Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t.

Imagine yourself in this situation: While in the pilot’s seat of a single engine piston powered airplane, the sound of your engine producing full power suddenly and unexpectedly rolls back to idle.

What to do? What to do?

If you’re on the downwind leg of a traffic pattern, you might tighten your pattern. If you’re at 8,000 feet AGL the silence will focus your attention, but you’ve got time to work through some causes and their possible solutions. If you’re well below pattern level, climbing out after departing the runway, this scenario is a whole different thing. It’s stressful. You’re playing for keeps on this roll of the dice and you know it.

A few weeks ago the Air Safety Institute released a video that deals with this exact situation. Titled “Reality Check: The Runway Behind You,” it’s an eye-opener.

We’re talking about the Impossible Turn.

Can you make it back to the runway or not? Some say yes. You just need to employ the proper technique and commit to it. Others say it’s a fallacy. The airplane simply loses too much altitude in the turn. Even considering the option is foolhardy.

With that debate in mind, the kids at the Aviation Safety Institute decided to put that exact question to the test. They took four different aircraft and simulated this most feared situation — an engine failure on climbout.

It’s common knowledge that a Super Cub, an RV-4, a C-172, and a Bonanza have very different flight characteristics. Yet when most of us discuss the Impossible Turn, we do it in a generic sense. Can you or can’t you? Will it or won’t it?

Context matters. Certainly, in this instance, it’s critical.

I won’t spoil the outcome for you. I’d rather you sought out the video to see for yourself. Anyone who invests the less than 10 minutes it takes to watch the video will not only come away with a better understanding of why they should — or shouldn’t — consider the Impossible Turn to be a part of their pilot skillset, they’ll know why.

Sometimes knowing why is more important knowing than what.

To the naysayers, or at least a good portion of the naysayers, the argument might well be that engine failures are so rare it’s not worth investing the time or energy to solve a problem that will probably never occur. Admittedly, engine failures are rare. It’s likely you will go through your entire flying career as a professional or a hobbyist without ever experiencing one. Then again, should your prop begin to wind down unexpectedly, that’s a really bad time to begin your first deliberations on the topic of how to deal with a full-blown emergency.

Engine failures are serious business. They tend to happen with little warning. The very nature of being airborne means any engine failure in flight falls somewhere between a significant inconvenience and a truly terrifying experience.

I’ve had two engine failures over the course of my career. One was a mysterious event that turned out as well as anyone could possibly hope for. The other was a self-induced problem rooted in ignorance that was thankfully uneventful.

My first engine failure was something of a mystery to me. I was acting as a CFI in a C-182, flying with a private pilot who was considering stepping up to an instrument rating. We were in the practice area, 10 or 12 miles east of our home airport, on the opposite side of a ridgeline that ran more or less north and south. The flight was going well, but something about the aircraft felt wrong to me. I can’t say what it was. I didn’t have the ability to articulate my concern then and I still don’t now. I just felt as if something wasn’t right.

I suggested we head back home, well before a normal lesson would have sent us back in that direction.

The short transition back to the pattern was uneventful, although my student was aware enough to question why we were cutting the lesson short. I was less than specific about my reasons, but she went along with my directives and took us home.

Something about the powerplant didn’t feel right to me. Maybe it was a vibration or maybe it was a sound. I’m not sure. But I knew I was uncomfortable about the flight continuing.

On downwind my student said something to the effect of “this doesn’t feel right.” I took the controls and agreed. It didn’t feel right, although I couldn’t put my finger on what “this” was.

I stayed in the game, as did my student. We flew the downwind, then base, then turned onto final. I carried a bit of power, preferring to be high and fast to low and slow. At the appropriate time I flared, and the engine gave out. Right there, five feet above the runway, my engine quit. I’ve often joked that my first engine failure happened in the best possible place at the best possible time. It was a no brainer. With an entire runway ahead of me and gravity working in my favor, we landed, taxied off the runway, and radioed in to the FBO to get a tug back to the hangar.

No problem.

Had that same failure happened half an hour earlier, on climbout, I’d have a very different story to tell, if I was here to tell it at all.

Thankfully, the good folks at the Air Safety Institute have now addressed that very issue in a thoughtful, responsible manner that just might help any one of us make a critical decision with actual knowledge rather than just a bucketful of hope, should the need ever arise.

Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.