Insane that this actually happened. During my lessons they would power down the engines on purpose to show it will not fall to the ground but it will float wherever you’re able to go. He executed it perfect when he needed to.
Planes stay in the air because of the wings, and the wings don't suddenly disappear when you lose your engines. Planes can glide for quite a while when they lose power provided they have enough altitude.
The longest glide for a big jet is an A330 which had to glide for 120 km/75 mi over the Atlantic to land on one smallish island. They still had 10-20 mins left before they hit the ocean. So they can glide a long way if things are right.
Every model of plane has specific documentation on characteristics of the airframe. A pilot should be very familiar with this documentation for any model of plane that they fly. This includes things like maximum straight-and-level speed, maximum maneuvering speed, and *ideal glide slope*. For a single-engine Cessna Skyhawk (similar to the plane in this video), it's around 8:1. If you're doing some local practice flying in a small plane, flying around at an altitude of around 5000 feet is fairly typical. This means that the engine going out gives you about 8 miles of range (and about 4 minutes, assuming a speed of 120 mph) to figure out a landing spot. Challenging and stressful, but usually doable!
All of this is why some of the most dangerous conditions for planes are takeoff (you don't yet have much altitude to use for gliding, so an engine failure is hard to recover from), landing (same reason), and mountainous areas (very few flat areas for landing).
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u/tikojonas 26d ago
Insane that this actually happened. During my lessons they would power down the engines on purpose to show it will not fall to the ground but it will float wherever you’re able to go. He executed it perfect when he needed to.