Know Where To Go

My father was a mechanic for a major airline. One day he was a passenger on one of the company’s Boeing 767s on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. As the heavy Boeing lifted off into a low overcast at O’Hare, the right engine failed. My father later told me he could hear the change in noise and feel the deck angle, but said the crew artfully handled the failure and engine shutdown, and most passengers probably didn’t notice anything unusual had happened.

Key Takeaways:

• Aviation safety is significantly enhanced by pre-planning for potential emergencies, especially by establishing a "takeoff alternate" airport before every flight.
• Airline crews demonstrate this by following pre-made decisions and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), which minimizes high-stress decision-making during critical in-flight incidents.
• General aviation pilots should adopt this practice, considering various abort scenarios (beyond engine failure) and selecting the safest alternate airport, which may not always be the departure airport.

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