Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Spin Training
Is it a good idea?
When I went through primary flight training in 1968, spin training was still a standard part of the curriculum. But some time after that, the FAA (presumably at the industry's urging) dropped that requirement and changed the focus to teaching how to avoid spins.
Apparently, spin training was scaring away some customers (student pilots), and in an effort to make flying less scary so more students would continue their training and actually get a private pilot license, most flight schools stopped teaching spins.
The result is a whole generation of pilots (and many flight instructors!) who have never spun an airplane and who find the prospect of entering a spin quite terrifying. And it's no wonder, because if you don't know how to recover from a spin, accidentally entering one is usually fatal.
On the other hand, if you are familiar with spins and how to recover from them, they can be a lot of fun. In my student pilot days I spent much more of my solo time having fun doing spins than I spent on the maneuvers required to pass the check ride. As a result, I had over 100 flight hours by the time my instructor thought I was ready.
I'm not sorry I did it that way. While it was a little embarrassing to take so many hours to get a license, I had a lot of fun along the way, and for me, having fun is the whole purpose of flying. After I got my license, I gave a lot of my college friends rides in rented Citabrias, and most of those rides included at least one three-turn spin. By the time I met my wife, I already had my Aeronca Champ, and many of her early rides in the Champ included spins, just for the fun of it.
But learning spins is also about safety. Stall/spin accidents are usually fatal, so becoming familiar with spin entry and recovery can save your life. Although each and every fatal stall/spin accident represents a failure of the flight training program, scaring away lots of customers with spin training might also represent a failure by ruining the training industry and shrinking the pilot base, possibly making flying less accessible to all of us.
So which is better, killing some pilots by not teaching them spin recovery, or scaring away a lot of students, thereby leaving us with an ever shrinking number of pilots? Is there some other alternative?
One possible alternative is to get better at teaching how to avoid spins. The Art of Avoiding Ground Loops recommends training a suite of three reflexes which provide three levels of protection against spins. The get the nose down elevator reflex prevents getting into a potential departure stall situation in the first place. The wing unloading elevator reflex unloads the wing to prevent any incipient stall from progressing to the point where a wing drops. The wing leveling rudder reflex prevents an actual wing drop stall from turning into a spin. These reflexes can only be trained one way - by lots of repetition.
I still think it is best to learn spin entry and recovery, but as a bare minimum all pilots should develop those three reflexes. What do you think? Leave comments on the Contact page.
