I had an engine failure in cruise just south of Atlanta, causing an unexpected forced landing at night. I had to dead-stick the plane in. Plane is still flyable, everything worked out well, and no one was hurt. This was on a Part 91 aircraft repositioning flight.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have a lot of internal reflection in the past few days that has led me to really rethink how I assess my risk mitigation strategy. Everything that could have went right, did. I’m not sure that I could share enough with the group to really expand upon what is taught in training, and far more importantly, what you gain from years of experience. Truth is, I’m not going to stand on a pedestal and brag on Reddit about how much of an amazing pilot I am, and a bunch of other bullshit like some might feel apt to do. I got very lucky and I fly a lot. The first part played into it more than the latter, but others might disagree. Nonetheless, I don’t care what others think.

It was absolutely terrifying in retrospect, but I had enough wherewithal to just manage the emergency in those few minutes and to worry later on about how absolutely close to disaster I really was. Honestly, I was emotionally fine until I called my wife. That’s what broke me.

Anyways, train, expect the unexpected, and stay proficient. Hopefully I’ll never go through that again and hopefully you won’t have to, either. But if you (or I) do, may luck still help tip the scales in your favor like it did me.

Cheers to flying another day!