Greg Esres wrote:
A solo student (not mine) had a landing accident today. Landed on the
nose wheel, porpoised a few times, and stalled the airplane in a
slightly nose down attitude. The student was unharmed, but the
aircraft is totaled.

*sigh*

One time not long after DH learned to fly, we arrived at the
airport to pick up our rented steed.

Uh-oh. News vans all over. Rescue vehicles.

Then we saw it: a C152, perched on the roof of a hangar. In order
to get there, he had to leave the 75 ft wide runway, cross a wide
grass strip to the taxiway, cross a wide ramp, and stall out onto
the hangar roof.

The soloing student was unhurt. He was damned lucky, he could
easily have been killed if he hadn't had a convenient hangar
roof to stall onto.

Our flight school has been moving towards an all-new aircraft fleet.
It it wise to be putting solo students out in a $170,000 airplane?

IMHO, it is unwise to be putting solo students out in any sort of
airplane if they don't "know when to go" (ie, know when to abort
a landing and go around) and have a reasonable safety margin of
proper reactions to a botched landing.

Cheers,
Sydney