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Consider the following scenarios:
…You are on final approach to a major airport when your airplane unexpectedly hits wake turbulence, which turns it upside down.
…As you initiate your takeoff roll, the gust front from an approaching storm blows you into the air at a low airspeed and high angle of bank.
…You are flying in the clouds on your first flight in actual instrument conditions. You begin to study the approach plate in preparation for the approach. Suddenly, you realize something does not seem right. You look up and find the attitude indicator showing a steep nose-down spiral with the wings banked past 90 degrees.
…You are an instructor demonstrating spin entries and recoveries to a pilot working on his CFI. After demonstrating a spin entry, you go through the recovery procedure but the spin only gets tighter.
…As you are turning base to final you realize you are going to overshoot final so you cheat by adding a little rudder. Then you put in some aileron opposite to the turn to keep the airplane from banking any steeper. You also notice you are getting a little low, so you pull back on the wheel. Suddenly the airplane snaps inverted.
For many pilots, any of these situations could spell disaster. This is because typical flight training curricula don't go beyond steep turns (to 45 degrees of bank), recovery from two canned unusual attitude situations, and for a CFI candidate, training in stall awareness, spin entry, spins and spin recovery procedures. Most pilots have never been upside down in an airplane, and many have never even banked the airplane beyond 30 degrees since they got their license. For normal flight operations this training is sufficient, but sometimes things can happen that are not what we consider normal.
Rich Stowell (www.richstowell.com) is an expert in this subject who has been researching and writing about it for over 15 years. He specializes in providing stall/spin awareness training and Emergency Maneuvers Training® and has done close to 20,000 instructional spins at his home base in Santa Paula, California, and at clinics he conducts around the country. Rich found that "in recent years stall/spin accidents have accounted for roughly 12 percent of general aviation accidents, but are responsible for 25 percent of fatal accidents." What caught his attention, however, was that "of these fatal stall/spins, 15-20 percent occurred during dual instructional flights-with FAA-certified flight instructors on board! None of these statistics, sad to say, are out of line considering the cursory treatment stalls and spins receive in the typical training environment. Nor are they out of line considering the minimal spin experience required of flight instructor applicants."
