Has been known :O

Fortunately I could just about see out of the bottom of the cloud so pulling the throttle was all that was necessary.

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.

Might be a misunderstanding, over here the term "abinitio" programs is usually used for airline sponsored abinitio training of its pilots, the normal way to enter the airline world since the last wolrd war. Yes it is the private flying forum, but the lines are quite often blurry especially as many of us who fly professionally also fly in their free time.

Anyway, as my first training was private aviation as well, albeit glider flying, I like the idea of spin awareness training during the initial part of it, right after stall training. It was back then a mandatory part of the syllabus as well. It wasn't for powered flight and I always wandered about the difference, but much of that was easily explained with the old moniker that those powered flight only pilots never really learned to fly well in the first place.

My understanding was that "ab initio" that is "from the beginning " was a universal term for initial pilot training and in the private flying context referred to training for the PPL. That is the sense I was using it.

I take your point about many professional pilots also being involved in private flying, and that is in fact the case for myself. My day job is flying a large T Prop airliner but I also own shares in two light aircraft and teach part time so I think I have an appreciation of both sides.

Just because an airline training program does something does not automatically mean it should be adopted at the flying club. For example most airline academies use 2 crew SOPs and CRM from the very first lesson. A great idea if your first post training airplane is an Airbus, not so usefull for renting that C 172 for your first post PPL flight.......