New Chum – Old story.
I’m certain that this sort of tale is not uncommon. There I was sat at the bar with time to kill, waiting for my flight to be called. Young fellahin parked on the next stool and, as you do, got chatting, turns out he was a pilot. Heading home on a break and glad of it, he’d had a catastrophic engine failure in the single he was flying. It all turned out very well indeed; we did discuss ‘luck' – unlucky that he was only a few miles short of a very remote airfield, but where it happened was, luckily, in a good place for a forced landing. So much for fate.
But what of ‘training for such a situation? There was oil all over the windscreen which reduced forward visibility to practically zero and smoke in the cabin, tough stuff for a young dog to chew. I asked about the forced landing training he’d had, sure enough two, I believe essential elements had never been raised during that time.
The reliability of aircraft engines is fantastic to the point where a sudden, catastrophic failure is indeed a very rare event – but they happen. Back in the day my first instructor had learned his trade when failures were ‘uncommon’ but always a consideration; he passed that knowledge along to me as part and parcel of routine learning. Part of this involved taking away forward visibility – simulated oil on the windscreen. This followed by using the DV (side) windows to evacuate smoke, (noise) and learning to arrange a glide path using this technique; additionally how to ‘side-slip’ the aircraft to get a better appreciation of the landing area and obstacles which may be avoided, early in the piece, so as not to further spoil a bad day.
I asked the young fellah about this stuff – a blank stare, followed by a small light going on was the result. Never heard of nor trained in that level of operational safety. It seems that despite to unbelievable amount of ‘tick-a-box’ training CASA have foisted on industry through Part 61, there are many gaping holes in the CASA slice of training cheese. There are many examples of where the training regime is divorced from the realities of operational flying, this is but one.
Part 61 does not ensure world best training, it is however an example of an amateurish attempt to create the impression that the writer actually understands the realities of aircraft operations and how they should be managed. No one was hurt this time, but it leaves one wondering when neat, tidy, compliant ‘tick-a-box’ training will be the radical cause of an accident.
Aye, all’s well that ends well; no bodies to recover – this time.
Toot – toot.
I’m certain that this sort of tale is not uncommon. There I was sat at the bar with time to kill, waiting for my flight to be called. Young fellahin parked on the next stool and, as you do, got chatting, turns out he was a pilot. Heading home on a break and glad of it, he’d had a catastrophic engine failure in the single he was flying. It all turned out very well indeed; we did discuss ‘luck' – unlucky that he was only a few miles short of a very remote airfield, but where it happened was, luckily, in a good place for a forced landing. So much for fate.
But what of ‘training for such a situation? There was oil all over the windscreen which reduced forward visibility to practically zero and smoke in the cabin, tough stuff for a young dog to chew. I asked about the forced landing training he’d had, sure enough two, I believe essential elements had never been raised during that time.
The reliability of aircraft engines is fantastic to the point where a sudden, catastrophic failure is indeed a very rare event – but they happen. Back in the day my first instructor had learned his trade when failures were ‘uncommon’ but always a consideration; he passed that knowledge along to me as part and parcel of routine learning. Part of this involved taking away forward visibility – simulated oil on the windscreen. This followed by using the DV (side) windows to evacuate smoke, (noise) and learning to arrange a glide path using this technique; additionally how to ‘side-slip’ the aircraft to get a better appreciation of the landing area and obstacles which may be avoided, early in the piece, so as not to further spoil a bad day.
I asked the young fellah about this stuff – a blank stare, followed by a small light going on was the result. Never heard of nor trained in that level of operational safety. It seems that despite to unbelievable amount of ‘tick-a-box’ training CASA have foisted on industry through Part 61, there are many gaping holes in the CASA slice of training cheese. There are many examples of where the training regime is divorced from the realities of operational flying, this is but one.
Part 61 does not ensure world best training, it is however an example of an amateurish attempt to create the impression that the writer actually understands the realities of aircraft operations and how they should be managed. No one was hurt this time, but it leaves one wondering when neat, tidy, compliant ‘tick-a-box’ training will be the radical cause of an accident.
Aye, all’s well that ends well; no bodies to recover – this time.
Toot – toot.