@Telsboy: I was stressed once. I went to my GP thinking he might prescribe sleeping aids or something but after diagnosing my symptoms he said “you’re stressed and I am signing you off work for 2 weeks starting today”. This hit me like a slap on the face, because I didn’t feel stressed at all, I just couldn’t seem to do my job as well as I usually did and didn’t know what was wrong with me. (A lot of stuff was going on at home).
Very interesting that spinning and MEP flying and engine failure in a twin on go-around has been dropped from the ATPL. That’s the problem right there. We did both in real aircraft, not in a SiM. Ditto unusual attitude recovery. It prepares you for bad situations and gives you the confidence that you can deal with them and recover safely. It also would weed out any cadets who were truly scared by flying.
Spinning always made me uncomfortable, but only like on a roller coaster where you get very very uncomfortable for a moment when it changes direction or plummets, but you know deep down that you are perfectly safe. Spinning training in a Zlin, as we did, was worse, since it seemed to flip over on to its back when entering the spin. However, a few years later, I inadvertently span a Shed - real one, not a SIM - an empty training flight with no passengers (!) - and because of my spin training, I was not scared, just momentarily WTF? and looking out of the windscreen at fields rotating below us. Then; right, spin recovery, here we go.
Towards the end of the ATPL course, we went up in the Zlin again and flew inverted. That was very weird.
But now, I am not worried by anything the atmosphere throws at me. I know I can fly it or get away from it.
How can a cadet with no actual spin experience or actual real twin prop engine failure experience, possibly have that deep confidence going straight from an SEP onto an Airbus or Boeing?