Flaps Up, Gear Up….?

It has come to my attention that at least one local multiengine training provider is advocating a seemingly peculiar technique.

Feathered propeller. At this altitude, it would be appropriate to troubleshoot first.

As any piston multi-engine pilot should know, the proper sequence in the event of an engine failure in-flight and above Vyse is as follows: maximize power (mixtures, props, throttles); minimize drags (flaps and gear retracted); activate boost pumps if they’re not already on; identify the dead engine (dead leg, dead engine), verify by moving the suspected throttle, and finally, if altitude or conditions don’t warrant troubleshooting, feather. 

Seems this person, a competent multi-engine pilot who was simply seeking a checkout in the Seneca I, was taught by an accelerated training school to skip the fuel pump step. I.e., everything forward, everything up, identify, verify, feather. Their reasoning, according to this pilot, is that activation of fuel pumps should occur only during the troubleshooting phase… because it’s an attempt to troubleshoot the problem, not a “power-up/clean-up” item.

So, this one summer, in band camp…

All right. Let’s play this scenario out: on takeoff, the critical engine (if the airplane is not equipped with counterrotating props) cuts out at 400 feet AGL. Conditions: hot day, max gross weight. (You can always count on an engine failure occurring under the worst possible conditions – it’s murphy’s law.) Going by the book, the pilot decides to quickly identify and feather the prop on the offending engine without first activating the fuel pumps (which should have been “on” per the checklist, by the way, but this is a commonly forgotten pre-takeoff item.) The pilot finds that she’s unable to maintain altitude due to the high density altitude and is forced to land in a nearby field, substantially damaging the airplane and causing minor injuries only (thank goodness!) to the occupants. The NTSB shows up and finds the boost pumps in the “off” position. Further investigation reveals that the left engine’s mechanical fuel pump was the cause of the engine failure.

That’d leave this unfortunate pilot in a bit of a sticky wicket, as the Brits like to say. The failure to flip one switch turned what would have been a non-event into a near disaster. I’d call it “bad training.”

Activating the fuel pumps – or verifying that the switches are in the “on” position – when dealing with an OEI situation at low or high altitude is an important and necessary step.

One of my favorite scenarios to run in Air Orlando’s full motion “MOTUS” sim, and its hyper-realistic Seneca model, is the failure of an engine driven fuel pump one knot above blue line. If the pilot correctly activates the fuel pumps, as he/she’s been taught, the engine will quickly return to life and the emergency can be cancelled. This is impossible to simulate in a real airplane. We must all remember to train like we fight, and fight like we train.