Day Thirty-Three – Forced Landings

Continuing on from yesterday’s theme, let’s say you are flying along at 4000 ft and your engine quits. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as it sounds; after all, your plane does glide and we already talked about the convenience of prairie farm fields as make shift landing strips. The procedure is pretty straight forward and follows the mnemonic ANICS:

A – aviate: set up a maximum glide angle of 69 knots and perform some immediate tasks such as applying carb heat.

N – navigate: pick a suitable field, road or other surface and establish a sort of spiral descent to lose altitude, keeping within sight of the touchdown spot using key points 45 degrees off to each side.

I – investigate: take a few moments to check into why your engine died. Maybe you ran out of gas in one of your tanks and switching to the other one fixes the problem? Or maybe not…see next step.

C – communicate: make your MAYDAY call and brief your passengers.

S – secure: make sure the plane is configured properly for landing and that your passengers are prepared for a possible rough landing.

I’ve left out quite a few details, but I’m sure you get the picture. From the instant your instructor pulls back the throttle, you only have a few minutes to go through the entire procedure. The Cherokee can glide about 1 mile for every 1000 ft of descent, rule of thumb, so that doesn’t leave you with much time. It’s actually a fun exercise, as you go right down to almost the point of landing before applying full power and pulling up. Good airmanship suggests you should pick a field where the farmer isn’t working, but you should see the look on the cows’ faces…

How about that road?