History of the BFR?

Jose wrote
Of course you have no gaps in knowledge or skill you are aware of. Tell me, do you have any gaps you are UNaware of?

IF you say "no", you are a statistic waiting to happen, and you won't be waiting too long. If you say "probably", then you are a statisitic that is waiting to not happen, if you take the right action.

Tell me, how many BFR's have you administered to pilots who fly over
100 hours a year?

I've administered at least a dozen like that, and I am 100% in
agreement with Jay - for a pilot who flies that much, especially in a
simple docile airplane, the typical BFR is an absolutely pointless
formality of no safety value. In fact, I would go so far as to say
that it would make MUCH more sense to have a recency of experience
requirement substitute for a BFR than for an IPC - and yet a recency
of experience requirement does subsitute for an IPC but not a BFR.
Just one more area where the FAA really got it wrong.

The idea that you somehow magically develop bad habits while flying
100+ hours a year on your own, and that an hour with a typical
instructor will somehow fix this is, in my experience, nonsense. It's
no wonder the FAA has never been able to establish a quantitative
safety benefit from the BFR. I don't see how there could be one.

That's because the BFR as currently practiced is really geared to the
pilot who flies less than 25 hours a year. Flying that little, skills
tend to deteriorate (and the less total experience, the more they
deteriorate) and the BFR is used to brush them up. For that pilot,
the BFR is recurrent training. Here's a good working definition of
recurrent training - it's periodic training designed to compensate for
atrophying skill, and you know it's working when you're sharper after
you finish the recurrent training cycle than you were going in.
That's probably the case for most renter pilots, since few of them fly
enough.

For a pilot who flies 100+ hours a year in a simple docile aircraft,
the BFR is not recurrent training. It's an exercise where he
demonstrates his skills to an instructor, the instructor nods
approvingly and notes that the pilot is clearly flying at or above the
minimum standards required to pass the private checkride (which is not
actually necessary to 'pass' a BFR), signs off the logbook,
congratulates the pilot, collects his money, and moves on. He's not
likely to be able to offer any real instruction because he probably
can't do a better (or even as good) job of flying that aircraft than
his 'student.'

The reality is that the 100+ hour a year pilot is way safer and more
proficient without a BFR than the 25 hours a year pilot is with the
BFR.

That's not to say that a pilot who flies 100+ hours a year can't
benefit from recurrent training - he certainly can. I fly 200+ hours
a year and never go a year without recurrent training. But a standard
BFR from your typical instructor won't do it. For a pilot who flies
100+ hours a year in his own airplane, you need something different.
You need either someone who is an expert on his particular make and
model who can really show him how to push it to the limits, or you
need to completely take him out of his comfort zone by doing something
else (acro, tailwheel, glider - whatever).

Michael