Originally Posted by
Denti
The mission title was spin awareness training. It was just a mission of spinning and getting out of spins. At first very early, later on fully developed spins after several turns, inverted spins and so on. At the end one should be able to get out of a spin at any time on a predefined heading. A few years earlier it was a full aerobatic training thereafter, but that was cut for cost reasons.
Oh, and it was and is a civilian airline program, although the training aircraft for spin training are shared with a military initial selection program. Come to think of it, the military used the bonanzas as well, don't know if they still do.
Since this is the "Private Flying" forum I do not think the experiences of a Military/Civilian professional flying training program is relevant to flying club PPL training.
In a perfect world everyone would get the level of training that these types of programs deliver, although it should be noted that it is preceded by an extensive aptitude testing program and that the students are invariably young and have the luxury of being able to concentrate full time on their training with minimal distractions.
For the average person learning to fly part time later in life with a full plate of responsibilities and with probably a low houred and inexperienced instructor, I believe a concentration on basic flying skills, including stall and incipient spin recognition and recovery is a better appraoch.
I firmly believe if a PPL student is being taught spinning, that is where the airplane passes through the most of first turn of the spin and
instead of recovering into spin controls are being maintained allowing the aircraft to enter a true spin, an aerobatic manoever with little relevance to PPL flying is being taught and IMO should not be.
However again after the PPL I highly encourage students take an introductory aerobatics course with a
fully trained aerobatic instructor where spins and other upsets will be thoughly explored.