In article ZZ writes:

I agree with your assessments Mark. I have only done three LOTs and they
were all easy and great fun.

A current student of mine asked me how common the double release failure
is and I did not have a good answer for him so I decided to poll the
masses. The answer to that one seems to be either zero or one.

Regarding the question of should we be practicing these, I am currently
bucking a political tide trying to get LOTs into Flight Reviews
for those pilots that want to widen their horizons. So far, no dice.


No reason to put them in flight reviews, since the trend is to make the
flight review more closely match the PTS. Now, I think that making the
flight review be matched to the Practical Test Standards is stupid, and it
makes a lot more sense to use the time working on something *different*,
and let the evaluation of general competency be incidental --- a good
instructor should be able to tell if the pilot is generally competent
fairly quickly, without having to go through a re-running of the checkride.

For example, it would make more sense for me to spend a bunch of flight
review time under a hood, since I am not instrument rated, so I have not
practiced that lately. Or, perhaps do it on a soft/grass field, since
most of my flying has been on pavement. Doing it in a different sort of
airplane would be another option.

Landing on tow as one option for a flight review is fine. It should
*not* be a standard part, however.

Putting specific items in the flight review is a bad idea. Doing something
different, gaining new experience, is better than re-doing the same experience.

Alan