack & airspeed combination. Therefore the increased angle of attack required for any given airspeed will be closer to stalling. THAT is the relevant definition of stalling and its relationship to stall speed, as in this example. What alternative "definition of stall speed" were you suggesting I should be checking? Please let us know, I'd love to hear it.

It seems you are confused by this.

To make it very clear and simple for you, take an extreme example which proves the general case: if you progressively disrupt the airflow to let's say 50% of the wing, more, 60%... more , say to 90% of a wing, do you honestly believe the stall characteristics of that wing remain identical to the undisturbed case? You are trying to claim that in all these cases, the wing flies as normal and still stalls at exactly the same airspeed, and that "there is absolutely no need to "compensate for increased stall speed" for any wing with disturbed airflow, which is completely wrong. That is dangerously flawed advice, potentially very dangerous.

As for your further comments " plus the slipstream from produced by a windmilling propeller of an engine running on idle power has zero effect anyway" this is so muddled and unclear as to make zero sense. Whichever way, and whatever you intended to say, trust me, the difference between the flight characteristics with an engine at idle and a stopped propeller are significantly different. For you to claim otherwise proves you have never experience a stopped propeller, unlike some of us who can tell for definite that it does - significantly.

So, disagree all you like, but I recommend you check a few facts and try to understand the physics and fundamentals of stalls and stalling before criticising pilots, flying instructors, who clearly understand aerodynamics rather better than you. Some of the misconceptions you hold are potentially quite dangerous in flight, especially in emergency situations such as total engine failure.

May we enquire your flying instructing experience, and where you claim to find these aeronautical myths from, which you then try to correct flying instructors about, please? But please stop the potentially dangerous claims of absolutely no need to "compensate for increased stall speed" for cases of total engine failure; you could cost people's lives if they make the mistake of believing your myths and misunderstandings.

Overall, a very successful outcome due the the pilots actions. Let’s face it, plenty of us have misjudged our own practice engine out scenarios.

I find this non-analyzing belief of you must land straight ahead after an engine failure to be a dangerous mindset. Who knows what is straight ahead.

This incident took place at the Old Bridge Airport. Take a look on google earth on the landing options around there, it is not good. How about turning toward the airport. It seems to have worked out well.

The video is a great example of how a slip should be used to one’s advantage instead of accepting a long landing(if safe to do so on aircraft type). In fact, it should be planned for as an option on every engine out scenario for similar types.

In general, aim for one third down the landing location which gives you some margin in case you find yourself low on energy(reduces the odds of not reaching the runway) and then enter a forward slip in if too high.

In this case, a good slip would have been useful to prevent a long but otherwise successful landing that was slightly downwind……and a tailwind can easily cause a long landing.

An aggressive slip should also be considered for an engine failure on takeoff when some runway is left ahead of you and the options beyond the runway are poor. There may be several variables to consider but on many small aircraft, one can lower the nose, initiate an aggressive slip and have a successful landing possibly with a partial but relatively low speed runway overrun rather than a relatively high speed touchdown in a much riskier area.