Inflight failure of all engines in a multi-engine airplane is an emergency procedure we don’t talk much about. There’s a reason for that, of course: Not only is such an event considered a remote possibility, one of the underlying reasons to have more than one engine is to hedge against one of them failing. Yet, it happens. Author Ernest K. Gann regales readers of his classic Fate is the Hunter with not one but two tales of multiple engine failures happening to him when captaining four-engine airplanes.
With all that in mind, I presented a related scenario to Beech Baron pilots back when I was teaching in the FlightSafety International simulator at Beech Field. Flying along in cruise, in a lull between events, I “failed” both engines without warning—we briefed exhaustively before simulator sessions, but I wanted the “startle effect” of a condition the pilot did not anticipate, probably never considered and almost certainly never practiced, to see how the pilot reacted.
