On Sep 5, 10:30 pm, Airbus wrote:


An interesting twist that has come to light from recent AOPA discussions
and rebuttals is that most spin training undertaken by private, commercial
and ATP candidates is done with the ambition of recognizing and avoiding
spins - in other words, virtually no one today really subscribes any
longer to the belief that spin recovery is useful or practicable in the
low-altitude "turn-to-final" scenario, and those students who do practice
spins are mostly interested in avoidance more than recovery.

The turn-to-final stall spin is probably unrecoverable, but
the spin-trained pilot might recognize what's beginning to happen in
time to avert the accident. If nothing else, with spin training he'll
have experienced what Transport Canada calls "intensity," or an eye-
opener, a bit of a scare, that makes a believer out of him. He won't
be so sloppy in that turn to final anymore because he'll be aware of
the cost. When I instructed on Citabrias we did all the scenarios, and
you'd better believe the student had much more respect for the
airplane after that. He knew a lot more than before. And that was the
point.
I watched a guy stall and spin out of a steep turn at low
level and low speed about ten years ago at Arlington. He had been
doing this for some time, and it finally bit him. He might not have
known the danger, and once things began to go wrong he may have done
all the wrong things: pull back to try to raise the nose, and use
opposite aileron to raise that wing. Both are exactly wrong but are
reflexive actions for the non-spin experienced pilot. His first
mistake was to be doing his maneuvers at such low altitude, but he'd
still have spun if he did it up high and might not have recovered
there either. In any case, the crash was non-survivable.
Spins are plenty safe if done properly. They're not hard on
the airplane. We do them in Canada and accidents are rare. The more
dangerous times, IMHO, are the takeoff and landing phases. Not much
room for error.

Dan