aviation query from a person new to all of this about the navigation system and emergencies

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Impossible-Bed46@reddit

Garmin has their Safe Glide and Safe Return feature on certain aircraft.

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Aggressive-Idea9509@reddit (OP)

that's only for airports though right?

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Yes. Most GPS navigators also have a nearest airport feature. The listing will usually be constrained by runway length and surface. Your best bet is always to look out the window. Fly over areas that you regularly drive and compare the terrain. I am a CFI and many of my students pick areas that have been harvested for pulp wood. When viewed from the ground they realize the left over stumps, limbs, etc make these areas some of the worst landing areas.

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EHP42@reddit

It would be pretty much impossible to keep a map of "good" emergency landing spots updated, not to mention that what's good for one airplane may not be good for another. Think about a field. A field might be flat in one season, full of furrows another, and full of corn another. How do you keep that map updated? That's why part of ppl training is learning how to assess potential emergency landing spots.

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monkiesandtool@reddit

At the flight school, this little bit (about seasonal lakes) came as a 'stump the cfi' question (which does codify your point)

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EHP42@reddit

Yeah, I don't think creating new maps with new seasonal legends that are guaranteed to be inaccurate is the solution.

I think OP is just obsessed with off-airport landings for some reason. They've got like 4 posts in the jar 24 hours about them.

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MNSoaring@reddit

Any pilot who has questions about landing off-airport simply needs to get their glider rating and all will be well with the world again.

Generally, with the right training, TLAR (that looks about right) works for landouts quite well.

For those who have no desire to fly a plane that has no engine , I would recommend Nate Jaros’ book “engine out survival tactics”. It’s a very good start on how to think about an off-airport landing. Another one is James Dulin’s book “contact flying”

Either way, no fancy equipment needed…

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NoConcentrate9116@reddit

People love to ask these types of questions but forget to ask themselves “who is going to pay for it?”

As others have noted, part of initial pilot training is being able to identify potential landing areas in the event of an emergency. That uses student eyeballs, which are free. If the student is using an airplane with decent avionics, lots of GPS systems have a “nearest” button (as noted by another redditor). If you push that button it will give you a list of the nearest whatever you select, be it airports, fixes, etc. Then all you’d have to do is hit direct to and you’d have a line snapped on your GPS to that airport. That’s as close as we have to what you’re describing.

A dedicated system that somehow identifies fields to land in would cost more money than anyone would be willing to pay to equip it on their airplanes. For starters, as soon as an emergency happens, that plane pretty much belongs to the insurance company now, so there’s not a huge incentive to pay for more systems like that while also paying for insurance. Additionally, how would this hypothetical system determine what terrain is or is not suitable for an emergency landing? How would it know that what once was a nice empty field now has a reforestation project ongoing and is full of saplings? Or that the field in question isn’t full of stumps?

It’s simply too complex and too expensive. Nobody will pay for it.

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Zargothrax@reddit

Most GPS will have a “nearest” page that shows a list of the nearest airports by distance. Other than that just look out the window.

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Necessary_Topic_1656@reddit

Looking out the window. No screens needed…

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spacecadet2399@reddit

This is one of the things you're trained for in the first stage of training, and you can't get your first private pilot certificate without being able to do it. This is part of being a pilot. The plane can't and does not do everything for you; not in small planes and not in airliners. If we have a real emergency when low to the ground in an airliner, we're going to be doing the same thing private pilots do, which is look out the window for a good place to land. Hopefully we've already been doing that and have some ideas, which is something (good) pilots are doing all the time while flying and even in pre-flight planning.

You can't expect airplanes to do everything that pilots do. Thinking skills and judgment are probably the two most important aspects of being a pilot. Collectively we call that "aeronautical decision making" or ADM.

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MostNinja2951@reddit

Yep, it's called a window. You look out it, identify the most appropriate site, and land the plane. There is no automated system that can do a better job of this than a human pilot, the hazards you're worried about just aren't things that exist in any kind of database or formal record.

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Independent-Reveal86@reddit

Eyes and planning.

If you need to make an emergency landing and you are a trainee then you are most likely in a small simple training aircraft. Landing areas basically consist of fields, and maybe roads with no traffic (but beware of powerlines!)

Any pilot of a small single engine aircraft should always have an eye out for emergency landing fields and not stray too far away from them.

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rFlyingTower@reddit

This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:

okay so i was reading through an aircraft's navigating system and landing system and all that stuff and something caught my attention.

so hear me out, does a system exist in aviation which helps trainee pilots locate a piece of terrain (that isn't in use of aviation industry) to conduct an emergency landing? like i believe the trainee aircrafts aren't that well equipped with the latest systems and the trainee pilots themselves don't have the greatest experience to handles these situations of emergency by themselves right so shouldn't there be a system that could help out??

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