PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Engine offs to the ground
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Old 21st Sep 2007, 06:14
  #82 (permalink)  
puntosaurus
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I had an ex Navy instructor in the early nineties who was nuts about autos to the ground, and his enthusiasm eventually rubbed off on me. About four years after I qualified he had his sixth genuine engine problem (first since the navy) in an R22 on a recovery from practise auto away from the field. Because it wasn't the nice smooth grass of the airfield, he tipped it over on landing, wrecked the machine but walked away with his student. The point there is that I would have backed him over anyone to land intact, but even he couldn't do it on a less than perfect surface.

The next point is that no matter how well trained the PPL is, I can't believe that anyone on this forum would recommend that PPLs practise EOLs on their own after qualification. In any case, no school would ever allow self fly hirers to do that. No matter how well greased the skills are at qualification, things will quickly get rusty. I reckon that the chances of a 1-300hr PPL pulling off an EOL away from an airfield without damaging the machine are less than 10%, even though the chances of walking away would probably be well in excess of 90%.

So let's get real here and lose some of the testosterone. We're training people for a vanishingly small probability event, the likely end point of which is a wrecked machine but safe passengers. Therefore I suggest that a sensible compromise is the approach we take at our school.
By our own (ie the instructors) choice only the head of training does EOLs, and he takes students who are proficient at hover recoveries for a concentrated session of full down autos before the first solo. This additionally serves as a very handy progress and standardisation check and quality control point.

Because he does all the EOLs he is very proficient and current, but he still has his fair share of heart attacks and some (thankfully minor) machine damage. Liability of the school and the instructors is managed, and the students are 'appropriately' trained. He then picks up EOLs again in the pre-GFT revision sessions, and post qualification in each LPC.

I'd like to do EOLs myself more often, but I don't want the liability, and if I'm honest with myself it's the reputational liability more than the financial which bothers me. It's a very small industry.