Just been reading through the "how long to solo" thread, and it made me wonder how well people are trained to cope if things go wrong. Two rare, but not very rare, scenarios:
You take off, turn crosswind and check the T's and P's - oil pressure is reading zero.
You are just about to call downwind when a landing aircraft bounces, lands on the nosewheel and comes to a halt blocking the main runway. You can still land on the other runway, but that has 12kts of crosswind, or you can divert.
To be really nasty, you could combine the two - you divert, but en-route you notice the oil pressure dropping. Not your lucky day...
Could you cope? I had this conversation with an instructor - he went solo after 6 hours, had to go around from his first approach and admitted that he would not have had a chance if something had gone wrong. As a result, he wasn't going to send anyone solo unless they could deal with the above problems. I had 10 hours before I even did a circuit (including overhead joins, how to find a nearby aerodrome, and basic PFLs - and although I doubt that I could have done a good PFL it was better than nothing) and before solo (18 hours) I had done plenty of EFATOs (and EFs on short final) and a couple of glide and crosswind circuits. Could I have coped? Maybe. Thought so at the time, less certain now...
