Engine failure! (Don't worry, it's just practice)

Cockpit Briefing

Nice weather, smooth air, everything calm. Then my instructor pulls the throttle back to idle and says: “Engine failure.” The engine doesn’t actually stop, it just goes quiet, but from now on I have to act as if it had. It sounds scary. In reality it’s one of the most useful (and weirdly calming) parts of training.

The Moment

The first time it happened, my brain froze for a second. The sudden quiet, the nose that wants to drop, the ground that suddenly looks a lot closer… and a little voice asking: “Okay. And now?”

My hands knew a few things from the briefing, but my head was about three seconds behind. I picked a field, changed my mind, picked another one, and forgot to check the wind. My instructor just smiled and said: “Let’s go around and do it again.”

And we did. Again and again, flight after flight. Until one day it wasn’t a panic moment anymore, just a flow.

The Lesson

The most important rule in any emergency is an old one: aviate, navigate, communicate. First fly the airplane, then decide where to go, then talk on the radio. In that order.

For an engine failure in the air, the flow looks roughly like this:

1. Fly the airplane. Pitch for the best glide speed, the speed where the airplane glides the furthest without engine. Trim it, and hold it. Everything else comes after.
2. Pick a field. Into the wind if possible, long enough, no power lines, no big slope, no cows. Choose one early and stick to it. Switching fields again and again is what costs you height.
3. Try to restart. Fuel selector, mixture, carb heat, magnetos… whatever the checklist of your airplane says. Maybe it’s something simple.
4. Talk. A short mayday call with who you are, where you are and what you’re doing. Squawk 7700 on the transponder, the code that tells everyone on the radar screens you have an emergency.
5. Secure and land. Fuel off, belts tight, doors ready, and fly a normal, calm approach to the field you picked.

In training, of course, we never actually land in a field. At first we practised over a real field and stopped the exercise well above the ground: throttle to idle, pick the field, fly the approach, and then push the throttle forward and climb away. Everything up to that point is real, only the landing isn’t. Later we took the exercise to the airfield.

Same flow, same decisions, but this time we really did land, on the runway, as if the engine was gone for good. Idle power, no engine, and the runway as our “field”. We repeated this again and again until it felt like second nature.

We also practise the scenario everyone fears most: the engine failure right after takeoff. Low, slow and not much time. The rule there is simple and hard at the same time: land more or less straight ahead. Turning back to the runway feels natural, but at low height it’s a trap.

And then there’s the precautionary landing: landing in a field while the engine still runs. Maybe the weather closes in, maybe it’s getting dark, maybe fuel gets tight. You fly over the field first, have a good look at it, and then land. Deciding to land early is always better than being forced to land late.

The Personal Part

Here’s the funny part: all this emergency training made me more relaxed, not more nervous. The worst case isn’t a dark, unknown thing anymore. It’s a flow I’ve practised many times. I know what to do, and I know I can do it.

And to be honest, this part felt a bit familiar. As a glider pilot, every landing is a landing without engine. Keeping an eye on possible fields along the way is a habit I brought with me from gliding, and it helps me a lot now. Today, even on a normal flight, a small part of my brain is always asking: “If it goes quiet right now… where would I go?”

I’m very grateful to my instructors for being so patient here, and for repeating the same exercise until it really sat.

One Takeaway

You can’t choose when something goes wrong. But you can choose how well prepared you are when it does. Practise the worst case until it becomes routine, and it loses a lot of its fear.