Definition
An unplanned landing, made on or off an airport, conducted in response to an in-flight situation that makes continued flight inadvisable or impossible. Includes forced landings (engine failure or other condition requiring immediate landing), precautionary landings (landing while the airplane is still under power but conditions make continued flight unwise), and ditching (a forced or precautionary landing on water).
Plain English
A landing the pilot did not plan to make, carried out because something has gone wrong in flight and getting the airplane on the ground promptly is the safest choice.
Context Anchor
You may see this term when studying ground-reference maneuvers, landing planning, engine problems, and decisions about where to put the airplane down if a normal flight cannot continue.
Derivation
Emergency comes from a Latin root meaning “to arise” or “come up.” That helps here because an emergency landing is caused by a serious situation that comes up and forces the pilot to change the plan.
Why Pilots Care
Correct technique minimizes aircraft damage and injury risk when power or control is lost; poor execution can turn a survivable situation into a serious accident.
Intuition Check
Do not assume an emergency landing means a crash. It means the landing is urgent and unplanned; the goal is still to land the airplane under control.
Example Sentence 1
When the oil pressure dropped to zero, the pilot declared an emergency and made an emergency landing in a plowed field.
Example Sentence 2
Practice emergency landings help pilots learn to judge glide distance and choose landing sites quickly under stress.