safety pilot course?
 

not heard of these before, are they widespread?

Safety Pilot Course

I think they may be stretching the term "safety" pretty much to the limits, there.

I particularly liked

Stall awareness

and

An introduction to take-off and landing.

:eek:

lol,

everythings a business suppose..

I think this course looks to be one of the better I have seen.

I've produced my own safety 'course' for anyone who flies with me on a regular basis, and the Fenland course seems likely to cover the requirements which are:

1. retain control of the aircraft
2. know how to call for help
3. be able to follow instructions

One of the things I train my regular passengers to do in the event of my incapacitation is to fly between two points along a line feature, turing right at each end point while they call for help. What does the forum think if this as an idea? My rationale is that:

• it is relatively easy to do
• it stops them moving out of radio range of the station I was last talking to
• it stops them entering controlled airspace (probably)
• it makes them easier to find and identify

My 'course' includes how to change radio frequencies and how to set 7700 on the transponder.

tp

Never let the facts get in the way of a good business proposition?
 

Just out of curiosity, how many cases of pilot incapacitation have there been in, say, the last 5 years which have led to pax fatalities/injuries in GA aircraft?

It's not that I particularly begrudge cash-strapped flying clubs earning a few quid, but what are the actual risks?

ryanair could start something similar in case the crew get knocked out...

I mean really im not sure if there is a need for it..

There definitely is a small niche market for this. It's for the significant others, and regular passengers of elderly pilots. Even if there's no actual statistics about fatal accidents resulting from pilot incapacitation, I know quite a few pilots and passengers thinking about this scenario.

A passenger who has had a little training in
- Calling for help (radio, transponder usage)
- Follow instructions (vectors)
- Land the plane in such a way that the occupants are not more sick than they already were
is far more likely to enjoy a flight, without the worry 'what would I do if'.

Plus such a course provides a fairly good basis for the pilot to slowly give the passenger more significant tasks in flying the plane.

If I had a non-pilot passenger who flew with me regularly, I would at some point suggest that he/she would do exactly such a course. Although I think the Fenland course, at 7 to 10 hours, is a bit too much. I would say one or two hours would be enough, initially.

Fighting chance....
 

Mrs Duchess has been shown the basics....and would probably make a good stab at getting the thing back on the ground. Don't care what the statistics say (and there was a case in the US not too long ago) it's only fair that she has a fighting chance to save herself, Duchess The Younger and Duchess Junior.

Negligible.

There have been accidents, usually with no passengers present, where pilot incapacitation (a heart attack) has been suspected once other explanations have been eliminated. But it's totally just conjecture.

In the USA, where they have a vastly bigger pilot population, much of it flying under a medical which has no ECG, the data shows the risk is negligible.

I'm curious as to what they mean by an "introduction" to landing. I reckon that out of all the useful things a non-pilot with a dead skipper could learn, landing would be top of the list.
Doesn't matter how good your level flying is, if you can't land the bugger, you've got a problem......

"PS I might add that it has very little to do with actual risk and everything to do with PAX confidence, no?"


I'd entirely agree with that, hence my post asking what the real risk is, because as pilots we should be dealing with facts not fiction. If a so-called 'safety pilot course' allows PAX to get more out of flying that's good - if it leads them to becoming pilots then that's brilliant - however it still has nothing to do with safety!

If you imagine how distracted and distraught a qualified pilot would be if they had to fly their expiring spouse to safety, I'm doubtful that the outcome would be a happy one if the roles were reversed with the PAX having very few hours and no recency.

Perhaps I'm rather tired of businesses manufacturing 'problems' in order to sell you their 'solutions'? :*

I think this kind of training is a very good idea.

However I doubt that leaving your "other half" with an instructor is necessarily the best way to go about it.

Firstly, if you own a plane and fly it regularly, unless it is a dead common type you will know more about it than any instructor you are likely to find. Do you really want some ATPL hour builder with 200hrs climbing into your plane? Most I have met know nothing about engine management, for a start.

Secondly, the conventional PPL training methods are sometimes very stressfull (deliberately so) and not ideal for teaching somebody how to fly a plane and land it safely. The very last thing I would teach somebody is how to fly a circuit, for example. What they should know is how to engage and operate the autopilot, how to call up ATC, set 7700, etc. And how to do a landing on a nice big long runway. For a lot of that stuff, one can produce a checklist.

I don't think that engine management is on the priority list though.

The course seems to be loosely based on the AOPA pinch hitter course and the main objective seems to be (where the pilot is incapacitated) :

Don't panic
Speak to somebody on the radio
Point the a/c where they tell you
Land it without injury

SWMBO is already pretty much there with operating the radio, transponder, straight and level, and simple turns so she's looking at doing the course for the confidence. I see it as stage 1 towards her NPPL / PPL :E

before I saw sence, I started training to fly a R22 heli. long story, however
had I continued with it, then hired one, the dual controls are removed on the pax side, can you just imagine the panic, should P1 have a problem ! not that
anyone without training could even attempt to wrestle a heli

The funniest thing is that The Witch (my ex) extremely aggressively mandates a co-pilot when I take my son(s) up, but when she took them on a holiday they went up in a single pilot single-controls heli, around the G Canyon :)

My 12 year old son can fly (visual and instrument, incl an ILS by hand), navigate, and land the TB20 just fine. Whether he could do it under real stress is anybody's guess but that argument would apply to anybody else too.

The point I was trying to make is that IMHO the best way to teach somebody to "recover" a plane is probably not how you would teach somebody to get the piece of paper that makes it legal to do it.

I have a vague recollection of someone in the Bristol area landing an aeroplane after the pilot was incapacitated. Must be ten years or more ago. Anyone remember this?

I would have thought the introduction to "Take offs" is little unecessary!

Except that it can be a good confidence booster if someone is a little nervous.