"m pautz" wrote in message
news:urJzc.46043$0y.44191@attbi_s03...
[...]
My point is that the power pilots of today are not being taught a valuable
safety feature, how to fly a pattern without power.

How can you say that?

I almost never fly an ILS when I land at an airport. Does the fact that you
never see me fly an ILS imply that I have not been taught to fly one, or
that I don't know how to? No.

Likewise, just because all of the airplanes you see in the pattern are not
making power-off gliding approaches and landings, that does not mean that
the pilots haven't been taught to, nor that they don't know how to. For
that matter, just because the pilot in the example you mentioned crashed,
that does not mean that he had not been taught to make a power-off gliding
approach and landing, or that he did not know how to.

All you can conclude from the specific accident is that the pilot failed to
make it to the runway; whether that's because of or in spite of that pilot's
particular skillset, we don't know. The example of the pilots in the
pattern is even less usable for conclusion-making; every single pilot might
indeed be capable of making a perfectly fine power-off approach and landing.
Just because they choose not to, that doesn't imply they don't know how to.

Now, it may well be that training is deficient and that the concept of a
power-off approach and landing is not emphasized well enough. But when the
bulk of your post talks about pilots who regularly don't do so in a normal
traffic pattern, it sure looks as though you're missing the point, and/or
are trying to use a false example to prove a point. All that business about
what pilots normally do in a traffic pattern is completely irrelevant to the
question of whether pilots are being properly trained to make power-off
approaches and landings.

Pete