It may be that inadequate handling of slow flight is a major killer on the PPL training scene and then one needs to do more training in that department.
Peter, it may have been, but no longer, but it remains the main cause for fatalities in private GA outside the training environment. So we have made training safer, but do not appear to have addressed the problem with the new, let’s stay well within the envelope training philosophy. There is clearly a knowledge gap, and the US is addressing this at the professional level.
The services, and some airlines, ensure this skill and understanding is learnt – by ground briefing, and experiencing departure from controlled flight from different attitudes with the drills for safe recovery learned into motor memory.
Currently only some aerobatics training provides a similar knowledge.
If the current PPL syllabus was fit for purpose on this topic we would not have the stubborn accident rate, or the NTSB highlighting it.
I wonder what can be taught usefully and safely that goes beyond the present stall awareness?
Most types that longer-term PPLs fly, ahem, longer-term, can be stalled, of course, but cannot be spun. Well, not legally.
I have read your original NTSB link and one of the fatal-spin-accident types mentioned is a Lancair IV, which is a type for which there probably isn’t a proper Vs anyway, in the sense that it may have a Vs if everything is kept very straight and the engine isn’t making any torque 
There is no free lunch and one of the ways of making a plane go fast is to make all the control surfaces smaller than they would be on a certified type.
I don’t think this can be discussed further. A better pilot is a better pilot … is a better pilot. And a pilot who was seriously trained in aerobatics will always be that better pilot.
Of course many types can be spun legally: most 172s, 152…
The presumption that acrobatic training, or spin training in specific leads to a safer better pilot is not proven in any set of stats or look-back accident analysis. A stall close the ground whether entering a spin or not is still the biggest trouble anyone can get into other than attempting the impossible turn, and that is the same thing.
How many experienced pilots don’t know that a stall can happen at any speed? How many understand the physics of load factor, the formula F=Ma? The primacy of angle-of-attack?
The real answer is to recognize and avoid stalls and spins…don’t learn how to enter and recover from them…
Aerobatic training is much more than “entering stalls or spins”. It gives you a much better feeling for the airplane and it’s aerodynamics and dynamics. I can only speak for myself but i felt like a different pilot after that week. Much more confidence in my own abilities was maybe the best part of it. And that’s what all pilots will tell you who did such a training.
I think we are getting into two separate discussions here. One involves the primary training, the other more confidence for the advanced pilot.
I don’t think that stall/spin/aeros training makes much sense in primary flight training for all the reasons already well enumerated here and elsewhere.
Further down the line it certainly makes sense, as you start to explore the envelope of the a/c you fly and it’s definitely a good idea to know where that envelope ends and if you get there, what to do! As I already posted earlier, some basic aerobatic training is on my to-do list in the near future.
In any case, my feeling is that the best aerobatic training in the world would not prevent the majority of stall/spin accidents, as they occur too close to the ground to be recovered from.
Flyer59 wrote:
It gives you a much better feeling for the airplane and it’s aerodynamics and dynamics.
Throwing around a Pitts or Extra or Zlin for five hours will give me exactly zero better feeling for the airplane I fly at work. Even less to the pilot of a Boeing or Airbus. We now have two accidents of Airbuses that were stalled into the ocean (Air France and Air Asia). Neither of them dropped a wing or spun or did anything that a Pitts or Extra or Zlin would have done if mishandled in such a way. These accidents did not happen because the pilots had no clue how to get out of a stall, but because they did not believe what their instruments showed them or because they got totally confused over contradicting warnings they got (like AF447 that had a stall warning and an overspeed warning at the same time). The only training that could have saved these flights would have been more ground training on systems and instruments and upset training in a simulator of the exact type they were flying. Not some aerobatic stuff during their PPL training 15 years before.
Sorry, but the airplane you fly for work is not really representative for this discussion. But really nobody can tell me that aerobatic training doesn’t produce better pilots, especially when you see how low the standard of many private pilots really is. Many really lack basic flying technique.
Flyer59 wrote:
Sorry, but the airplane you fly for work is not really representative for this discussion.
Unfortunately it is. Because both the NTSB recommendation and this new EASA draft aim at basic training (PPL level) and type specific training (airliner level). As an instructor and commercial pilot it will concern me in more than one way. Otherwise I wouldn’t really care.
Flyer59 wrote:
But really nobody can tell me that aerobatic training doesn’t produce better pilots,
The biggest part of the current generation of airliner pilots didn’t receive any aerobatic training at all. There must be in the order of ten thousand Airbus pilots out there. Exactly four were involved in stall accidents over 30+ years. To me, it looks as if the other 9.996 are excellent pilots and perfectly well suited for their job. How many training accidents would have occured if every single one of these ten thousand would have flown five hours of aerobatics? Personally, I knew four pilots who were killed doing aerobatics. I know zero pilots who were killed flying transport category aircraft. (But I know, this kind of mini-statistics proves nothing…)
But I know, this kind of mini-statistics proves nothing…
;-)
It’s a fantasy that most airline pilots are “excellent pilots”. They are only “excellent pilots” by statistics because the level of automation in every Boeing or Airbus is so high, and I really have that one from the source, which i cannot disclose here.
Basic aerobatic training is not dangerous. We are not talking about competition aerobatics or show flying.
