you need a base of experience be it banner tow, CFI-ing that gives you some bad students, bushrattery that has you operating low and slow, some aero that allows you to experience the full envelope of flight.
...and I usually get harassed when I suggest that acro should be part of basic flying training.
I totally agree; your comment about airlines procedurally making things as safe as possible is spot-on, but the follow-on as to how this effects pilot skills goes all the way back to training much earlier in the process.
I recently went through an initial Type class at Flight Safety for a turboprop, and I was amazed at how close to the "warm, chewy center" of the flight envelope they stayed. Even the "unusual attitudes" weren't unusual in any way. When I asked why they wouldn't set up a more extreme attitude -- you know, something
unusual -- they said;
1. Without an aerobatic category aircraft and parachutes, you can't do that (duh...this is why we're training in a simulator, right?)
2. The sim doesn't have a flight model that's accurate outside of the normal parameters, so they weren't sure what it would do.
Bottom line, they trained to an extremely conservative portion of the flight envelope. Even though I left there with a Type Rating in the airplane on my certificate, I have no experience whatsoever with even close to the extremes of the flight envelope. Hell, we didn't even actually
stall it, but trained and executed recovery at the first indication of an approaching stall.
In the fighter business, our job is to fly airplanes at the edge of the performance envelope -- to not do so means not using parts of the airplane's capability that could cause us to be beat by another aircraft (or whatever we're maneuvering against). We spend dedicated time training to "Advanced Handling Characteristics" -- beyond just approach to stall training or the standard stuff that keeps us smiply safe. We go find the left side of the chart (up and down the lift limit line with accelerated stalls), go find the top of the chart (max G), and even sometimes the right side of the chart (max airspeed/Mach). Although such training is "tactical", it has the collateral benefit of letting pilots actually see the dark corners of the flight envelope and be reasonably comfortable flying the airplane there. Meaning, when something unusual really happens, and you HAVE to max perform the airplane to keep from smacking the dirt or another airplane, that's not the first time you've attempted to max perform. A pilot who is somewhat familiar with that is less likely to over-shoot those limitations (like pulling into an accelerated stall and keeping the yoke buried in a failed attempt to keep from smacking the dirt).
It floors me that the rest of the world doesn't include at least some training (in a sim even, where it's perfectly safe!) in those dark corners and edges of the flight envelope so that the first time the limits are seen, there aren't innocent paying pax in the back while the pilot is trying to figure it out real time.
