Training - Fully Feathered Landings

[wdn]

I just read this in Australian Flying July/August 2005 at p58:


Potentially high-risk practices include simulating engine failure at very low level, demonstrations of actual engine shutdown and feathering, asymmetric operations close to the ground, engine inoperative landings (which CASA emphasises that current rules prohibit), and operations that risk exceeding aircraft capabilities.


Could someone direct me to the legislation that prohibits engine inoperative landings?

[Continental-520]

That's the first I've heard of that.

I thought it was a requirement to do at least one satisfactory fully feathered engine shutdown landing for the initial M/E endorsement?

I had to do that for my initial multi about 2yrs ago. Furthermore, on a subsequent type endorsement with CASA on board there was a requirement to do a fully feathered shutdown in flight, but restarting it, not landing.

Would be interested to find out about that one....


520.

[The Bunglerat]

It's been a while since I bothered reading any regs on the subject, so I can't comment on CASA's current stance, but...

Whilst in my early days as a multi-engine instructor I would routinely teach fully-feathered landings, a very experienced ex-RAAF/airline instructor (whom I have a great deal of respect for), bitch-slapped me for being such an irresponsible twit. He made sure his point was driven home by providing me with a long and distinguished list of accident reports to mull over. It soon became quite apparent that there are far more accidents resulting from a simulated engine failure than a real one, and I was suitably converted at that point. Incidentally, any flight training organisation that is serious about safety, will probably have something in their ops manual prohibiting fully-feathered landings. Even back when I was doing it, there was never a requirement - rather a demonstration purely for effect.

Nevertheless, there is no light piston twin in existence that will give you a comfortable safety margin if things go pear-shaped at the last moment, and you suddenly find yourself wishing that you hadn't feathered that perfectly serviceable propeller/engine after all! No need to turn a simulated emergency into a real one, I say.

[BARON DRIVER]

Very interesting casa statement, will have to check?
In the mean time my students will only be doing an air start for prac.

Having experianced a pear shaped approach, with a simulated engine failure. There really can be no room for error depending on the height agl.

At least i can still open the tap on the simulated dead engine, if it goes pear shape again.

My advice dont do it,

[john_tullamarine]

The only consideration I can see is that, for an aeroplane with respectable power output, there is a considerable difference (between idle and shutdown) during the flare as the throttles are closed so far as yawing moments are concerned.

However, apart from having a look at it once - preferably in the simulator - I can see little point in repeating it for subsequent aircraft endorsements. Once experienced, the pilot could reasonably be expected to keep it in mind for OEI landings in future.

[Bula]

you dont need to shut down and feather the engine for your endorsement. Thats a wise tail and any instructor that makes you do it should be shot or told in the nicest possible way that you not going to do it.

[wdn]

thanks all for your opinions. i was more interested in the legislative requirements if any - i think the dangers of feathered landings have been well documented and understood by anyone with half a brain.

bula - i would be interested in your interpretation of CAO 40.1.0 Appendix III (d) - SYLLABUS OF FLIGHT TRAINING FOR A TYPE ENDORSEMENT......at the bottom of that paragraph,


Cruising flight with 1 or more engines inoperative - feathering and unfeathering propellers.


cheers

[Continental-520]

A friend who's currently studying for his META has shown me the CASA requirement in the M/E syllabus to fully feather/shutdown and restart an engine in flight, it's in the CAAP's, 5.23, but I neither of us could find anything to say that you had to land with it feathered, or that you were NOT to land with it feathered.

So...the plot thickens, maybe?


520.

[BARON DRIVER]

Hello all,

I think the issue will only be resloved when CASA finally gets stuck into the workshops it has planed for Multi Training Instructors. When this will be, who knows. Just saw it mentioned on the CASA web site!

Some firm direction is very much required on this issue from CASA.

[Bula]

WDN,
CAO 48.1.0 Appen. III is only a requirement if your doing a B-25, 717 etc type endorsement. It does not to apply to Annex 1 Part A or Annex 1b Part 5 etc etc. Therefore, this does NOT apply for the type of aircraft a person would conduct an initial multi-engine endorement. For Piston aircraft <5700 the endorsement only says simulated thrust.
If CASA were to have a problem with this bring it on..... but I know that they do not.
Engine inoperative landings are not illegal, just non reflective and of little useful additional benefit to the students training.

[bushy]

If you have never done a single engine landing, how do you know you can? Is there going to be uncertainly when you have to do one? (and if you fly for long you probably will) Are people going to do one when no-one is watching, just to see what it is like?
The one that bothers me is the VMCA demonstration where VMCA and stall speed are close. You need some air under you to do that. The RAAF lost a 707 doing that.

[wdn]

so it is, thanks bula :ok:

[romeocharlie]

I have recently completed my initial twin endorsement and in the course of this had one engine shut down and feathered for landing. Psychologically when you actually shut down and feather one engine the option in the back of your mind of taking the two engines back is not there and your thought patterns vary greatly from when it is simulated. Also unfeathering and restarting the engine procedures differ from what you would imagine eg. half pitch.

any instructor that makes you do it should be shot or told in the nicest possible way that you not going to do it.

All pilots that I have spoken to about this procedure have been endorsed in the same conditions through many reputable flying institutions and I would imagine you would have to ''shoot'' many experienced and highly qualified instructors.

rc.

[captain_cranky]

:ugh:
A few points I will make.
There is no such thing as a feathered engine - we feather propellers.:ok:
There are no rules that prohibit landing with inoperative engines.:hmm:
The excerpt you provide from Australian Flying is yet another example of the poor standard of research and editorial regularly evident in that magazine.:yuk:

[The Bunglerat]

I have recently completed my initial twin endorsement and in the course of this had one engine shut down and feathered for landing. Psychologically when you actually shut down and feather one engine the option in the back of your mind of taking the two engines back is not there and your thought patterns vary greatly from when it is simulated.

Good for you. Just glad it didn't turn ugly. For quite some time, I used to justify my actions with the same mentality. However, I stand by my earlier comments that there is absolutely no good reason to turn a simulated emergency into a real one. And a continuation of such practices during multi-engine training significantly increases the chances of exactly that.

Thankfully it wasn't a regular occurrence, but every now and then I would experience a situation where I set up a simulated engine failure with my student on approach and final. Due to the student's lack of appreciation of flightpath monitoring and energy management, he/she would allow the situation to deteriorate to a point where, if I hadn't had the option of powering up the failed engine, we would have ploughed into the industrial area south of the aerodrome rather than make it to the runway. Needless to say, as an Instructor I could always pipe up a lot earlier to advise him of how things were deteriorating, but then how would the student ever learn for himself?

I agree completely that training scenarios need to be as realistic as possible in order to provide full effect, but I would never chance putting myself or a student in a situation that left me with no escape route - and a feathered prop/shut-down engine in such a scenario would have been disastrous.

How bloody dangerous do we have to make it before the student appreciates the gravity of the situation? Go ahead and continue practising fully-feathered landings if you must, but I'm over it.

[Hugh Jarse]

The point we are missing here is that whatever is actually in the school's syllabus must be covered. The syllabus is approved (or accepted (?)) by CASA.

There is nothing (that I'm aware of) in the CAO's or Regs that feathered landings are illegal during training.

Australian Flying magazine is not what I'd call the epitome of authority on all things aviation:yuk:

Getting back to syllabi. If the syllabus calls for a feathered landing (and all the schools I've worked for have), then you cannot sign off the endorsement if the candidate has not completed all items on the syllabus....

I can't recall now exactly how many practice feathered landings I had to do in my instructing career for initial endorsements. Well over a hundred, and none with any mishap.

If we aren't going to do feathered landings because they're too dangerous, what else should we leave out? Stalling? Spinning? Spiral dive recovery? Static and dynamic VMCA recoveries?:ugh:

I suppose I should go out and shoot myself a hundred times for being negligent:cool:

[Dashtrash]

I don't have the exact text in front of me but I think that CAO 20.6 continuation of flight with OEI refers to the availabiliy of a shutdown engine for appoach and landing.
Hmmmmmm might be an idea if you actually know how to restart a shutdown engine/ feathered propeller.

My META took many hours in the classroom and quite a few hours in the air. While feathered approaches are undoubtedly more risky than with both paddles in the water, under the hawk-eyes of a well trained instructor who has set up the exercise properly, its not that bad.

Perhaps more requirements for METAs is more appropriate. Jnr3s hunting for every multi hour do a quicky approval and find themselves the wrong way up after a OEI circuit goes wrong.

Just my humble opinion.

Jarse, stop limping and get back to work.

[The Bunglerat]

[QUOTE=Hugh Jarse]If we aren't going to do feathered landings because they're too dangerous, what else should we leave out? Stalling? Spinning? Spiral dive recovery? Static and dynamic VMCA recoveries?:ugh:QUOTE]

Jarse, always enjoy your posts, and take note of your point about syllabus requirements, but on this occasion I don't agree with your sentiments. The above-mentioned examples all include an adequate margin of safety, i.e. ALTITUDE in which to recover if things don't work out. What margin of safety is there when the aircraft is on final approach with one engine shut-down, whilst still a mile from the threshold, woefully below optimum approach path, and very likely to make a dent in some factory or residential dwelling instead of the runway? All because the pilot didn't manage the situation properly as instructed?

I have been quite able to impress upon a student the gravity of this scenario through in-depth discussion followed by simulation of said scenario with an engine at zero thrust - all without having to shut it down for real.

I repeat yet again, why run the risk of turning a simulated emergency into a real one?!?

[Continental-520]

I repeat yet again, why run the risk of turning a simulated emergency into a real one?!?

Settle gretel.

Firstly, I don't think any ME instructor is going to do it (feather the prop) unless he/she has seen that the student has some grasp of assymetric ops aloft and in the circuit with just a simulated failure on the mixture beforehand.

Secondly, I don't know about all you guys, but it FREAKED ME OUT the first time I was shown a feathered prop in flight. I know it seems like no big deal, but when you're new to twins it is. And if the first time you see/operate with an actually feathered prop is because of a REAL emergency, I reckon it could just add to the stress of the situation, being something you've never done before that you now have to do.

Ultimately, it is all to prepare you better for when real emergencies happen, since they DO.

On the logic of the quote above, we shouldn't be practicing ANY engine out ops in twins, even if they're failed on the mixtures. Do you have a guarantee that if a dangerous situation develops, that the simulated dead engine will kick back into life just by frantically shoving the mixture forward??

I wish I did.


520.

[The Bunglerat]

At my previous place of employment, the ops manual stipulated mixture cuts only at a safe height (which was deemed to be greater than 1000ft AGL with no significant terrain in the nearby area), and idle throttle to simulate engine failure when at circuit altitude or below. Furthermore, use of a very capable synthetic trainer was also included in the organisation's syllabus to assist with developing multi-engine procedures.

To play devil's advocate (bearing in mind that I once used to teach fully-feathered landings myself), I don't have an issue with in-flight shut-downs/restarts at a safe height, but I never saw any difference in student abilities and levels of understanding between those whom I used to do fully-feathered landings with, and those with whom I subsequently did not. Thus I do not accept the notion that a student absolutely has to experience a fully-feathered landing in order to be wiser for the experience. That's just the old mentality of "why are we doing it? ...Because we can!" Which is bollocks.

Clearly there will continue to be a divided school of thought on this subject, so I might as well make this my last comment. If nothing I've said is going to give META instructors pause for reflection on the issue, nothing will. However, I've spent my whole career under the belief that good piloting is in large part based on good risk management - not actively increasing the risk just to prove a point.

[Centaurus]

Re practice feathered landings in GA. Strange thing is that when Avalon was once a busy training airport years ago with F28's, DC9's and 707's flogging the circuit (before Level Five simulators were in vogue), one engine inoperative landings were part of the type rating syllabus. Yet none of these landings were done with the engine actually shut down. The simulation was done with thrust lever at idle. I guess the airline companies considered it safer than with the engine dead - even though these aircraft had an excellent low altitude go around capability on asymmetric power.

I also seem to recall that if a light twin had a real engine failure requiring feathering of a prop it was recommended the pilot transmit a PAN call as a matter of flight safety urgency. This suggests a real prop feathered landing is not something to be laughed at. That being so, there must be some sort of definable risk involved. So should not the instructor transmit a PAN call to the effect he needs priority for a practice feathered landing?

I recall the fatal accident at Bankstown some time back where the instructor forgot to lower the gear with a feathered prop and promptly did a belly landing rather than go around. An awfully expensive method of practicing a feathered landing? In the same year, someone was killed in a single engine feathered go around in a Seneca (?) also at Bankstown.

I would say there are lessons to be learned here in risk management, don't you agree?

[Continental-520]

Indeed, there are many ways to skin a cat. There will always be a division of opinion and reasoning on things like this, it seems.

But that can be said for most techniques practiced in aviation.


520.

[Always_init]

Have a look, if you can stand it, through this order. No wonder there is confusion about what is required for ME ratings. You need to decide which aircraft you are wanting a rating on, see which column it falls into, readre the appropriate requiremets for type, and then qualify under the associated appendix. Fully feathered landings are not a requirement Refer CAO 40.1.0 appendix 3 for the most commonly used sylabus. It calls for Go around with a SIMULATED failure, and inoperative engines in crusing flight. This must be the hardest CAO to fathom.

Single engine landings are a feature of ATpl flight check (base) Ref CAo 40.1.5, para 11.6 will point you in the right direction, refers to appendix II, which mentions an approach and landing with a SIMULATED failure. It only just mentions the most critical (for my $0.02) the assymetric baulked landing, this is a tricky one. Cheershttp://www.pprune.org/forums/images/icons/mpangel.gif