The Engine-Out Forced Landing, the ABCDE Flow, and Choosing Your Field Before the Propeller Ever Stops

A total engine failure is survivable when you fly a rehearsed flow instead of freezing. The ABCDE memory aid captures the order that keeps pilots alive: Airspeed, Best field, Cockpit checklist, Declare, Execute. The single strongest predictor of a good outcome is that you were already scanning for landing fields before the engine ever quit.

Why Engine Failures Kill Pilots Who Could Have Walked Away

The forced landing itself is not a difficult maneuver. A power-off glide to a field is one of the most basic things an airplane can do. What turns a recoverable emergency into a fatal one is not the flying - it’s the freezing.

In the first twelve to fifteen seconds, an unprepared brain refuses to accept what the ears are reporting. The pilot sits and stares at a dead engine while the airplane trades away the one thing it can never get back: altitude.

The entire goal is to have a plan so worn into your hands that you begin executing it before your conscious mind catches up. That is exactly what a flow is for.

What Is the ABCDE Engine-Out Flow?

ABCDE stands for Airspeed, Best field, Cockpit checklist, Declare, and Execute. The order is deliberate - each step protects the airplane and buys time for the next one.

A - Airspeed: Pitch and Trim First

Before you troubleshoot anything, before you touch the radio, pitch for best glide speed. In most training airplanes that’s roughly 65 to 70 knots, but you need to know the exact number for your airplane cold, without looking.

Best glide is the speed that buys the most distance across the ground for every foot of altitude spent. Fly faster and you’re diving; fly slower and you’re mushing toward a stall. Either way you throw away real estate.

When the engine quits, the nose will want to drop - and that’s helping you, because the airplane is hunting for a speed. Catch it at best glide and trim it off. A trimmed airplane at best glide will nearly fly the emergency for you and frees your brain for the next four letters.

B - Best Field: The Decision That Matters Most

This choice matters more than all the others combined, and here is the key: you do not start looking for a field when the engine fails. You start looking when the wheels leave the ground.

On every cross-country, play a quiet running game - where would I go right now? That road? That pasture? That harvested cornfield off the left wing? Build that habit and, when the silence comes, you already have an answer and can spend altitude flying to it instead of hunting for it.

When you pick a field, evaluate it in this order - the five S’s: wind, size, surface, slope, and obstacles.

• Wind first, so you land into it and touch down as slowly as possible.
• Size - take the longest run available.
• Surface - on a plowed field, land along the furrows, not across them.
• Slope - land uphill if you can; it slows you fast.
• Obstacles - watch for wires. They’re nearly invisible and hide between the poles you can see. If you see poles, assume wires, and plan to clear them with intention.

One hard truth: a controlled touchdown into trees or a fence at the far end of a field is survivable. Stretching a glide, running out of airspeed short, and stalling in is what kills people. Pick your field, commit, and fly the airplane all the way to the ground. The insurance company owns the airplane the moment the engine quits - your only job is keeping the people inside alive.

C - Cockpit Checklist: Attempt the Restart

Only now, with the airplane trimmed and gliding toward a chosen field, do you try to restart the engine. Every airplane has its own flow, but the pattern is almost always the same handful of items: fuel, mixture, carb heat, mags, primer, pump.

• Fuel - is the selector on a tank that actually has fuel? Switching tanks has saved more forced landings than any other single action, because fuel starvation is one of the most common causes of engine stoppage.
• Mixture - push it in; an engine can quit from running too lean.
• Carb heat - on. Carburetor ice is a silent killer that can choke an engine on a mild, humid day.
• Magnetos - try both.
• Primer - check it’s in and locked.
• Fuel pump - on, if your airplane has one.

Do it quickly, in order, and from memory. You won’t have time to read a laminated card and fly a glide at the same time in your first few thousand hours.

D - Declare: Say the Word

Get on the radio. If you’re already talking to someone, tell them. If not, go to 121.5, the emergency frequency, and say “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” followed by who you are, where you are, and what’s happening. Then squawk 7700 on the transponder - that code lights you up on every radar scope in the region.

Kill any instinct toward embarrassment. Declaring an emergency does not bury you in paperwork; it points every resource in the national airspace system at helping you. Remember the priority: aviate, navigate, communicate - in that order. The radio is third for a reason, but it’s on the list.

E - Execute: Prepare for Arrival

This is everything that readies you and your passengers for touchdown.

Brief your passengers: tell them to cinch their belts as hard as they’ll go, show them where to brace, and explain how the door works so it can’t jam shut on a crumpled airframe. If your airplane calls for cracking a door before touchdown so the frame can’t twist it closed, do it now.

Right before touchdown, shut off the fuel selector, pull mixture to idle cutoff, turn magnetos off, and master off - your best odds against fire. Then fly the airplane all the way down, onto the ground, and through it, until it stops moving.

How Do I Practice Engine-Out Landings?

A flow you’ve never rehearsed under pressure is just words on a card. Picture a Cessna 172 at 4,500 feet on a smooth cross-country afternoon when the engine quietly loses power and the prop windmills. What does your hand do first?

If the answer is anything other than easing the nose to best glide and trimming, you have homework. The pilot who reaches for the fuel selector before establishing a glide lets airspeed decay while heads-down - and that’s how a recoverable failure becomes a stall-spin off a low turn.

On your next flight - with an instructor if you’re not comfortable solo - practice it:

1. Pull the power to idle at altitude.
2. Establish the glide and trim.
3. Pick a field.
4. Run the flow out loud: where’s the wind, where’s my field, fuel, mixture, carb heat, mags.
5. Talk through the radio call.
6. High and safe, set up as if you’ll fly it down, and study the picture.

Do it enough times that the silence stops being a shock and becomes just another thing you know how to handle.

What Do Examiners Actually Grade on the Checkride?

The Airman Certification Standards emergency approach and landing task looks for a pilot who, the moment power comes to idle, immediately establishes the recommended best glide, promptly selects a suitable landing area, and works the restart, checklist, and passenger brief without ever losing control of the airplane.

You are not graded on finding the world’s most perfect field. You’re graded on keeping your head, flying the airplane, and making an orderly, decisive plan. Order and control - that’s the whole standard.

Most of this aligns with the emergency procedures guidance in the FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook and the ACS emergency approach and landing task. Read both with your own airplane’s checklist beside them.

Key Takeaways

• Fly the flow, don’t freeze. Most engine-failure fatalities come from hesitation, not from the glide itself.
• ABCDE = Airspeed, Best field, Cockpit checklist, Declare, Execute - in that order.
• Pitch to best glide (~65–70 kt) and trim first, before troubleshooting anything.
• Start choosing fields when the wheels leave the ground, not when the engine quits.
• Commit to your field and fly it to the ground - stretching a glide and stalling short is the real killer.