Aerial Forum

John Smith

Call that Instruction?

When I left the forces, some thirty years ago, I started instructing at a civilian school in the UK, a common practice in schools of the time which had mostly ex-forces instructors. Then after a few years I went into another aviation job, for about twenty years. I have now returned to instructing, and what a shock that has been. My first impression was that standards are so low as to be underground, and this impression has not changed with closer examination.

Firstly, it seems that almost no instructors are 'prepared' to teach engine-off landings, that is to full touch-down. A few individual instructors and examiners tell me they do, but far more PPL(H)s tell me they have not done a single engine-off in their whole training, and some have not even done an autorotation to a hover recovery, their instructors having done all the autos to a go-around. That they do not even do engine-off landings in a test I find almost unforgivable, even more so when I am told that this is no longer required in a test! God forbid that any pilot so ignorant should have an engine actually...