Dynamic Rollover said:
I wonder if the FAA's decision is related to this accident.
That was our local examiner who died in that one. I'd flown with him once or twice; a good guy and a good pilot. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that was partly why they've changed the requirement.
The other thing that relates is that a few years back the requirement for touchdowns was suspended for a while... What we were hearing on the East Coast is that it was lobbying by some of the California schools - they were claiming that their insurance companies were not allowing it. I suspect that if the rumor was even true, it was more about trying to reduce insurance rates than being told it wasn't allowed.
As Rotorgoat8 hints, the R22 can be a pretty difficult machine to stay current on touchdowns. I have about 2.5K in R22s but I haven't flown one in a few years, and I'm sure I'd have to work back up to proficiency after having flown higher inertia machines for quite a while now. The difference between a pretty good touchdown and a really bad one in an R22 can be just a couple feet of altitude when the RPM starts to run out.
I'm against the current change because I think the change is reasonable, but will be abused. I suspect flight instructor candidates will have a couple touchdowns demoed to them, and then will get to do one or two (with his/her instructor right there on the controls to prevent any problems) and then will be declared ready for checkride, i.e. without really the experience to do it by themselves.
I grant you that if you can get within 5 feet of the ground you're probably going to walk away from an autorotation, but you can mask a lot of errors during a power recovery... It's really the touchdown that shows you that you aren't cheating... that you in fact have enough energy/RPM to achieve a safe landing.
Obviously those of us lucky enough to be teaching in higher inertia machines will continue to teach touchdowns, but given the vast numbers of R22 trained instructors, it does worry me that this requirement is being changed.