The FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook (AFH, FAA-H-8083-3C) describes energy management as “the process of planning, monitoring, and controlling altitude and airspeed,” which seems straightforward enough. Using the available tools, primarily pitch and power, we’re expected to attain and maintain “desired vertical flightpath-airspeed profiles, detect, correct and prevent “unintentional altitude-airspeed deviations” and prevent “irreversible deceleration and/or sink rate” that can lead to a less-than desirable outcome.
Put another way, managing an airplane’s energy is a key concept in any attempt to understand various flight phases, obtain desired performance and put it where we want it, in high-speed cruise, on the glidepath or in the touchdown zone. But we don’t always get it right the first time, whether due to poor planning, distractions, mechanical issues, weather or inexperience. The AFH calls these occurrences “energy errors,” and further breaks them down into “total energy errors” and “energy distribution errors,” or some combination of the two. The sidebar below explains these terms in greater detail.
