Deadstick landings are something that I think every student should deal with before they are allowed to solo. Unfortunately a lot of instructors won't teach them this for whatever reason. I teach my students how to deal with deadsticks after then have learned to land and before they solo. Here's what I do for them. I will have them get the plane 3-4 mistakes high and then cut the throttle to idle, and then tell them to land the plane without touching the throttle stick at all. Doing this teaches a student how to line up on the runway from where they are when the engine dies as it makes the student think ahead as to how they are going to line up on the runway. I will have them do this repeatedly from different places in the sky so they can get good practice at it.

Now with that said, many pilots will wind up crashing their planes on a deadstick, even experienced pilots. So what causes the crash?? The reason most crash is that they worry about getting the plane back to the runway, and some situations that's going to be impossible. So what happens is they try to stretch a glide out to the point that they plane stalls and crashes. What a pilot needs to learn is that they can't always get back to the runway. So when the plane quits the first thing they should do is figure out someplace to set the plane down. Now if the plane can be brought back to the runway, then by all means do so. But if not then set the plane down in a field so that it's not damaged. When a pilot learns to be able to say that they can't always get it back to the runway they will find that deadsticks aren't quite so scary and difficult anymore.

Ken