Emergencies

Not every engine-out need take you by surprise and even if there's nothing you can do about the problem, having some warning that its coming and some knowledge of its nature will always help. Generally speaking, your mission as a safe pilot is not simply to fly the airplane but also to account and compensate for those variables that might otherwise do you in. This means you must acquire knowledge of and / or take the proactive steps that will minimize or remove those threats. The steps listed below, are designed to help you prevent a forced landing due to engine failure, and survive one should it happen anyway...

A careful preflight won't protect you from some problems -- in the case of a flap problem though, that's not necessarily the case. Knowing what to look for (and what to do if it happens anyway) can make the difference between a tough day and a bad year -- or no year.

For most of us, if our engine quits, we're going down. It happens, though not often. About half the time, it's either because a pilot exhausted his fuel, starved the engine by attempting flight with a tank that had none left, or forgot about that red knob.

At about 11 a.m., just as I arrived to fly an R-22 into a cool blue March sky out of Frederick, Md., a pilot proved once again that when you consider all weather phenomena, it is winds which are the cause of many accidents. As I was waiting for the instructor to return with his student and the helicopter, I heard a cacophony of sirens, but I just figured that it was coming from one of the local roads nearby. They weren't.