"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...
Tom Fleischman wrote:
On 2005-05-27 15:58:31 -0400, "Neil Gould" said:

snip

Disregarding whether or not the instructor handled the situation
properly,
how many of you feel that getting experience in actual IMC during flight
instruction is a bad thing?

One of the best experiences that I had in my early training was exactly
this, and gave me the confidence to make good decisions if caught in IMC
inadvertently.


I do not think that getting experience in IMC during primary training is
necessarily a bad thing, in fact I think it is a good thing if done the
right way, but the instructor is really obligated to use some degree of
judgment. I think taking a primary student up into a benign stratus cloud
layer in stable conditions to show him or her what the effects of spatial
disorientation can be like is a very, very valuable lesson. However, the
conditions that prevailed in the area that day were not suitable for this
type of instruction, IMHO. The ceilings were very low, the temp/dewpoint
spread was nil, the winds were sporadically very gusty and there were
periods of heavy rain throughout the day. To take a primary student up in
conditions like that was incredibly stupid and downright negligent and
the parents should, and I predict will, win the lawsuit.

And if they win they will likely put another flight school out of
business... Just what we need.

Matt

They put themselves out of business. No instructor has any business flying
any primary student into low IMC without two full sets of flight
instruments. It was stupid and now the student is dead.

Mike
MU-2