You really have to think about managing your risks when flying. For me, the love of aviation keeps me going, but I've seen some walk away. I've known several pilots who were killed in crashes, and I also lost 7 family members in a crash. I've had an emergency landing when an engine failed on a rental plane. I've had a crash when my engine failed in my Luscombe. I had the engine stop in an Aeronca Chief and I was able to glide back to the airport safely. I've had at least 3 other times where I had to return to the airport. One was this weekend. I was flying with a guy who is getting ready for his checkride when he pulled power to land and figured out the RPM wouldn't go below 2,000. We returned to home base. Slowed down as much as possible, then shut off the engine as we crossed the end of the runway.
I have 9700+ hours. I figure I drive 2000 hours a year or more. If I'd had this many close calls in a car, I might quit driving, or buy the biggest car I could find! I love flying though, and I accept the risks of flying planes that are often 70 year old or more.
Your experience is certainly an outlier when it comes to engine problems in piston land. Luscombes, Chiefs, Cubs? Those are all extra small carbed engines, perhaps it's stacking the deck against your favor. No way for me to know, but here's my experience...
...I've had two instances where the vehicle I was driving lost complete power at highway speed. One was a catastrophic camshaft failure (POS VW Beetle turbo my POS exwife used to own), the other a hall sensor failure in a Jeep Cherokee killing the ignition. Both ended in coasting to the shoulder. In an airplane these two incidents would have been dead stick crashes, if we are to normalize for the fact they occurred during "cruise" and the fact I no longer concern myself with the proposition of "making it back to runways" in a single anymore. I'm much more spring loaded to save the occupants at the expense of the airframe, and happily collect the insurance check. I just don't care about salvaging these things with heroics. My work ticket is protected by the USAF, so on my civilian rating side of things, the FAA can suck it if they don't like the manner or configuration in which I decide to put an airplane down during a power failure.
At any rate, I have had zero such incidents in my flying life. My point is that by your logic, I should stop driving and fly the airplane to work every day. I'm still driving of course, and flying. So since "my perception is my reality", I am not anywhere near as concerned with these engine failures. They happen, but they don't happen that often in my life. Which is another way of saying, I
have to eat the opportunity cost of these things betraying me (low to the ground especially) in the most unexpected of ways. If that's not a risk I'm willing to take then I gotta quit. I'm obviously not there yet.
And bear in mind, I just got my engine mythology blown all to hell this weekend when I heard of a comanche 250 whose NA, independent mag, parallel valve Lycoming engine chunked up in cruise after days of being flown without a hiccup, and what appeared to be mindful mx by a conscientious private pilot with a family makeup identical to mine. Apparently the camshaft grenaded out of the blue, according to the interview. Last I heard the dude is selling the airframe (no damage to it, successful landing on a road) and getting into a Cirrus. The wife seemed shook up enough she's not doing it again without 'assurances'. Can't say I blame the guy. I'm lucky my wife places enough trust in me to not feel paralyzed by these things, plus she legitimately enjoys the travel perks. I recognize not everybody has families as supportive. We have a contributor on here that got hurt badly when his continental betrayed him on takeoff, so there's just no way to insulate from this, other than going turbine. Since that's out for most of us, we either make peace, get a BRS, or get out of this thing.
