locnut I rarely take anything personally...so I hope you wan't take what I am about to write personally.
I found your entire first paragraph terrifying reading...particularly this bit.
The point I make is that in a real life engine failure on a hot day at MTOW I doubt that many instructors could honestly say that their students would definitely pull it off.
I can tell you without fear of contradiction that
every person I ever signed out on any aircraft, including twins, was to a standard that would allow
me to happily put my famly in the aeroplane with them...or they
were not released. All my peers who were trainers and all the trainers who trained us took a similar view.
With good quality training from experienced trainers the % of pilots not capable of meeting that criteria was tiny...but there were a few.
It doesn't happen often but there are pilots who should not be licenced as there are drivers who should not be licenced.
As for decision points...well benouli covered it in great detail...I used to sit down and do similar calculations for a worse case situation and then I always knew I could expect at least that much performance anywhere that was less limiting...true bush strips aside...sometimes in PNG you were committed by the time you were 3 cone markers from brakes released...on a 350m/15% sloped wet grass airstrip there is just no way you will stop once you have 40kts indicating...luckily most of those style strips had falling terrain off the end...often a sheer cliff...and you could just charge off the cliff at less than flying speed and pick it up in a dive....perhaps retarding the good engine just enough to maintain directional control. Often in PNG , I did 99% of my piston single and twin time there, if you had an engine failure before 1000' above strip level you were simply going to crash and that was that...so we gave a lot of thought about how we would crash and where we would crash at specific strips...or at least I did and most of my mates did...you could virtually always cobble something survivable together.
That may well be part of the problem in Australia...crashes are so rare no one gives serious consideration to how they will do it...in PNG they were anything but rare so we gave the 'how' of crashing in various scenarios a lot of thought...and were better equiped to cope as a result.
I would go as far as to say that if you arrive
under control virtually anything is survivable...water is a piece of piss. It is just a mindset.
EDIT:
Benouli I feel your pain...when I was given a Cessna Citation 560 Ultra endorsment years ago the CASA approved chap told me "If you lose an engine on takeoff retard the good engine 'a bit'."
I held, at that time, every check and training approval possible for the Falcon 200 corporate jet and had been trained initially on jets in the airlines (Air Niugini) where the required standards were high indeed.
"umm..why would I do that"
"because this aeroplane has really powerful engines and you might lose control and roll upside down"
"umm...this aeroplane is transport category certified under part 25"
"Yep"
"So V1 can't be less than VMCg or more than Vr which itself can't be less than 1.05 VMCa. V2 is at least 1.1 VMCa and 1.2 Vs...you fly those numbers and you cannot lose control"
He looked a bit like a dog watching TV..."well...if you lose one at V1 pull the other one back a bit"
"No..I won't be doing that".
Terribly nice fella...but some tw@t at CASA had listened to that drivel and said nothing.
What hope for an appropriate standard at the bottom rungs?
Many, many years ago a very experienced pilot showed me a VMCa loss of control at altitude in a Baron...it was eye watering to say the least but it wasn't a VMCa loss of control it was an assy stall. I said 'cool' let me have a go...and limited rudder input appropriately so at some speed around the published VMCa the aircraft just gently yawed away until I recovered.
The chap was flumoxed...I explained that at our present altitude the engines were producing so little power that VMCa was below stall speed...to his great credit he took it on board and, I think, stopped demoing assy stalls.
