Andrew Sarangan wrote
OK, let me slightly change what I said. If you can fly a 50 mile xc, you
should be able to fly a 2000 mile xc.

If you have forever to get there.

The real purpose is to make you navigate in an
unfamiliar area.

In the age of electronic nav (especially LORAN and GPS) navigation is
probably the least important part of XC training. Back in the old
days, when everyone navigated by map, compass, and stopwatch, what you
say was true. It no longer is. Navigation has become dramatically
easier in the past decade. Weather hasn't.

If the weather gets bad, land at the nearest airport.

If you land at the nearest airport the first time the weather is iffy,
you will NEVER complete that 2000 mile XC. Before that happens, your
charts will expire, your airplane will need service - you name it.
For a recreational pilot, what you say makes sense. For a private
pilot, whose privileges include flying in support of his business and
family vacations, it does not. You should be training him to a
proficiency level that allows him to exercise private pilot
privileges, not telling him to limit himself to recreational pilot
privileges. In other words, train for the privileges of the
certificate, not the requirements of the checkride.

The overall result is that safety has improved.

Sure. It has improved on a per-hour basis, because most private
pilots today don't go anywhere. While the recreational certificate
never really caught on, the reality is that most private pilots fly to
recreational privileges most of the time. It's hard to get hurt if
you never do anything.

As for an instrument rating - that's not a substitute for being able
to fly VFR in iffy weather but an addition to it. Iffy weather is
HARDER to handle when you are in the soup, not easier. Most IFR in
most of the country is associated with other ugly weather phenomena
most of the time.

You may have reasons to believe that the training standards
has degraded over the years, but the statistics clearly prove that we
are training much safer pilots today than we did in the past.

And of course safety is the most important thing. Once we have
stopped everyone from doing anything other than going up on blue sky
days to look at the pretty scenery, we will have a spectavular safety
record. In that sense - and ONLY in that sense - are we training
safer pilots. Of course the result is also there to see. People
conclude that flying is not useful - and if you approach it the way
you suggest, it's NOT. So long term pilot retention is way down. The
pilot population shrinks every year. One day, there will be none
left. Then we will have total safety.

Michael