Dead stick landing on the runway should be an absolute requirement for certification...and I don't mean shut the engine off on approach, either. I mean you're just out in front of you somewhere and OOPS, dead stick! Now land. I've lost count of how many wrecks I've seen because a pilot isn't capable of maintaining proper control without the engine running. New pilots should also go through stall training. It'd help cut down on the amount of picking-up to do when an engine flames out on takeoff or they bank too soon on an aborted landing.

The most important lesson a pilot needs to learn is that until the plane is on the ground and it comes to a complete stop you KEEP ON FLYING IT, whether it's on the runway or out in the giggly-weeds.


Call me old school or weird or whatever, but I've always thought it would help a learning pilot to do a complete flight with a model with no throttle (a la old-school 1/2A). You learn an awful LOT about flying when you're stuck with it until the fuel runs out and then you want to actually land the thing on the runway in your general vicinity.