Best Glide, the ABC Flow, and Flying a Dead-Stick Approach to a Field When the Engine Quits Between Ripon and Oshkosh

When your engine quits in cruise, your first move is not to fix it - it’s to fly the airplane using the ABC flow: Airspeed, Best field, Checklist. Pitch and trim for best glide speed immediately, pick a reachable field into the wind, then run your engine-restart checklist. If the engine stays quiet, you Declare (Mayday) and Execute a power-off approach to your chosen field.

An enroute engine failure is the emergency most pilots never rehearse, yet it’s the most statistically likely place to have a real one - up high in cruise, relaxed, with your guard down. This guide walks through the exact sequence, why each step matters, and how to fly a dead-stick approach to a field.

What is the first thing to do when the engine quits in flight?

Fly the airplane. Your first action is not to diagnose the engine - it’s to establish best glide speed.

Every airplane has one. In a Cessna 172, depending on model and weight, it’s roughly 68 knots. Know your airplane’s number as cold as your own phone number.

Best glide is the airspeed that gives you the most forward distance for every foot of altitude you give up. It buys you the most time and the most options. Fly faster and you trade altitude for nothing; fly slower and you sink like a stone while feeling like you’re saving something.

When the engine quits in cruise, the nose will want to drop toward glide speed on its own. Let it - guide it. If you haul back to hold altitude, you’re spending the one asset you have left. Altitude is money. Airspeed is money. Don’t give either away by accident.

How do I remember what to do in an engine failure? The ABC flow

Three letters make it automatic: A, B, C.

A is for Airspeed. Pitch for best glide, first thing, every time. Trim for it so you’re not fighting the yoke while your brain is busy elsewhere. Get the airplane settled and let it fly itself.

B is for Best field. The moment your glide is established, eyes go outside and you pick where you’re putting the airplane - not where you wish you could land, but where you actually can, given your altitude and the wind. A good pilot runs a low-grade background scan the whole flight, quietly asking “Where would I go right now?” By the time the engine quits, you should already have a candidate half the time.

C is for Checklist (or Cockpit, however you were taught). Now - and only now - that the airplane is at the right speed and pointed at survivable ground, you try to figure out why the engine quit. Most engine failures in trainers are fuel related: wrong tank, empty tank. Run it as a fast flow, not a fumble:

• Fuel selector - check it, switch tanks
• Mixture - full rich
• Carb heat - on
• Fuel pump - on, if equipped
• Primer - in and locked
• Mags - try both, try each

If the engine comes back, you just had an educational moment. If it doesn’t, you’ve lost maybe 15 seconds and you’re still gliding at the right speed toward the right field.

What comes after ABC? Declare and Execute

The Airman Certification Standards (ACS) - the document your examiner grades you against - wants two more letters: D and E.

Declare. Get on the radio. If you were already talking to someone, tell them: “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” then who you are, where you are, what’s wrong, and what you’re doing about it. If you’re not talking to anyone, squawk 7700 on the transponder and try 121.5. Nobody has ever been embarrassed to death, but pilots have absolutely been killed by the silence of being too proud to say the word Mayday.

Execute. Fly the approach to your field and commit. This is the hard part, because the whole approach is a series of decisions with no engine to fix a mistake.

How do I fly a dead-stick approach to a field?

You’re flying a power-off descent - exactly the power-off 180 your instructor made you practice. The core trick: arrive high and bleed off the extra, rather than arrive low and pray.

You cannot add power to stretch a glide that came up short. But you can always throw away altitude you don’t need - with slips, flaps, and S-turns on final. So plan to be a little high on your chosen field and give the extra back.

Fly to a key position: an aiming point abeam or slightly past your touchdown zone, where turning base and final will roll you out lined up with enough energy but not too much. Judge your glide against that key point:

• Too high? Widen out or add drag.
• Too low? Cut the corner, tighten it up - but hold best glide and do not let the nose come up in a panic.

The instinct to pull as the ground rises is powerful, and it is exactly wrong. Pulling up short of a field does not get you to the field - it gets you a stall-spin short of the field, which is a far worse day than a firm arrival into the near edge of it.

Why is Wisconsin farmland ideal emergency terrain?

If you’re flying into EAA AirVenture Oshkosh - coming up from the south, following the railroad tracks between Ripon, Fisk, and Oshkosh - you’re over some of the friendliest emergency terrain in the country. This is Wisconsin farmland in July: big, flat, section-line fields.

• Cut hayfields and soybean fields are your best friends.
• Corn in July is tall enough to flip you - avoid it if you can.
• Roads hide wires, cars, and signs you can’t see from altitude.

Fly this same failure over the Rockies or the north woods and the conversation is very different. This week, the terrain is on your side. Treat that as a gift, not an excuse to get sloppy.

A real scenario: engine trouble 12 miles south of Oshkosh

You’re a private pilot with 300 hours, flying your family’s Cessna 172 up from Illinois for your first AirVenture. You’re about 12 miles south of the field, following the tracks, when the engine loses power - not all at once, but a rough stumble with the RPM sagging.

A - Airspeed: You pitch for glide and trim. The airplane is under control.

B - Best field: Off to your right, a big cut hayfield running roughly into the wind you briefed this morning. You turn gently toward it - no dive, no climb - protecting your glide speed.

C - Checklist: Carb heat, full on - a rough-running engine losing power at cruise power on a humid July morning is carburetor ice until proven otherwise, and that carb heat knob might melt the ice and bring the engine back over the next 30 seconds. Fuel on the fullest tank, mixture rich, pump on, mags both.

If it comes back - rough at first, then smooth - you now face the mature decision. You do not shrug and press on to the busiest airport on Earth with an engine that just scared you. You tell someone, consider putting it down somewhere calm, and accept that you might watch AirVenture from the ground this year. That isn’t failure - that’s command authority.

If it doesn’t come back, you declare - Mayday on your current frequency, or 7700 and 121.5. You commit to the hayfield. You arrive a touch high on purpose, slip off the extra, hold glide speed all the way down final, and fly it into the near third of the field, wings level. Mixture to cutoff, fuel off, master off on short final if you have the hands for it, so you arrive with fuel and electrics safed. And you walk away. Your family walks away. A dinged airplane is a thing, and things are replaceable - people are not.

What does a checkride examiner want to see?

This maneuver lives in the ACS under emergency operations. The examiner will pull your throttle at altitude and say, “You just lost your engine.” They are not looking for a greaser onto a runway. They want a pilot who does not freeze:

• Pitch and trim for best glide immediately - without being told the number, because you already know it.
• Eyes outside for a field they’d actually buy - into the wind, reachable, not a fantasy runway eight miles away.
• A checklist attempt, out loud, in a sensible order.
• A radio call.
• A plan to the field with a shape - a key point, a base, a final - and the judgment to add or subtract drag to make it work.

If you pump the throttle and stare at the panel while the airplane slows, that’s the bust. Not the landing - the freeze.

How do I actually get good at this?

You do not rise to the occasion in an emergency. You sink to the level of your training.

Go up with an instructor this month and pull the power at altitude, over and over, until ABC isn’t a checklist you recite but something your hands do while your mouth is still catching up. Pick fields. Fly the glide. Do power-off 180s until you can feel the energy. Learn your airplane’s glide speed and glide ratio - roughly how many feet forward per foot down - so that up high you have an instinct for how far you can actually reach. That instinct is the difference between picking a field you can make and one you can’t.

Before your next flight, pick your number and say it out loud in the run-up: “Best glide,” and the speed. Then, up high, keep half an eye on the ground and keep asking, “Where would I go right now?” Make the habit so deep it’s boring - because the day it isn’t boring, that habit is the whole reason you get to walk the flight line the next morning.

This material draws on the FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook and the Airman Certification Standards for emergency approach and landing.

Key Takeaways

• Fly the airplane first. The instant the engine quits, pitch and trim for best glide (about 68 knots in a Cessna 172) before anything else.
• Run the ABC flow: Airspeed for glide, Best field into the wind, Checklist for a restart (fuel selector, mixture, carb heat, fuel pump, primer, mags).
• Then D and E: Declare (Mayday, squawk 7700, try 121.5) and Execute your power-off approach.
• Arrive high, not low. You can dump extra altitude with slips, flaps, and S-turns - you can’t stretch a short glide. Never pull the nose up short of the field; that’s a stall-spin.
• Train it until it’s boring. You sink to the level of your training, so practice power-off 180s and simulated failures until ABC is muscle memory.