Engine Failure
 

Have you ever lost your engine?

This is my story...

July 24th 2010

It was a typical VFR flight out of Destin (DTS) like I’ve done time and time again. I got there about 9AM to do the mission planning and took off around 11AM. We were headed to Orlando (ORL) for a surprise birthday party. I preflighted the C-172 N53456, called to open our flight plan, then talked to Eglin clearance to receive flight following enroute. Just prior to takeoff I did the normal checklists and the engine run-up was fine with both mags working normally. We flew down the coast at about 1000’ taking in the scenery for approximately 5 miles. We then started our climb to 9500’. Approximately 30 miles East of DTS and passing 3800’ the engine went from about 2400RPM to 1000RPM. It was as if the throttle linkage had disconnected and the engine went to idle. I was on the radio with flight watch getting a weather update when it happened. I told them to standby and maintained aircraft control by immediately trading airspeed for altitude. We were at about 90-95 KIAS when the engine went to idle so I pitched for 65 KIAS (best glide) and we were able to get to almost 4000’. I then began to analyze the situation as we descended quickly. After trouble shooting as much as I could, I pushed the throttle in and pulled it out looking for a response. I pulled the carb heat hoping that it would remedy the idle engine. In the limited amount of time that I had I tried every feasible solution; unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to keep the C-172 from descending. I spun the Garmin 430 and saw that the closest airfield was 12 miles away. Too far! With only a few minutes to spare, I realized that I had to make a decision quickly. Below me was the ocean, the beach and a busy road. At my 9 O’clock, I saw Shark’s Tooth golf course and it was my only realistic option. I then turned the aircraft toward the golf course and maneuvered for high key; my safest option was to land on the golf course. I had just checked in with Tyndall approach a few minutes prior so I declared an emergency with them and squawked 7700 with a flash. I hit high key at 2000’ while analyzing the golf course for the safest option for the passengers on board as well as any civilians on the ground. What ended up being the 18th hole had a cart on it so I chose the hole next to it. I hit low key at around 1300’. I then maneuvered to clear the tall trees on the south side of hole 17 while milking my flaps down. As soon as I cleared the huge trees I pushed over to try and use as much fairway as possible. After landing and rolling to a stop I made sure everyone was okay and I contacted emergency response along with the FAA.

Here is a link to the official story and a video just a few minutes after. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and stories of your own. Praise God we're all alive and even the plane was left undamaged.

Story
Pilot makes emergency landing on 17th Hole at Shark's Tooth | tooth, landing, 17th - News - The News Herald

Video
YouTube - Girl survives emergency airplane landing

God bless,
Tony<><

Tony. I'm glad you are all unhurt, but while you're thanking God for the happy outcome, would you mind asking Him why he messed with your engine in the first place?

Congrats on a successful outcome!

I always understood a throttle cable break to be spring loaded to full throttle on carb engines, could be and probably am wrong though. Did you ever find out the cause?

Had one in almost a brand new Seneca 4 Twin a few years back. Both engines had covered 100 hrs. I was at Grosse weight on an above standard day.

The takeoff was normal until at 200 feet in the climb there was a serious vibration and yaw.

I estimated the bad engine was still producing some power maybe 30-40 percent and equally realised that if I feathered and shut it down i would go one way and one way only DOWN.

I kept the thing going one hand poised on the prop lever in case there was a big bang :ugh:

Once up at circuit hight I levelled and then shut the engine down as by then it was a bag of nails.

Continental examined the unit and eventually admitted over torque of the rocker shafts at manufacture which had resulted in three rocker shafts shearing. They replaced the unit with a complete brand new engine within days.

Initially they claimed over boost on takeoff but luckely for me a PAX had filmed the complete takeoff with all the relevant engine instruments visible and well within limits.

Now I question the training for engine failure in light twins and wonder whether a pitch for level flight isnt a better option even a few hundred feet up.

Tony congrats on pulling off a good landing in a limited area

Pace

If you have had that many you really should be worrying about your operating procedures, the aircraft you accept commanding, and the maintenance shops used.

Complete Newspaper twaddle. I know many pilots who are very high hour instructors who have never had an engine failure, one or two who are even retired and never had a single one in their career. Engine failures do and will occurr, I agree, and there is some sense in the rest of your post. I have had one engine failure in £550K aircraft that was six months old - but fortunately it was a twin, so didnt matter. :) However flying, particularly singles, is an excercise in risk assessment. There are those who will never fly over the sea, those that will never fly over the sea without survival suits, those that will never flying over the sea without a raft and those that accept the risk and have none of these. You can therefore plan for a failure that for the owner operator who trusts his maintenance to a reliable shop, properly preflights every trip, and nips in the bud any obvious problems, will almost certainly never come any more or less than being stopped at the lights and the lorry behinds brakes fail and hits you at 50 mph.

I'd have landed at the 19th hole and sunk a few afterwards !!! Well done.

Fuji

I am sure you are referring to a failure in level cruise regarding your own failure as a failure in climbout is a very serious situation and one which statistically you are more likely to die from than a failure in a single.

I do not have a lot of trust in the reliability of piston engines!!! or the quality control at Continental a few years back. I have had two full failures and numerous partial but then I averaged 300 hrs per year while many knock out 10 to 20 hrs a year.

Pace

Although my own experience is far too small to comment on such matters on my own behalf, I have had a number of very experienced flying instructors and while they took great care in teaching me proper engine-out procedures, they also told me that an engine-out is not a matter of "when", but rather something a fair percentage of private pilots never actually experience themselves. Granted all we fly is PA-28's and the engines on those don't really give up easily.

I think the real risk on engine failure is often overstated by those who fly a lot of different aircraft types, since you're bound to run into some of the more unreliable ones eventually :}

That said, I for one always bring lifevests (and a raft, if available) when over sea and always keep a look-out for nice open fields to land in. Murphy's law and all that. :ok:

@tweed0099: congrats for remembering your training, making good decisions AND working them out. I can only hope I'll do as good as you did, when my turn comes.
But you puzzle me linguistically: what do you mean by "hitting high key" and "hitting low key" ?

As for twins vs. singles: didn't I hear a rumour as to twin-engined planes being deadlier than singles?

As for thanking God: when all goes nicely as planned - as it luckily does, most of the times, for most of us - :
-) a stupid pilot will say it was just a normal flight
-) a non-stupid religious pilot will thank God
-) a non-stupid non-religious pilot will hope to have the same good luck on the flight home
When things go wrong, matters are much simpler: ALL the blame is on Mr. Murphy, or perhaps on the weather. None on the pilot(s), of course.

Well done on the landing

I am sure you could have pancaked it onto a tree that a certain uk guy swears by :E

And I agree with 2nd post about god

You have made my exact point withour realising, which was why I was concerned about the message your earlier post conveyed.

I wouldnt command an aircraft in these circumtances or with maintenance performed by some of these individuals. If your career is to be believed, then unfortunately you dont have the same luxury as I, and most private pilots and some commercial, in deciding what you will command. If that is the case your post is hardly representative to most of us. In that much your poor record is more believable. As a friend and instructor of mine very recently told me when we were discussing this subject (and who almost certainly has many more hours than you, but very much keeps his own council) the trick is knowing when to refuse to a fly an aircraft - which he has done on many occasions. Wise words indeed that you may find would reduce the chances of your suffering yet another engine failure, albeit would not eliminate the risk.

I was asked to take an aircraft in for its annual last month. I had never flown the aircraft before, although I did know the owners. A walk around revealed enough, albiet relatively minor issues to give me cause for concern, further investigation revealed other issues that I am not going to go into - suffice to say I never flew the aircraft.

Pace

Yes, it was in the cruise. While I agree an engine failure in the climb out is a serious matter, I am almost equally mindful of the failure in a descent particularly in IMC. Engines throttled back , the failure goes unnoticed or isnt noticeable, power is applied for whatever reason .. .. ..

He was given an experience to learn from with a happy outcome what more does he want ;)

Pace

@Jan Olieslagers

High Key & Low Key are techniques used as part of standard PFL training.

Read this for more information:

Very well done, tweed0099!

And at least golf courses do have one worthwhile use - as potential emergency landing areas for light aircraft....:\

(I'm with Mark Twain and Jeremy Clarkson as regards golf!)

I hope so too, thank you. :)

I hope your next is equally painless, but, more importantly, I shall hope your last, was your last.

Tweed0099

Sorry, to be drawn into the aside, but well done for a job very well done; a most interesting post.

In 6000 hours, 4 complete engine failures to the ground, 2 preventative shutdowns in twins, 5 power losses, 2 governor failures, and some other unrelated electrical, control, hydraulic and landing gear failures. Always landed safely though, and working hard to keep that record!

It was my understanding this was preliminarily a UK thing? A descendant of Military terms crossing over into civvy aviation, as so often happens?

One total failure (stupid Theirlet FADEC twin that decided to do it's own thing) and three partial in a little over 2500hrs.

For what it's worth, I think we should always plan for a failure as those first few seconds can make an awful lot of difference. Going through the Oh F***, what now?" at 400ft in a climbing attitude is probably going to lower the odds of survival. :sad:

Haven't had one for 5weeks now ( and that was only partial ) must be getting better.

( The above IS tongue in cheek but true , bringing my total to 30, mainly whilst testing aircraft).

What's really interesting is that 6 years ago I took a BFR with a low time instructor ( who had never had a real engine failure) and he refused to sign me out because he was not happy with my PFL !:bored:

I think this record has already been done to death in some other forum but if I had 3 never mind 30 engine failures I would give up flying and take up knitting.

For a moment I thought you must be flight testing lawn mowers but actually my £600 Husquarna is not that bad - only one engine failure in 10 years.

There seem to be some sections of the GA scene where massive engine failure rates are indeed common, and readily accepted. I don't fly behind a Rotax but only in recent years have they elevated themselves from that category. This is (to me) completely unacceptable because it makes a plane totally useless for going anywhere, due to the risk of coming down in water, in a forest, on a mountain, and even if I carried a parachute, what about passengers? They have a reasonable expectation of some kind of safety.

The MTBF of the certified Lyco/Conti engines is of the order of 50k-100k hours and the vast majority of pilots will never get a failure in their flying lifetime.

Sure you train for a forced landing, and you do the usual escape routes (a life raft, etc) but with an MTBF of say 1k-2k hours (probably about the mark for the Thielerts) GA would totally cease to have any value for going anywhere.

A couple of things I'd like to know about this incident:

1) What caused the EF..did the engine let go or was the engine still fine and it was a fuel issue (carb / throttle linkage etc..)

2) Who was the chick in the video !

I suppose a lot of it depends what you fly. If you "test fly" aeroplanes you have to assume that you will have more failures. If you fly aeroplanes that are home made, you have to assume you will have more failures (someone I know landed short and nosed over in his homebuilt because the throttle jammed at idle on landing and he didn't make the runway).

Which was my point earlier.

Anyone who is suffering way above the expected rate of engine failures for sure needs to be asking why. There may be good reasons, including flying a "load of junk" for various reasons, including it is your job to do so, but otherwise I would be very suspicious of your operating procedures or your maintenance facility.

Even in the notoriously unreliable DA40s fitted with Theilerts the number of total engine failures in flight are a miniscule percentage of the total hours flown.

If you know the high rate you have experienced is due to such factors at least dont suggest others are temeracious in expecting their experience to be very difference.

490 hours, one engine failure. Hoping for no more of course, although I *am* flying a Thielert Diamond next week...:eek:

However high or low one's rate of in-flight engine failures, one should ALWAYS be prepared to handle one. At least, that's what this newbie pilot was taught, and I'll stick to it until proven wrong.

What IS the "normal" rate of such failures? When I experienced my own, suggestions were "one occurence per 10.000 hours of flight" - sustained by the local pilot of legend, who had some 40.000 hours logged, and did suffer exactly 4 engine failures.

Jan

I have not suggested in this thread we shouldnt be prepared for an engine failure.

Clearly engines fail, and clearly you might be "unlucky" and have your one in 4,000 hours failure in your first 100 hours.

However, as with so much in aviation, engine failure is just another risk we assess and take a view on.

One view is never fly a single. There are other views. Dont fly over rough terrain, dont fly over a low undercast, dont fly over water, particularly rough water, dont fly up mountain passes especially if there is only one way out and a fire raging at the same end. :)

In other words there are lots of things many do in a single which are patently unsafe if you take into account that the engine could fail at any moment. You would for example almost certainly never fly on a dark night.

I guess that sums up the problem I had with Guppy's post and some others on here. You can end up fly around being permanently obsessed that the engine is about to fail on you, whereas in fact you would be far better off assessing the risk in the first place and then making certain you had a strategy to deal with the risk whilst being confident you could enact that strategy. Do you drive on the road expecting a blow out at every moment? Do you expect the U/J to collapse on you as you are going around a bend. I have actually had both happen to me, but I didnt expect either. In fact a blow out on a motorway at 70+ mph is probably more dangerous than an engine failure in most situations.

I recall many many years ago a flight with an RAF fast jet pilot, training captain and a string of experiences and flying time very few will ever achieve. We flew along the wet side of some sea cliffs about cliff top high. The view was glorious, the experience brilliant. Fresh out of training I inevitably asked where he would go if the engine suddenly quit. He gave a wry smile, pointed out we would never make it over the cliffs so the choice was easy - we would land straight ahead in the drink. He said, if it happens we will deal with it. In short he had a plan, knew instantly what course of action he would take, knew that there was a higher than average risk running low level along those cliffs, but felt the rewards outweighed the risk. The plan was simple but effective, the risk of losing control of the aircraft almost nil, but more than a degree of injury risk involved with the final ditching.

So in my view I think it is far more important to decide what level of risk we are willing to accept. Having made that decision we should ensure we have a strategy for dealing with an engine failure but beyond that not obssess about something happening that with luck we may never experience.

Realistically the point about being a private pilot and flying 20, 30 or 40 hours a year as many do is that your skill levels will never be comparable with those flying 1,000 hours a year, or having a sim session every six months. I would rather see that pilot ahev the strategy in place to reduce the risk of an engine failure in the first instance, then have a clear understanding of when you are placing yourself in a high risk situation, and, finally, having a strategy for dealing with a failure that is good enough for that pilot's flying skills.

In sailing we teach various techniques for recovering a MOB. A MOB is every bit as life threatening for the man in the water as an engine failure. We teach a recovery that isnt elegant, but will work in most circumstances and for most helms and crews even if their handling skills are somewhat ham fisted. Why? Simply, because it was realised some while back that although there are "better" ways of recovering a MOB they are only "better" in experienced hands and many of those helms and crews involved simply do not have the experience necessary.

and you see for these reasons that is why I think comments such as this are just so far fetched, but often trotted out by pilots whose flying "careers" are at best suspect. There is obviously some thruth in the comment but the fact of the matter is for most low time private pilots the priorities are keep control of the aircraft at all cost, dont try and do anything fancy, make sure the aircraft is as fire and exit safe as possible before you land, and whatever else you do land the aircraft without stalling. If you then just happen to see two trees rushing towards you that have popped up in the middle of your landing area with a gap that is just wide enough to fit the fusealage through and not the wings and you are running straight ahead along the ground and actually have the control of the sliding aircraft and the thought time to do something about it by all means go through the middle - otherwise leave it to Harrison and the special effects guys in the movies. :} Sadly real life and the movies are often some way apart. :)

Never heard of this in my life .. and I did all my training in Surrey!

thats cause there is nothing high key about surrey.

It is one method of teaching PFL's don't worry about it you haven't missed out on anything.

Fuji

Flying is not about when everything is going right but about handling things when they go wrong. I am not just talking about mechanical but equally electrical, weather nav etc.

Full engine failures are probably fairly rare failures which create a problem with the engine are not.

Turbochargers, fuel flow problems etc etc etc. I can remember flying a Seneca Five which was brand new for a non pilot private owner.

The engine had a habit of cutting out with no warning and did so completely in IMC near Dublin. Luckely it restarted.

On landing she ran like a sewing machine, was checked numerous times by the engineers, given a clean bill of health only to play her silly games once again.
Piper had to almost change the whole fuel system to finally sort it!!!
I have had a large piece of exhaust manifold detach We found the piece lying at the bottom of the engine cowl.
2 complete engine failures and numerous engine, electrical, fuel, nav heating etc problems.

My point is to be aware of things going wrong not just engine failures and making the correct decisions to put them right. A crash is usually a culmination of bad descisions or judgements.

To go flying expecting everything to run like clockwork is something which is lovely to have but very often one problem or another will rear its ugly head.
A complete engine failure is just one possible and yes they do happen.

I take your point on accepting risk. Flying at night or over fog banks is a high risk activity especially in a single. Take that risk and its russian roulette!

Pilots like Guppy have a mass of hard experience in the most difficult of circumstances which test man and machine which pilots like you or I dont have so I always lend an ear to what they say ;) Even if the response can be sharp at times :E

Pace

Pace

I agree with everything in your post.

One hears of very few engine failures that occur instantly and without any warning or previous neglect.

In fact the engine failure I had almost fell into this category, albeit I suspect that I could have continued on the engine for maybe 10 minutes if it had been a single, before it cooked itself. In that much it certainly did not fall into an instant failure category and there would have been more than enough time to get on the gorund with some power. Clearly yours was similiar in so far as the engine started and continued to run.

I have had a few rough running engines for various reasons and any of these with hindsight could have stopped but I had warning.

Yes, as you say Mr Guppy clearly has a wealth of experience from all over the world in the most testing enviroments so I have no doubt we may have something to learn from his exploits. I shall look forward to reading his future posts.

Oi !!! I resent that! :}

What's wrong with a few days in Dublin? :}


Yes, I know what you meant ;)

Dublin Pilot

Took a twin into Dublin Main first time in 3 years a month back got charges for 240 Euros :sad: Same friendly bunch but yikes!!! a few days there and the bill would be massive.

Oh well have to pay a visit to the nice blond lady at weston instead ;)

Pace

Unfortunately it's the handling charges that make Dublin International so expensive. When we used to be based there, we didn't have any handling charges (and parking was an annual arrangement).

That just left landing fees (well movement charge) which could be as little as €0.50c! depending on the time of the date, and day of the week.

More normal would have been about €9 for a take off and landings, so not expensive. Unfortunately the handling agents know how to charge :(

On the other hand, as you say, Vanessa is lovely in every sense :ok:

Mad_Jock,

Do you remember anything about "Constant Aspect Forced Landing'?

Jeremy Pratt covers it in Exercise 16.

Or check this.

Yes I do and it is one of the methods I teach depending if its a high wing or a low wing aircraft I am teaching in.

I have 1000 hours instructing under my belt.

It is one of 4 methods I can teach BTW depending on what the policy of the school is, what aircraft type I am in and also what works for the student.

Personally I don't go for it myself prefering to teach the get it to a base point how ever you like or low key as you would call it. And the the low wing types get taught constant aspect and the high wings get taught a more square base then finals.

Sorry Mad_Jock, That was directed at Molesworth not you.:confused:

Well you were a complete prat performing the tests after dark over a remote area. Ask for trouble and as sure as hell you WILL find it.

As I said before you need to review your operating procedures and you would have far less problems.

Interestingly NTSB statistics (GA only) show that there are roughly 430 engine failure accidents per year in the US GA fleet of about 150,000. This equates to 0.2%. To normalise that against number of hours flown, it works out at 1 per 50,000 flight hours or something like that. Of those about a quater are "non mechanical" i.e. the likes of fuel or some other reason. About 14% of engine failures result in a fatality (1 per 357000 flight hours).

So I'm guessing that some sorts of flying are more hazardous than others - test flying being one example.

Guppy can you point me to the NTSB report if it was in the USA please? I'd be interested to read it but couldn't find it. Thanks.

Englishal

By the time you eliminate failures due to fuel and reasons that could easily have been prevented, partial failures, a raft of failures that could have been forseen and prevented (it never ceases to amaze me how many people are aware of issues that could result in engine problems and yet continue to fly - low oil pressure etc) and failures in higher risk circumstances (test flghts and the like) I am assuming that statistically an engine failure of 1:100,000 hours is made typical. Clearly I am not "typical" but at least stats like that are a comfort. :)

I am aware that huge numbers of PPLs never even make it to 2,000 hours so the vast majority are going to be very unlucky to see an engine failure in their entire "career" not only as part of the flying they do but also as part of the flying of all of their friends.

Totally agree with the 3 posts above :ok:

And if I had 3 engine failures in my TT of 1200hrs I would have given up flying and would now be sitting on Shoreham beach waiting for the wind to get up :)

and as you suggest this is across a huge spectrum of "maintenance practices" and "operating practices".

If one adopts "best practice" - whatever that means in the individual case but certainly it means not letting your mags go past 500hrs and not running your engine on condition if the compressions suggest the rings are only just hanging in there but are still legal and hey it only uses 1 litre oil per hour which is within Lyco's limits so it must be OK, etc - then your chances will quite obviously be better than the 0.2%.

One improves them further by flying with fuel in the tanks ;)

Sure one needs to be able to do a forced landing but there are time windows when it just isn't possible and you take your chances. A lot of approaches to airports are firmly in that category...... The rest of the time, you are carrying a life raft, and flying high enough to be able to glide somewhere.

Engine Failures
 

Fascinating thread. Guppy, your posts really are very interesting to read. You should write a blog or something, if you don't already.

I had my first engine failure, well, loss of power, about two weeks ago. Engine decided to quit in a descent at idle at altitude. Fortunately my hand moved to the fuel pump switch and switched it on before the rest of me had fully realised what had happened. Power restored immediately. Bit of a non-event really, but it was my first taste of a potentially big problem in 335 hours, and it has come at a good time for me. I was beginning to have faith in aero engines!

I flew with a sub 100hr PPL recently. He chose to fly a very long final over water to a runway on the coast. When I asked him why, he replied "my instructor used to do it". When I asked him the obvious potential gotcha, he replied "I don't give a sh1t about the engine failing. If your times up, your times up". He's doing an ATPL, so if you ever hear a bang followed by a similar comment over the PA, you may remember this post.:eek: