Lawsuit in HPN accident

As a CFI, I have no problem at all taking primary students into some
light IMC once or twice. It does a few things:

1. Once and for all, it kills the notion that a few hours of hood time
can allow you to even THINK about flying in the soup.

2. It helps them get a stronger connection between the actions of the
airplane and the instrument indications.

3. It helps them get a better understanding of ATC, communications, and
the airspace system.

4. It MAY help them not panic so much if they ever do wander into IMC.
If they can delay the panic just one or two minutes, it might well save
their lives someday.

However, this accident troubles me on a number of fronts, and I don't
see it as a standard vampire-lawyer thing (especially since the filing
attorney is a 1000-hour IFR-rated pilot himself, and goes out of his
way to show this isn't about the dangers of GA).

1. This is one of those 'hyper-accelerated' training programs. The
student had 32 hours, yet hadn't soloed yet. Most of his training had
been in HUGE blocks of flying time, 5 or 6 hours per day; hardly
condusive to good training.

2. This was a hard-IMC cross-country; not a limited flight into a few
clouds to introduce him to weather. The weather at the destination
(accident) airport (if I remember correctly) was 200 and 1/2. And it
had been a 2-3 hour X-C...what on earth purpose does that serve? What
benefit can a student who hasn't even soloed yet gain from a X-C in
serious soup, followed by an ILS approach to minimums?

3. American Flyers (like some other well-known national schools) has a
reputation for being both cookie-cutter in it's approach, and possibly
more focuses on the $30,000 brought in by a student taking the 'career
pilot' program than in turning out quality pilots, or possibly even in
safety.

As I said, exposing a primary student to IMC is quite reasonable. But
from what I have read of the accident, the lawyer may well have a good
case...esposing a rushed pre-solo student to a hard-IMC cross country
(perhaps just to keep him in the air, and keep the revenue coming, a
cynical part of me things) may very well be negligent...and looks to me
to be counterproductive at best.

Cheers,


Cap


Neil Gould wrote:
Recently, Steve S posted:

It didn't take them very long.


http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/p...505270315/1018

Hey, it's a lot easier than chasing ambulances.

Here's the part that gets me:
"We do not contend that flying in small planes is dangerous, rather that
American Flyers failed to properly manage the risks in flying and in so
doing cut short this young man's life," said Paul Marx of the firm
DelBello, Donnellan, Weingarten, Tartaglia, Wise and Wiederkehr, who is
representing Alexei and Olga Naoumov. "There s no defensible or logical
reason for a primary flight student who was still learning how to fly in
visual conditions to be receiving training in weather conditions that were
at or below those minimally required for instrument flying. Doing so is
simply reckless and irresponsible."

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.

Neil