Continued flight vs divert

Every malfunction is really a question about which runway you'll see next, and when. The skill isn't fixing the airplane — it's choosing the right place to put it down before the airplane chooses for you.

The spectrum of "land"

A malfunction doesn't force a single response; it puts you somewhere on a spectrum, and the whole art is picking the right rung early:

• Continue to the destination — appropriate only for a benign, stable issue that doesn't degrade (a single inop instrument you don't need, a comm radio when you have another).
• Divert to a nearer suitable field — the VI.C decision, applied under pressure: a known airport with usable weather, fuel, and a runway you can land on.
• Precautionary landing — a deliberate, powered landing at the best available field while you still have engine and options, because the situation is trending wrong.
• Forced landing — the IX.B flow, flown when the engine has already quit and the field is whatever's in glide range.

The mistake that kills people is sliding down that spectrum by default — staying on the top rung, nursing a degrading airplane toward the original destination, until the bottom rung is the only one left.

A precautionary landing beats a forced one

The single most important idea in this element: a precautionary landing with power is vastly better than a forced landing without it. With the engine still running you choose the field, the runway, the pattern, the airspeed — you fly a normal-looking arrival to an off-nominal place. Wait until the engine quits and all of that is decided for you by gravity and geography.

So when a malfunction is degrading — a roughening engine, oil pressure walking down, fuel that's become doubtful, smoke you've knocked down but don't trust — the airmanship move is to spend a little convenience to buy a lot of control. Put it down at a good field now, on your terms.

Deciding under pressure

The inputs are the same ones you weigh for any diversion (VI.C), now read against the trend of the malfunction:

• Nature and trajectory of the problem — stable, or getting worse, and how fast?
• Fuel and time remaining versus distance to each option.
• Weather, terrain, daylight — the same option-spenders as a lost or low-fuel situation.
• Field availability — nearest suitable versus merely nearest.

And don't let bureaucracy keep you airborne. <CFR id="91.3" /> gives the PIC final authority and, in an emergency, the right to deviate from any rule — declaring and diverting is authorized and expected, not an admission of failure. The paperwork from a precautionary landing you didn't strictly need is trivial; the cost of pressing on with a sick airplane is not.