Twins - engine failure / EFATO (merged)

…outside of practising engine out drills on the ground (i.e. in the aircraft parked engines shut down)…never. I would carry out remedial training/proficiency check twice a year with a training captain/CRE.

With a zero drag setting I did it quite often, but never full shutdowns. And I never did it in critical situations, as during takeoff or steep turns etc. One could argue that doing it when it’s “safe” has little educational value and that would probably be true. Still, good to keep the “butt feel” for which one is quitting.

Funnily enough when it comes to stalls, my first Commander I stalled all the time just to keep sharp. I’d heard the Aerostar could get pretty wild on you, so that was treated with more respect in training. The Aerostar was certified without stall warner, because it started to shake and rumble so much, so the FAA saw no need for it. So, we always took it to the rumble, but never beyond that into a full stall. So never explored that range when I owned it. And kind of respected it and was mindful of getting close to it. Now that I have the Turbo Commander we went right back to full stalls. They’re really benign, even for such a big plane. Pretty much straight ahead, might drop a wing a little, but nothing too exciting.

I do, a few times a year, gear out, full throttle climbing at 90 knots. At a safe altitude..
But the surprise factor is gone of course, both regarding the event itself and regarding which engine.

I am not sure doing it yourself (engine failure practice in flight) is either a good idea or has much training value. As aart says the surprise and identify issues have gone and that seems to be the area with the greatest practical challenge.

Also you must do it at a safe altitude.

This is where simulator training in larger aircraft really shines. You can fail an engine at V1 or on a base to final turn which you could never practice in the real aircraft.

I think reminding yourself of the right immediate actions is important regularly but this can be done on the ground.

I practice on my sim at home, which has force feedback yoke and pedals. It is really quite realistic. I have set up an aircraft model that only climbs away if you get everything right!

I am very happy to train or work with anyone in SE England who wants to have a go.

I also do two IR/MEP renewals a year.

But no, I agree with Jason that there is no point doing it to yourself.

I came across an interesting article the other day which might be relevant to this discussion.

The gist of it boils down to:

“…engine failures accounted for only 2% of accidents…recurrent training should include…’both engines running’ manuevers…matched to a pilot’s specifc mission.”

The vast majority of accidents (at least in the Cessna Twins) aren’t related to typical EFATO events. Loss of control in IMC, fuel mismanagement and various other accident types account for the remainder. I guess the lesson is that there is no substitute for good airmanship and decision making. The amount of training time devoted to those issues should probably be more proportional to the relative risk.

Page 16 here: http://www.twincessna.org/pdf/april2013issuefinal.pdf (I presume this is meant to be public as I found it via Google).

While I agree that compared to other incident scenaries, EFATO is (relatively) over-trained, it may well be the case that the low accident rate is the outcome of this training. Designing evidence/statistics based training is hard, even for those who have access to the statistics and the underlying data.

Precautionary shut down and feathering of an engine before it seizes is possibly undertrained, also recovery of loss of control asymmetric is not easy to fit in the curriculum.