Emergency procedures
Engine failure, fire, and the forced landing, step by step.
14 min read · Airport operations and procedures
After this lesson you can
- Fly a power-off glide toward a chosen field, applying best glide speed and the wind/dimensions/obstacles approach factors.
- Explain why the low-altitude turn back to the runway is called "the impossible turn," using a worked numeric example.
- Respond correctly to an engine fire, an electrical fire, and a cabin fire, in that order of first action.
- State the aviate-navigate-communicate priority and apply it to an in-flight emergency.
An in-flight emergency is managed in a fixed order: fly the airplane, navigate toward a solution, then communicate it. More accidents come from a pilot trying to solve the problem before flying the airplane than from the failure itself being unsurvivable.
The second principle is memory. A short list of immediate actions is recalled from memory; the checklist comes afterward, to verify. Those immediate actions are the only ones that need to be known cold, because there may not be time to read them.
The rest of this lesson
- 1.Engine failure in flight: attitude, terrain, approach
- 2.Engine failure after takeoff: the impossible turn
- 3.The emergency descent
- 4.Engine fire in flight
- 5.Electrical and cabin fires
- 6.Door opening in flight
- 7.After the event
- 8.Where distraction and traffic bite during an emergency
- 9.Best glide, minimum sink, and what the wind does to both
- 10.Committing to the field, changing your mind once, and the help on the frequency
- 11.Malfunctions that are not the engine: electrics, displays, gear and flaps, trim
- 12.Startle, the undesired aircraft state, and the checklist that follows
These 12 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the PPL track. Paid once, yours for good.
Key terms
Try to recall each definition before turning the card.