AOPA catastrophic engine failure thread

[jnmeade]

If you are an AOPA member, I encourage you to read the thread Catastrophic Engine Failure on their forum.
It is quite well written and shows competence and professionalism in dealing with an in-flight emergency.
There is a lessons learned message that reinforces how imortant it is for us to know our airplane, it's characteristics, our competence and ATC's role in an emergency.
Highly recommended.

[patmike]

great write up. shows if you keep your head, things will work out
http://forums.aopa.org/showthread.php?t=82447

[Jack Tyler]

Completely agree. Excellent tutorial for that "what if" moment, and a tip of the hat to patmike for posting the link.

Here are two points that I think could be especially relevant for Sport Pilots.

Before an engine calamity occurs: This episode highlights the value of using ATC services. No fumbling about to identify the right freq (or getting it wrong) when bad things begin to happen, no radio gymnastics -- if/when any problem surfaces, the pilot is already set up to utilize ATC...and so is ATC. Given the shorter, more "relaxed" nature of many Light Sport flights, my impression is that SP pilots tend not to use ATC as often. This illustrates why that tendency may not be a good practice.

After an engine calamity occurs: Knowing how to slip the aircraft allows one the comfort of holding both speed and altitude on the comfortable side of "enough" when landing with reduced or no power, yet make a normal controlled landing. Not just knowing 'how to slip' but what a given amount of slip does for a given aircraft one is flying is a wonderfully useful skill in general. In a 'loss of power' scenario, it's a great arrow to have in one's quiver (and which I've been fortunate to have in just those circumstances).

But there are many other gems in this report as well.