Scary situation in a lesson this week

Yeah 20 ft is crazy.

So many things can go wrong even when 2 experienced pilots are in the cockpit, when there is terrain and at such low altitude. Completely unjustified risk for an exercise, in my opinion.

I think it is important to keep in your mind during all of those exercises, that they are just that, exercises. They are not supposed to put your life in danger.

And so if you feel unsafe, your recover immediately to a safe configuration, regardless of who else is in the airplane. Worst case, you "fail the exercise", and then you get to try it again 5 minutes later.

In those exercises, I start calling altitudes every 100 ft; I also start calling out potential obstacles ("power lines at 10 o'clock", "500 ft", "road truck passing", "400 ft"). Instructor acknowledges awareness of altitude, then calls "recover" at about 300 - 200 (after seeing me able to do a go-around reliably; i.e. without stalling or entering a spin or something like that).

I had an instructor once who made a terrible mistake putting our lives in danger. I was willing to let it go since everyone makes mistakes; but I decided to tell them "thank you for your services and that is all, I will not be needing them anymore" when I realized that they kept pushing the subject away and not discussing it with me. I.e. refusing to acknowledge the mistake and help me learn from it, but blaming "the other guy".

So in my mind, that was a life-or-death situation which for some reason I could not discuss with my instructor. That was not the student-instructor relationship that I wanted to be in.

So do you trust your instructor given how he handled it: both why he let it happen (e.g. was he distracted, or was he attentive the entire time and still let it happen), and how he assessed it with you afterwards? Does he think it's okay that if you repeat this exercise next time, to let you also plunge to 20 ft above ground over terrain before you recover?

/r/flying Thread