EH?
What's it really matter? If you are slipping in the pattern, chances are good you are high and trying to lose some altitude. That is not a bad situation to be in, high on final, low on fuel, and a sputtering engine.
I slip almost every landing because i keep my patterns tight, and I have never had an engine so much as sputter.
Bill, I am really surprised you asked why does it really matter!
You make assumptions about where people slip their aircraft, where they are trying to get into, the ability of the pilot to deal with a sudden engine out, possibly followed by an engine coming back to life when not expected.
Look up landing at Stanton in the Uk on google. The one with the light aircraft not the gliders. I tried landing there the other day and had I had either scenario happen there would be one less RV 4 in the world.
Basically it an up hill strip 600 metres long easy in an RV. But you have to land uphill even with a tailwind, and there are high power lines on the approach. You will see them on the video. Now bear in mind the aircraft in the video has a stall of 26mph so was approaching at about 40, this made it easily doable.
I tried two approaches in my 4, the first following the approach in the vid, the second coming straight in over the power lines with about 10 knots on the tail.
You will have noticed that there is a hangar right at the end of the strip, so in a go round you are not only trying to out climb the hill but also clear the hangar!
So there I was down to 60 on approach slipping to loose height, if the engine had stopped I would have no choices I would have crashed. So, this is why people need to know not to slip with the lowest wing supplying fuel.
We are not all blessed with 2400 ft asphalt runways, 1100 ft on grass is often common in the Uk, with trees at each end! You really don’t want the donkey stopping if it can easily be avoided by switching tanks if you know you are going to slip on short final.
Still love the EI commander!