How it all happened
Hi Chuck.
In the UK this whole situation came about by accident. This is how it happened to the best of my recollection. I learned to fly in 1960. At that time the standard aircraft types in UK flying clubs were the Tiger Moth and the Auster. The Tigers were WWII government surplus and most of the Austers were civilianised versions of Army artillery spotters built early post-war usually about 1947. A few Chipmunks were beginning to be sold off to the clubs by the military, but where available these cost twice as much to hire. All these aircraft had to be FLOWN.
We flew non-radio in much simpler airspace than today but you had to be able to navigate because if you got really lost you had to land out. Communication on the ground was by Aldis lamp and in the air you really did look at the signals area before landing at a strange aerodrome. Instruction was very RAF influenced; (most instructors were ex-military). For example normal landing approaches then were all glide approaches and you had to learn both three point and wheeler landings. You also had to learn actual spin recovery; not just spin avoidance. You had to learn to swing a prop because the Austers and Tigers had no self-starters.
After getting my PPL I gave up flying temporarily while I finished college. I figured that after qualifying I would have a much higher salary and would be able to afford much more flying.
Apparently, during my absence, there was some kind of crisis apparently to do with the deterioration of the casein glues used to construct wood framed aircraft. They all had either to be completely stripped and rebuilt or else scrapped, (which is probably why there are so few of them around now). Most clubs scrapped their fleets and re-equipped. However there were no new aircraft then available from de Havilland, Miles or Auster. Companies on mainland Europe were still only just recovering from the war, so the only other sources were the two 'big daddies' in the States.
When I came back to flying a mere two years later all the Tigers and Austers had gone and been replaced by Piper Pa 22 Colts, Pa28 Cherokees and Cessna 150s. (I don't remember seeing any C172s but a few French Rallyes appeared after a year or so). The cost of hire had trebled or quadrupled (I forget which). I did a limited amount of flying just to keep my licence valid. But now powered approaches were the norm. Spinning was out.
I went from club to club looking for a better deal. One place I went to was a 'Cessna flight centre'. There you learned your theory from recorded lessons played on some sort of early video player. I picked up a brochure and was horrified. The whole thing had been written in language that suggested that flying an aeroplane was no different from driving a car. To give some idea of the sort of language used, it went something like this. 'When you're flying along if you want to turn left, why- you just turn the wheel - just like a car'.
It seems that at that time the American light aircraft industry was trying to persuade affluent American families (who already had one or more family cars) to buy a family aeroplane. So aircraft cabins had to be as much like a family saloon as possible and the handling demands of the aircraft had to be 'dumbed down' so as to make it more likely that 'Daddy' would be able to fly it without killing everybody or making a fool of himself.
It should be pointed out also that these aircraft were designed to fly in American conditions, (i.e. cheap fuel and long flying legs). So these aircraft were heavy on fuel and had control yokes rather than columns so that they would be more comfortable flying a leg of perhaps 500 nm. (In the UK we rarely fly even 100nm in a single leg). The cost of aircraft purchase and spares was swingeing having regard to the very poor dollar/pound conversion rate post war. Fewer young people began to present themselves for training. Private flying in the UK became the province of the affluent middle aged man who needed a new bird-puller or an alternative passtime to golf.
This meant that for the next 40 years British clubs were now largely equipped with un-spinnable and in some cases unstallable (Rallye) aircraft. Ex-military instructors were gradually replaced by civilian trained instructors who had learned on Pipers and Cessnas, so the whole question of whether spinning or even side-slipping needed to be taught became moot points.
In some ways, learning to fly has become much harder. Learning to handle radio while flying adds a great deal to the difficulty and you have to fly in complex airspace here in the South of England especially. I personally believe that a really good basic training aircraft should not have a landing approach speed much above 60kts: just about all the present types in use far exceed this and this adds to the difficulty.
But overall I don't think it can be denied that the requirements for aircraft handling have been lessened. This probably doesn't matter during an ordinary uneventful flight. It only matters when things start going badly wrong and your hard flying skills are the difference between driving home and being stretchered to hospital or the mortuary.
Well those are my thoughts.
BP.