Originally Posted by
joshperry
If you care about this industry, you might want to direct your bile somewhere more productive than the people trying to make it something better everyday, taking their and their student's lives into their hands with subpar equipment harangued by regulation and the old guard. I think soon a lot of us are going to wake up to a disruption to aviation as big as spacex did to the fat and happy incumbent space industry.
Bile, sir?
Whoa, whoa, whoa there, big fella! I think that it's
you who's spewing the bile. Let's get a few things straight. 1) If a helicopter engine quits unexpectedly, and the pilot crashes and wrecks the ship but the people walk away...great! Good job, pat on the back, blah blah blah. But if that pilot is a CFI and he is about to demonstrate a maneuver in which he deliberately simulates an engine failure, then he damn well better be able to set the thing down successfully, without damage to the a/c and persons onboard. Period. 2) You can make all the excuses you want about how "the industry" or the particular operators discourage (or even disallow) full-down autos in training because of the increased risk. That's fine. But from a personal standpoint, a r/w CFI who is not proficient in touchdown autos has no business teaching autorotations to others. Your instructor didn't heroically
save your lives! He f'ed-up. If it were
my flight school and the guy just wrecked one of
my brand-new R-44's because he couldn't do a touchdown auto, he'd be out looking for another job. That's not bile; that's just the cold, hard facts of life (as Porter Wagoner sang).
Josh, I don't know what you expect out of the aviation industry. You seem frustrated and maybe even angry at what you perceive as the slow speed of adoption of some unspecified "new technology." You fantasize that there is a revolution possible for general aviation similar to what Elon has done for the space industry. Dream on, big boy. Yes, it is true that the FAA acts very slowly and conservatively...for a reason. They do not rush to approve new technology that would replace existing, proven technology. This is why the ancient C-172 you cited is pretty much the same basic airplane as a brand-new one off the assembly line today: It works. I'm not sure what Cessna could do to improve it that would meet with your approval. Perhaps you have some suggestions? On the r/w side, the Cabri isn't all that much more technologically advanced than an R-22, to be honest, except that it takes up more space in the hangar. Should we all be flying in turbine-powered trainers (R-66's, say)? That'd be great, but it would also put the cost of attaining a r/w certificate out of reach of most aspiring students. I'm telling you, man, the entire aviation industry eagerly awaits your suggestions as to how it can be improved at a cost that would work with the low-volume production levels of the various products. As Ross Perot once said, I'm all ears.