I can think of a few incidents along the way that I cant see how they could have been prevented. For example, a complete engine failure on almost brand new aircraft is difficult to forsee or prevent. I think Timothy is right in that probably the most important lesson I have taken from flying with very experienced pilots (and for that matter as true in many other aspects of life) is that having recognised you have big problem, chances are in the vast majority of situations it isnt immediately life threatening, so take time out to work the problem, consider the options, apply a few bag fulls of logic. The instant and life threatening ones will almost certainly result in your best trained or knee jerk reactions. For example an engine failure in a twin in the climb out requires sufficiently well rehearsed training to take the correct action in the correct order without too much thinking time, although even then those actions had better include suffiicient thinking time to ensure that you shut down the correct engine.
Timothy wrote:
Really though?
I don’t disagree. But given the option of flying 12 h or doing some scenario (whatever that may be), I’m not so sure the scenario would be better. For professional pilots it would be an addition to a very strict and procedure based type of everyday flying. The underlying realities are very different. You cannot simply say what’s good for airline pilots are also good for low time GA pilots IMO, as any additional training and similar would mean less hours in the plane as PIC. There aren’t many hours to start with.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
having recognised you have big problem, chances are in the vast majority of situations it isnt immediately life threatening, so take time out to work the problem
Indeed. My favourite (true) example is that I got an engine failure in an SEP (TB9) about halfway between Southampton and Guernsey. My then girlfriend was naturally very disturbed, and I said to her “Look, we are at 10,000’, descending at 500fpm. That gives us twenty minutes to sort something out.” And indeed, in the ensuing two or three minutes I had worked out the problem and got the engine restarted before diverting to Alderney. Doing the TDODAR can save lives.
LeSving wrote:
given the option of flying 12 h or doing some scenario (whatever that may be), I’m not so sure the scenario would be better.
I don’t really understand why scenario training is an alternative to 12h of flying? You’ve lost me there. Most of the scenario training I do is embedded in either other training or in mentoring.
any additional training and similar would mean fewer hours in the plane as PIC.
You think that the learning experience generated by sitting in the aeroplane as PIC is greater, hour for hour, than doing scenario training with an instructor? You must have encountered some really bad instructors.
There aren’t many hours to start with.
I think that you have hit the nail on the head there. It just may not be possible for a pilot flying minimum hours to be current, safe and competent.
But then I question what the minimum hour pilot is doing and why. 12 hours is not much “useful” flying. I mean, he is not going to Le Touquet for lunch many times. I would guess that most 12h pilots are really spending most of those hours struggling to maintain competence for the day in the future when they get a better job, or their kids leave home, and they have more disposable time and money.
If they are doing the hours to tread water, surely time with an instructor or mentor is a better use of the time?
What was the tb9 issue?
Timothy wrote:
I don’t really understand why scenario training is an alternative to 12h of flying? You’ve lost me there. Most of the scenario training I do is embedded in either other training or in mentoring.
I think there are many pilots that would not know how to apply themselves to various scenarios. I know they can / could reach for the checklist but that isnt always the whole story. As a simple example how would most pilots work through some smoke in the cockpit. On a more specific subject in some aircraft there may be various means of deploying the u/c. You may well know there is a charged bottle of gas under the seat, but how many pilots would actually locate the pull mechanism and activate the blow down. I am not suggesting it is difficult, but at night, by yourself, if you have rehearsed exactly where the bottle is, and how to discharge it, you are a few steps ahead of the game.
The symptom was rough running. I ran through the normal things of fuel pump, changing tanks, one mag at a time and enrichening mixture. Then the engine stopped.
I was helped by the fact that the last thing I had done was to enrichen the mixture and that led me to suspect a rich cut. I leaned very aggressively and got the engine restarted.
I forget the exact cause, but it was a small leak in either a diaphragm or a valve in the fuel system which was allowing too much fuel into the mixture.
This was in 1986, so memory is flaky.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
I think there are many pilots that would not know how to apply themselves to various scenarios.
This is why you are trying to train not the skills of how to deal with each possible individual failure, but a generic approach to the situation.
The most difficult of the six letters to teach is the first one, “T”; that is where this conversation started in post 07. The ATCO did a great job in telling the pilot “Don’t panic, we have plenty of time; I don’t know exactly what we are going to, but I do know that we’re going to work it out between us in time.”
I can see I will soon have to create
TDODAR (merged thread)
and spend half an hour moving all the posts from all the threads (several of them) which went off the rails 
Why can’t people start a nice focused thread on risk management or whatever call it? Almost nobody will read a thread on a PA28 losing a wheel, past the on-topic posts which started it. It would also save me time.
Cos that’s not how conversation works.
It works that way here on EuroGA, which was created to create a good information resource for European GA.
So now you have a new thread.
I was going to post an explanatory link for TDODAR (because the vast majority of GA has never heard of it) but the one posted some time ago under Abbreviations has gone dead, and I suggest that anyone who is interested does a google, which brings up several aviation related hits.
