The ABCDE Flow and the Ninety Seconds After the Engine Quits - Working an Emergency While Inbound to Oshkosh

When your engine quits, the ordered response is A-B-C-D-E: establish Airspeed (best glide), pick your Best field, run your Cockpit checks, Declare the emergency, and Execute the forced landing. An engine failure is not the emergency - panic is. The airplane is still flying, and the flow exists so nothing important gets skipped when your heart rate is at 160.

This matters most in high-density environments like the Fisk arrival into AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where you’re packed into a low-altitude line of traffic with limited room to maneuver. The single biggest factor in surviving an engine-out isn’t reflexes in the moment - it’s the brief you ran on the ground before you ever launched.

What Should You Do First When the Engine Quits?

When the engine goes quiet, your body wants to do two things immediately, and both are wrong. It wants to stare at the gauges and start troubleshooting, and it wants to pull back on the yoke because the dropping nose feels like falling.

Do neither first. There is an order, and it starts with airspeed - not the engine.

A is for Airspeed. Before you touch a single switch, pitch for best glide speed. In a typical Cessna 172, that’s around 68 knots. In your airplane it’s a specific number you should know like your own phone number. Best glide gives you the most distance for every foot of altitude you have left.

Airspeed comes first because altitude and airspeed are the only two things running out. If you let the nose hang while you fiddle with the fuel selector, you bleed off speed and flirt with a stall. A stall at 1,500 feet over open country is survivable. A stall that becomes a spin often is not.

The reflex to build until it’s automatic: engine quits, pitch for glide, trim it off. Trim the airplane to hold best glide hands-off, and it will fly itself at the right speed while your hands and brain go do other work.

How Do You Choose a Landing Spot in an Engine-Out?

B is for Best field. Once the airplane is gliding and trimmed, you pick where you’re going - the best available spot, not the perfect one.

This is where pilots freeze, hunting for pavement when there is none to be had. An examiner wants a decision, not a miracle. A committed glide to a plowed field into the wind beats a beautiful, indecisive spiral over three mediocre options while you burn through altitude.

Consider surface, wind, length, slope, obstacles on final, and people on the ground. A soft, open, into-the-wind field with a clear approach is your friend. Wires - and the poles that hold them - are the enemy. You often can’t see the wires, but you can see the poles. Land between the poles.

The AirVenture wrinkle: on the Fisk arrival you can’t just wander off looking for a field. That’s exactly why the official EAA AirVenture NOTAM - which every arriving pilot is required to read and brief - builds in structure, including a published hold and a bail-out plan. Fond du Lac, just to the south, exists as a release valve for this kind of pressure.

Which brings up the most important point: you brief the emergency before you ever get near Fisk. You do it on the ground, at the kitchen table, with the NOTAM open - not at 2,300 feet with a low-wing on your tail.

What Are the Cockpit Checks After an Engine Failure?

C is for Cockpit checks, and cause. Only now - after the airplane is gliding and you’ve committed to a field - do you troubleshoot. Run it as a fast flow: fuel, ignition, air.

• Fuel selector to both, or to the fullest tank
• Mixture rich
• Boost pump on, if equipped
• Carburetor heat on - carb ice is a quiet killer that robs power on a clear day
• Magnetos - try the other position
• Primer in and locked

If the engine comes back, wonderful. If it doesn’t, stop troubleshooting. Do not keep your head down while the ground comes up - you have a field, so fly to the field.

Here’s the honest part: if the engine is truly dead and it isn’t a simple fuel or carb-heat fix, it usually isn’t coming back with a switch. The check is worth ten seconds. It is not worth thirty. Discipline is knowing the difference.

When Should You Declare an Emergency?

D is for Declare. Get on the radio, squawk 7700, and say “Mayday” three times. Tell them who you are, where you are, and what you intend to do.

A lot of students are shy about this. Declaring an emergency does not bury you in paperwork and does not mean you failed. It tells the system you need help, and every resource in the area starts moving your way - so when you put the airplane in a field, someone knows exactly where to send the trucks.

At AirVenture, frequencies are saturated and Oshkosh controllers are working more traffic than anywhere on earth. If you have a genuine emergency there, say so clearly and briefly, and they will move mountains to give you room.

But the radio is fourth for a reason: aviate, navigate, communicate. Fly the airplane first, point it at the field second, talk third. Nobody was ever saved by a beautiful radio call made while stalling.

How Do You Fly the Forced-Landing Approach?

E is for Execute - the landing itself, and everything you do to walk away.

Fly your pattern to the field and use flaps as you would for a short field. Aim for the near third so you aren’t tempted to stretch the glide. Never try to stretch a glide - that’s pulling back to reach a spot you can’t reach, going slow, and stalling short. If anything, land long and roll into the far obstacle at low speed rather than stall high and hit hard.

Before touchdown, if you have time, turn your airplane into the safest possible crash:

• Mixture to cutoff
• Fuel selector off
• Master and magnetos off just before landing to reduce fire risk
• Doors cracked open so they can’t jam shut on impact
• Seatbelt and shoulder harness cinched down hard
• Loose items secured

A controlled arrival into a soft field at low speed, with the cabin intact, is an emergency you walk away from.

The Full ABCDE Flow in Real Time

The letters only matter if the flow is automatic. Here’s how it runs together:

You’re inbound. It gets quiet. Your hand pitches for glide and rolls in trim before your brain catches up - Airspeed. You look out and spot a big green hayfield running with the wind, clear approach, no visible wires - Best field, committed. Head down for ten seconds: fuel on both, mixture rich, carb heat on, mags, pump. Nothing. Fine - Cockpit check done. Head back up: 7700, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” single engine, engine out, landing in a field to the west, two souls on board - Declare. Now you fly the approach you’ve flown a thousand times, just without the noise: flaps as needed, aim near, don’t stretch, then fuel off, mixture off, mags off, master off, doors cracked, harness tight - Execute.

That’s not luck. That’s a flow, run in order under pressure, because you built it before you needed it.

What Does the ACS Expect on Engine Failure?

If you’re working toward your private certificate, the emergency operations area of the Airman Certification Standards (ACS) asks you to demonstrate exactly this: establish and maintain best glide, select a suitable landing area, plan and follow a flight pattern to it, run the appropriate checklist, and simulate securing the airplane.

The examiner isn’t looking for you to save a broken airplane. They want you to fly the airplane you have, all the way to the ground, in control - making decisions instead of freezing. A-B-C-D-E is simply insurance that nothing important gets skipped.

The material on best glide, forced landings, and the emergency flow comes straight out of the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook and the ACS; the arrival specifics come from the official EAA AirVenture NOTAM.

Before your next flight, take ten seconds and say it out loud: if it quits after takeoff, I’m landing more or less straight ahead; if it quits at altitude, my glide speed is this number, and I’m always keeping a field in the corner of my eye. Rehearse the flow on the ground, where it’s free, so that in the air it’s already yours.

Key Takeaways

• Follow the order: A-B-C-D-E - Airspeed (best glide), Best field, Cockpit checks, Declare, Execute. Airspeed always comes before troubleshooting.
• Trim for best glide and let the airplane fly itself while your hands and brain handle the rest.
• Commit to the best available field, not the perfect one. Land between the poles, into the wind, and never stretch the glide.
• Declare early - squawk 7700, say “Mayday” three times, and let the system send help.
• Brief the emergency on the ground. At AirVenture, the NOTAM’s structure (the hold, Fond du Lac as a release valve) is part of your plan before you reach Fisk.