The average PPL in the UK takes around 55 hours to complete, so at typical C152 rates, throw in books, medical, licensing fees and GFT an estimate of £10k is conservative, but fair.
Given the chronic persistence of low level/stall manoeuvring fatal accidents, and VMC into IMC fatal accidents, the current PPL syllabus arguably needs bolstering.
Taking the first type accident, the two hours of logged stall exercises, and the low level precautionary landing exercise, don’t seem to be sufficient to reduce this source of fatalities, which apparently is more prevalent in the UK than the US. This is despite the bulk of the GA fleet being spin resistant and having benign stall characteristics. Perhaps this may be a reason, training aircraft being too tame? However society may not be ready to accept the training fatality rates of the WW2 Harvard, which consequently did promote high alertness to low level stall, spin accidents.
The VMC to IMC accident set seems to be a lack of CRM type training at the PPL level. Clearly as confidence builds the risk appetite for low level scud running increases to the point where an unacceptable exposure to fatal accident risk materialises. Short of going straight to the IMC rating, which has a proven safety improvement, the current standard of exhibiting a steady 180 degree reversal on instruments is also inadequate.
Not sure what a strengthening of training in these areas would cost, and arguably the FI skill set on stall/spin has atrophied as spin awareness and training is not required for a PPL, and the optional spin demo in a C152 is unlikely to demonstrate stable autorotation. FIs ideally should be familiar with spinning to the same level of knowledge of service instructors, or basic aerobatic instructors, which again would require more investment in training.
Unfortunately I think many people do PPLs to a budget. I did mine to a safety standard when I could barely afford each weekend’s lessons. I wanted to fly well and be safe for my family. I was fine VFR then realised quickly that after a small scare in low cloud in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney I needed an IR. It took a while but I did it.
Fully developed spinning is pointless and an unnecessary training risk at ab-initio PPL level – if a PPL ends up in a full spin, at average GA heights by the time they have even thought about a recovery it will be too late. Stall recognition, prevention and confident standard stall recovery action should be the focus.
A “high end” PPL school is all well and good, but the PPL is all about general handling and very basic navigation. Doing a one hour stalling exercise in the local area / circuits / PFLs is basically the same whether you do it in a PA28 or a Cirrus, just one is cost wise far more – bit like learning to drive in an BMW M5 compared to a Ford Fiesta.
I would recommend nice spec training aircraft with good EFIS and GPS integration – see Tecnam P2008JC for example which I test flew recently – get people PPL course done and tested efficiently, then have higher end aircraft in the fleet and put people straight onto an ‘Advanced PPL’ course.
Balliol wrote:
Doing a one hour stalling exercise in the local area / circuits / PFLs is basically the same whether you do it in a PA28 or a Cirrus
I wouldn’t say doing circuits in a PA28 or a Cirrus is the same. You have different speeds, different handling and a different view out of the cockpit. If the student after his PPL intends to fly a Cirrus, I think he will be better prepared having done the circuits on the Cirrus to begin with.
But yes, a new Tecnam would probably attract more students than an old C152, even though I would prefer the latter.
Balliol you are correct that the modest two hours stall training, most of which is to first indication of stall, combined with benign stall characteristics, have had a dramatic reduction in training fatalities. However stall accidents/low level manoeuvring is the main killer still for PPLs so the training is coming up short.
Not completely sure if spin training would improve this, my own view is that an FI should be tested to long brief standard on spinning and have mandatory spin recovery at their renewal (ie they should fly with an examiner and not take a seminar). The understanding of spin departures, with spins entered from different manoeuvres creates a higher level of risk awareness, and my thesis is that pilots who have received comprehensive spin training are less likely, for a variety of reasons, to suffer a low level stall spin event. It is not about recovering from a low level incipient spin, it is about having thorough knowledge gained through briefing and practice at a safe altitude of how not to get into the accident scenario in the first place.
The services require spin training, Part 121 operations will require advanced upset recovery training, including spinning (and possibly cross over spin recognition and recovery), Lufthansa requires spin training, gliding clubs require spin training, etc
I think he will be better prepared having done the circuits on the Cirrus to begin with.
It would probably save money and make a safer Cirrus pilot because the average new PPL will take as long to be proficient in an SR22 after doing a PPL in a C152 as it took to do the PPL in the first place. Yes, it took me only 10hrs to be signed off in the TB20 but that’s not what I am talking about…
When my younger son started a PPL I got him doing it in a PA28-161, even though it costs a bit more. When you get the PPL that way, you already have great currency in the plane you might be flying to places.
But yes, a new Tecnam would probably attract more students than an old C152, even though I would prefer the latter.
Very much so and if every school was operating a modern plane, I might not have started this thread 
Peter wrote:
I think a 6k PPL is possible only at a place which has almost zero landing fees, and maybe volunteer or very low paid instructors.
Actually the instructors at that particular school are the highest paid in the area but that still makes it far from well paid.
Rwy20 wrote:
By the way, if you are in Paris and looking to do an IR, I recommend the ACOP at Toussus. They’ve been doing IR instruction for ages.Thanks Rwy20. I met Christine last week. I really liked her style: transparent, simple, volunteer spirit. For TK she convinced me to go for ATPL, not CB-IR.
I don’t have first hand experience with ATPL theory, since I only did the CBIR TK. Second-hand, I have heard that most of the young wannabes in the ATPL schools count entirely on the question banks, and treat this as a stupid memorization exercise. So anything you do “on site”, you will be sitting in a classroom full of unmotivated teenagers joking around and mostly not interested in the content of the course. I would try to minimize this as much as possible, by choosing a small school where the on site instruction (required by regulations) is one-on-one, if ever possible, and by choosing a distance learning course.
As to the books, the quality in France often seems to be mediocre at best and the schools steal the content from one another. I would use a school that uses standard books and not their own, but that would probably mean doing it in English (don’t know if that is a problem for you).
So apart from that, obviously I don’t have experience with or an opinion about that particular course provider/ATO either.
Is the ATPL question bank common across all EASA countries? Ie. if I go the ATPL TK route when doing the IR and I do that in Poland, are the question banks still valid?
