Skydemon and “User expertise with Skydemon”… come to mind, yet again. It’s a complex product with a weird UI. To avoid UK and N European CAS is fairly easy, out of the box, but not so much beyond that.
Peter wrote:
Plenty of Swiss pilots get killed in the mountains, too.
Quite logical if you’d think about it. That is where most of the flying takes place over here…
172driver wrote:
Oh puleeeze – do you really want to introduce more regulations?
I agree. There is no need to include mountain flying skills into the EASA PPL as a general requirement.
I did my PPL in a field that sits at 3 ft AMSL and where you can easily avoid hitting any terrain within a ca. 150 nm radius by keeping the altimeter at 1000 ft AMSL. Many local pilots will never in their lifetime have to fly higher than 2000 ft to fly safe and comfortable. One cannot justify putting an extra regulatory burden on them just because some flatland pilots get caught out when they venture into higher terrain eventually. It is on each of them to prepare accordingly, and even then you will have accidents because the margins of error are smaller in the mountains.
MedEwok wrote:
There is no need to include mountain flying skills into the EASA PPL as a general requirement.
I also agree. What should be in the EASA PPL as a general requirement is to fly at some point to at least FL100 (or the service ceiling of the aircraft, if less) to experience the performance differences. This would also have a positive psychological effect.
Putting mountain flying into a PPL would be impossible. Nobody in the Netherlands would be able to get a PPL if that was the case!
If flying in mountains required separate rating that would make things very difficult. Pilots such as myself would have to travel very long distances in order to be able to do the course for the rating. That would make it largely unfeasible to get and maintain.
In reality very few would do it, meaning that either most pilots would never fly in the Alps again or many would do it illegally. That in itself would make things worse as people are unlikely to ask for help or guidance to do something that would be illegal. So it would probably result in more accidents, not fewer.
I got my PPL in British Columbia but the science of mountain flying was inexact. A bit about DA, leaning for best power, turning in a canyon not much else. My IR was much better with non precision approaches into places like Penticton at night. Sparky Imeson’s Mountain Flying Bible remains an excellent source of common sense for mountain flying.
The Italian rating is excellent and is in effect an advanced ski/mountain/altiport rating.
The mountain rating could never be mandatory for overflight of mountains, because it would be completely ridiculous.
I have overflown the Alps at FL150 or so, VFR – in places where ATC let you, so probably not CH. But even in CH I was doing it at FL129 – good for photos 
And as pointed out, the vast majority of European pilots would either never get it, or would let it lapse, and mostly both. This accident happened only because the pilot was trying to get himself signed off; his next flight would have been with a mountain instructor.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I also agree. What should be in the EASA PPL as a general requirement is to fly at some point to at least FL100 (or the service ceiling of the aircraft, if less) to experience the performance differences. This would also have a positive psychological effect.
Interesting point. I agree that most pilots don’t really get to experience the performance limitation of their aircraft during the PPL.
I never went higher than FL65 during training, which again is probably higher than many others go as students, where most flying takes place in the 2000 to 3000 ft range. But it isn’t enough to really notice the degradation of performance in normally-aspirated piston aircraft.
Indeed a good idea to climb to FL100 at least once during the PPL course. Especially on a day with nice cumuli, to simulate flying between mountains. I know, not the same but still useful to do exercises like ‘with this climb rate, would we get on top of that cloud/mountain?’
Airborne_Again wrote:
What should be in the EASA PPL as a general requirement is to fly at some point to at least FL100 (or the service ceiling of the aircraft, if less) to experience the performance differences.
I don’t really see a point in that. When I did that after the PPL, the CD-135 pulled the Cessna just as bad towards the sky at FL95 as at 3kft. What I learned was: TAS is a thing and to get back down to 1000 ft takes a while. Safety wise nothing. The learning starts when you have solid objects as a reference and not only the VSI. Takeoff from a short field on a high DA day would have been much more exciting in that plane. But the PPL teaches the basics to not harm yourself and especially not others, thats it. It certainly can’t teach the weakness of every type of airplane.
