Engine failure on final

"Ron Garret"
If you fly final with some amount of power (which I gather most people
do -- I always have) that seems to guarantee that if you lose your
engine on final you will land short, and there's pretty much nothing you
can do about it. Is that true?

Unless you do every landing power off with room to spare, yes. Or, aim for
the mid point of a 2500' plus field. There are ways to do it. But, almost
nobody does. Base turn should be doable power off in most cases in a 172 or
similar glider.

Or have I missed something? What
should you do if you lose your engine just after turning base to final?

Land short. That's why the slow idle check during the run-up is important.

moo

"Happy Dog" wrote in message
...

Unless you do every landing power off with room to spare, yes.

The flip-side of doing every landing power-off, particularly when training
in the pattern, is that you *may* be putting enough extra stress on the
engine to make it *more* likely that the engine will fail in a difficult
position. Hence you may be increasing the overall risk by that pattern of
behaviour.

With typical trainers, it seems unlikely that it would have much long-term
effect. But with larger engines that require more delicate handling, I'd be
very reluctant to fly power-off landings on a regular basis. The effect may
be small but so is, as Michael said, the chance of a catastrophic engine
failure during the period when your glideslope makes a difference.

I'm surprised that the only two accidents that have been cited involve IFR
flights on an approach. They may not have had a choice of glideslope.

Julian Scarfe