Uncoordinated stall entries during instructional flights are common enough to justify the requirement that fixed-wing CFIs receive spin training. Its value for pilots who don’t teach is more debatable. While it improves understanding of the components of a spin and awareness of the situations where they’re most likely, inadvertent spins that end in accidents usually begin at altitudes too low for standard techniques to effect recovery.
The other drawback to “ordinary” spin training is one it shares with conventional stall practice: The setting bears little resemblance to typical accident scenarios.
What is useful for pilots at almost any level of experience is more comprehensive upset recovery training. Flying with an expert instructor in an aerobatic airplane enables the student to explore edges of the flight envelope that can’t safely be approached in Normal-category machines. In addition to spins—upright, progressive, inverted, and maybe even flat—there’s the opportunity to become familiar with all manner of aggravated and accelerated stalls in settings more similar to real-world hazards. Experiencing a nose-low stall at reduced power in a 50-degree bank sharpens one’s attention to attitude and coordination in the pattern.
Knowing that you can’t break the airplane or surprise the instructor reduces the level of stress. It may take more than one lesson, but the student can learn to remain calm and recover efficiently if the airplane departs controlled flight—say, rolled inverted by wake turbulence.
Thanks to the staff of Chesapeake, Virginia-based Prevailance Aerospace, more than a dozen of AOPA’s staff pilots recently benefited from this kind of training. They ranged from 100-hour private pilots to airline transport pilots who had given thousands of hours of instruction. All agreed that one hour flying an Extra 330 LX under the guidance of a retired Navy fighter pilot increased their confidence and improved their understanding of how the airplane moves in space, thereby boosting stick-and-rudder skills. Some longstanding fears of losing control were largely put to rest. The most frequently heard comment, however, was less clinical: It was almost indecently fun.
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