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LAPL/PPL in a taildragger? Is it extinct?

Do you know of any flight school in EASA-land that conducts basic flight training in taildraggers? From 0 hours to skill test?

Why is it so rare?

  • Considered more difficult?
  • “Way of the past”?
  • Instructors prefer Cherokees and Cessnas for their working environment?

I think that there are many advantages that comes with flight training in taildraggers.

  • Stick and rudder.
  • Focus on the flying and basic aeronautical skills
  • Often cheap to operate
  • Safe to operate from small strips
ESSZ, Sweden

Indeed, rare these days.

There used to be a PPL school at Berlin-Tempelhof (until 2008, that is…) which offered PPL training in a Super Cub.

Many aeroclubs in Germany have Super Cubs, too, but I guess many don’t do PPL training on them. Maybe these aircraft aren’t even on their ATO approval.

Some French aeroclubs have Jodels. Some British aeroclubs even have Chipmunks (expensive).

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Fly310 wrote:

Why is it so rare?

A number of reasons come to mind (I can only talk about commercial flying instruction, not flying clubs):

- Taildraggers don’t like hard runways much. All the other trainers on the fleet don’t like (soaked) grass runways. So the airfield where the FTO is based needs both types of runways. Rare.
- Most taildraggers are vintage types made from wood and fabric. They absolutely need to be hangared. Hangar space is rare and expensive around here. A C152 doesn’t need a hangar.
- Wood and fabric planes are maintenance intensive compared to metal ones and need specialised skill for that. Difficult to find, lengthy and expensive.
- Most taildraggers are vintage types. Spare parts are a lot more difficult to find or must be fabricated. This results in a lot of ground time which is not good for a commercial school.
- Instructors with taildragger experience are becoming an extinct species. Many of them got their medical pulled sometime after their 85th birthday…
- Taildraggers, especially in the training environment, have a long history of ground mishaps of all sorts. Not good for the reputation of a flying school and not good for the financial well being of that school either.

EDDS - Stuttgart

Good topic. I have flown both tail staggers and tricycle for all my flying life. I learnt, and got my PPL on a Chipmunk, which I owned. Even in 1996, I could only get a freelance instructor to teach me. No clubs, certainly in my locale, would entertain it, nor offered. Still the case, but tail dragger instructors are like hens teeth. A number of reasons I would offer. A lot of potential tail dragger LAPL/PPL pilots have gone Ultralight, or certainly Permit, lightweight. The skills required to teach are being slowly eroded. I also think it is perceived as a bit eccentric, pilots covered from head to foot in oil, grass cuttings etc. today’s generation look to glass, and GPS gizmo to get them safely from A to B. In comfort I may add. Comfort and tail dragger aircraft generally don’t compute. Flying my tail dragger still puts an enormous smile on my face, and the sense of satisfaction I get putting down through trees to a difficult grass strip, well,nothing beats it.

Last Edited by BeechBaby at 21 May 11:18
Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

Could it also be so that introduction of EASA phased out a lot of these taildraggers for flight training?

I think that some member states does not allow flight training in Annex II aircraft for EASA licenses.

However, I guess that the phase out started decades before EASA.

Last Edited by Fly310 at 21 May 11:50
ESSZ, Sweden

I think that to train ab initio in Annex 2 you need to own it, which limits it to people who have a clear vision of their requirements, and money.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Fly310 wrote:

However, I guess that the phase out started decades before EASA.

The phase out must have begun when Cessna started to mass-produce the C152

EDDS - Stuttgart

what_next wrote:

Instructors with taildragger experience are becoming an extinct species

Instructors with good taildragger experience are becoming extinct is more precise. Many instructors consider a taildragger dangerous, and it is my humble opinion that the reason is they never properly learned how to fly taildragger themselves, or had difficulties learning it, so they feel insecure when landing a tildragger. I’m not saying a tildragger is not potentially more difficult than a nose wheel aircraft, particularly on hard surface. A taildragger is physically unstable in yaw with the main wheels on the ground. It’s just that some people have no problems being their own “artificial stability system”, while others never seem to fully “get” it for some reason. The same “skill” is needed for ski jumping, moto-cross, rally driving and so on, only you need more of it.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

BeechBaby wrote:

Still the case, but tail dragger instructors are like hens’ teeth

Well, in the UK, one couldn’t do better than join the Light Aircraft Association, and enroll on one of their coaching courses. . Annual membership" is modest, the courses extremely good value and the instruction, in our group’s experience, is generally superb. In addition, some instructors, some retired from a career’s flying (RAF and civil), freelance for reimbursement of expenses – occasionally for their own aircraft’s fuel to visit you…..

It’s a world away from the routine GA scene.

Last Edited by 2greens1red at 21 May 13:18
Swanborough Farm (UK), Shoreham EGKA, Soysambu (Kenya), Kenya

It tends to be by appointment only. The drop out rate is also quite high so economically schools prefer tri cycle aircraft as it’s easier to advance on these. The PPL requires both some instrument flying and radio navigation, and most Super Cubs are not equipped to cover all aspects of the training.

The Super Cub has plentiful spares support which is also cheap, hence being ubiquitous in the role. It is a very benign tail wheel trainer and the bungee chord under carriage allows you to flatter yourself, where another type might be stricter in producing a bouncer landing.

In South America some schools would get the student to solo standard in a PA-11 or PA-18-90, and then carry on with a 152 for cross country exercises etc.

I can think of several airfields in the UK with experienced tail wheel instructors, and tail dragger instructors, where most of the PPL syllabus would be covered in a tail wheel aircraft: Andrewsfield, Headcorn, Cambridge, Clacton, Stapleford, and in Ireland, Weston. The demography of the instructors might not be eighty plus, but most qualify for bus passes.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom
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