How an airplane escapes when its engine dies

The ability to glide at high altitudes can give the plane more time to escape if all engines fail.

The plane can still land safely even if its engine dies. Illustration: Express.

In the event of an engine failure while flying over land, an experienced pilot can handle the situation safely because the plane can still glide a long distance to restart the engine and land safely on the runway, according to Nicoday.com.

"Normally, for every 300 meters of altitude, the plane can glide about 3.2 kilometers. Therefore, at an altitude of 12,200 meters, the plane can continue flying a distance of about 129 kilometers without the engine. Pilots are trained in the skills to continue flying like this, with the goal of gaining more time until the engine restarts. Calculating to land successfully without engine thrust from an altitude of 12,200 meters is very difficult," said a British captain.unnamedsaid.

Patrick Smith, author of Cockpit Confidential, shares a similar opinion. “Just like turning off the engine on a downhill slope and the car keeps moving, the same goes for an airplane,” Smith says.

Gliding has been a popular public performance for commercial pilots for many years. The most famous was Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger in 2009. After a collision with a bird completely disabled the engine, Sullenberger flew his Airbus A320 into a glide and landed it in the Hudson River in New York, USA. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Pilots control plane that died and landed in Hudson River

In 1982, a British Airways Boeing 747 taking off from Heathrow Airport to Jakarta flew through a volcanic ash plume 177 km from its destination. Volcanic ash caused all four engines to shut down and the plane glided for 20 minutes from 11,277 m to 3,657 m.At this altitude, the crew successfully restarted the engines and landed safely, although the runway could not be seen clearly because ash covered the cockpit windows.

According to VNE