Practicing and preparing for an aviation emergency is always good but sometimes it can make pilots uncomfortable if its not carried out properly or in a safe manner. Moreover, emergency practice in the air can easily turn into a real emergency resulting in an accident.
However, Brian, the blogger behind Brian’s Flying Blog, recently practiced an emergency landing in preparation for his biennial flight review in a way that made him more comfortable than his previous emergency landing practice which had usually been in the middle of nowhere. This time around, the emergency field was a long airport runway. Hence and if something did go wrong, Brian would still be safe.
Brian also noted his favorite acronym (ALARMS) for an emergency land that is well worth repeating again here:
- Airspeed (Best glide speed)
- Landing Site (remember to look straight down for sites)
- Air Restart (carb heat, throttle, mixture, primer, fuel tank switch and indicator, ignition L/R checks, etc)
- Radio set (7700 on transponder, 121.5 if not talking on another frequency)
- Mayday
- Secure (Final flaps, then Electric off, fuel off, mixture off, tighten seat belts, crack the door)
Definitely good advice worth remembering.
The passenger briefing is missing from the list. Its purpose is both to explain to the passengers (who may have noticed the lack of engine noise) what's going on and rehearse with them what to do in preparation for impact.
I used to have an instructor who would grab my arm and shout "Julien, are we all going to die?" if I forgot this most important item 🙂
Haha, that's one way to drum it into you!