Places to land in an engine failure?

Half Fast said:
Y’all sure worry about gators a lot. You’d be wiser to worry about the skeeters.
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I would be more worried about toothless swamp men that make statements like, ''He's got a real pretty mouth, ain't he?"....

Be very worried if after the engine failure you hear banjo music....
 
Half Fast said:
Y’all sure worry about gators a lot. You’d be wiser to worry about the skeeters.

https://www.mosquitosquad.com/tampa...deadly-mosquito-a-year-round-problem-for-flo/
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One of the required items in the Canadian aviation survival equipment items is insect repellent. Those bugs have been known to drive people insane. Some of the best fishing I've ever had was in places where you had to wear a special screen over your head and have lots of repellent everywhere else. Trout eat bugs, so places with lots of bugs have lots of fat fish. In Northern SK we have plenty of biting flies, much worse than mosquitos. Piranhas with wings.
 
I mean it depends where I am. Optimally a fat open flat field. Trees are a good option according to the FAA handbooks.
 
Jon Howard said:
On a checkride during a simulated engine failure I chose a cow pasture - a large one. I set up my approach to land in the middle of the pasture. There were cows on the edges - along the fence line about 200-300 feet from where I was aiming to set down. I failed the checkride. The examiner said the field was unsuitable because I could have hit a cow. Technically - yes, but why would cows have suddenly run TOWARD the airplane? Needless to say the voice in my head says "don't land there" whenever I see a cow pasture.
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Well…that’s insane. Pretty sure he isn’t supposed to be grading whether you pick the absolute perfect place to put down but whether you can get to best glide, hold it, and fly it down.
 
Thanks for asking this question, I am constantly considering where I would land while flying my 172 and I find myself looking for a place that I could fly the plane out of. That's putting my airplane safety over my own? I'm being honest so go easy on me. Do any of you do that?
 
TooTall said:
Thanks for asking this question, I am constantly considering where I would land while flying my 172 and I find myself looking for a place that I could fly the plane out of. That's putting my airplane safety over my own? I'm being honest so go easy on me. Do any of you do that?
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The temptation to save the airplane can cause you to pick a nice spot that's just out of reach rather than the workable one close by. You end up landing on much rougher territory and doing more damage instead of less or none.

Sully's ditching is a case in point. The controllers kept telling him that an airport was nearby, but he elected to ditch in the river rather than risk trying to get to the airport and ending up crashing in the city, which would certainly have had an extreme death toll. Better to lose the airplane and save the pax.
 
Yea, true. On the other hand, I guess you could say, "If I can fly it out, it must be a pretty good place to land"? No?
 
Jon Howard said:
On a checkride during a simulated engine failure I chose a cow pasture - a large one. I set up my approach to land in the middle of the pasture. There were cows on the edges - along the fence line about 200-300 feet from where I was aiming to set down. I failed the checkride. The examiner said the field was unsuitable because I could have hit a cow. Technically - yes, but why would cows have suddenly run TOWARD the airplane? Needless to say the voice in my head says "don't land there" whenever I see a cow pasture.
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If you had the correct emergency equipment for the situation--a Weber Kettle--in the back of the plane, he would have passed you.
 
I guess I would have failed that check also as I would take a cow pasture over a field with plowed rows.
 
Bonchie said:
Well…that’s insane. Pretty sure he isn’t supposed to be grading whether you pick the absolute perfect place to put down but whether you can get to best glide, hold it, and fly it down.
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I generally agree, but.....

On my checkride, my engine-out was a simulated engine fire at about 3500’ and we were almost over the Orlando North airport. I’m pretty sure that had I rejected a runway landing in favor of a nearby field or swamp I would have (rightly) failed.
 
TooTall said:
Yea, true. On the other hand, I guess you could say, "If I can fly it out, it must be a pretty good place to land"? No?
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Airports are about the only place that’s guaranteed. I wouldn’t use that as a criteria.
 
TooTall said:
Yea, true. On the other hand, I guess you could say, "If I can fly it out, it must be a pretty good place to land"? No?
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Seems that most times getting out is more of a challenge than getting in ...
 
I've heard that when the engine quits it's now the insurance companies airplane.
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Good topic.
Regarding the above, flyhound is correct - in most cases, if you have hull insurance and make a great injury-free & damage-free landing.
The insurance co will say, ‘so glad you are ok’ (they are thinking ‘so glad you didn’t kill someone or burn down a house), then they will maybe help pay for transporting the a/c and crop damage etc.
Whereas, if you botch the forced landing through bad luck or technique, mangle the airplane, most hull policies will pay out!

Wait, is the moral of the story to be a bad pilot? Certainly, the better/luckier pilot is favored!
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Whereas, if you botch the forced landing through bad luck or technique, mangle the airplane, most hull policies will pay out!

Wait, is the moral of the story to be a bad pilot?
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This is why wise pilots carry a book of matches, just in case the crash fire isn’t quite spontaneous enough....

:D
 
other sub-topic comments:

- I would be very unlikely to even think of ease of airplane extraction following a forced landing, when choosing a site.
Way more important to be thinking of your survival/not bouncing off the heads of a schoolyard full of children.

-I do not rule out water landings, I’ve been over cities with zero clear space except for waterways. Think I could avoid boats, swimmers, land near the bank with gear up, swim to shore if it was 60°+ water temps.
 
Half Fast said:
This is why wise pilots carry a book of matches, just in case the crash fire isn’t quite spontaneous enough....:D
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I will publicly confess that during my descent, an (involuntary) thought popped into my mind, of leaving the gear up and getting some insurance company help on my $80,000 engine & prop….but I suppressed it, in about 0.01 seconds. I’m such a dumbass.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I will publicly confess that during my descent, an (involuntary) thought popped into my mind, of leaving the gear up and getting some insurance company help on my $80,000 engine & prop….but I suppressed it, in about 0.01 seconds. I’m such a dumbass.
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Nah, you did the right thing. Brought the plane down and everybody walked away. People forget that engines are, overall, wear items.
 
wanttaja said:
So if the engine quits, don't stall.
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This cannot be emphasized enough.

My friend Doug Rozendaal puts it this way: "Airplanes that arrive at the earth with the wings level, under control, have survivors on board."

Bob Hoover said it this way: "Fly the airplane as far through the crash as possible."

Where they land is nowhere near as significant as landing under control. Don't stall it. Don't ever give up flying the airplane, and you'll have a high probability of surviving the crash.

- Martin
 
Martin Pauly said:
This cannot be emphasized enough.
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Yes - unless you are Mr Cool, you will have a helmet fire going on and won't be worth chit...at many tasks.
You won't remember most of the checklist and won't observe important things going on around you.
I thanked my instructors for repeated training on best glide speed, because that is one thing I remembered and did right (wing loading of 33lbs/sf).
When I got out of the airplane I looked up and noticed the biggest set of multiple high tension lines ever, right above the airplane. Never noticed them in my approach.
 
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