Mountain flying Rotary-wing

Video made to help Rotary-wing pilots understand the basics of mountain flying. This is part of private pilot training in many countries but was overlooked in New Zealand for many years, because they are so sure their training is world class they wouldn’t bother looking around to see how others do it. After years of recording accidents resulting from not applying basic common sense during mountain flying, the NZ CAA decided in 2011 to incorporate some kind of theory into their PPL syllabus and made this very good quality video. Those who understand best mountain flying are sailglider pilots, and as usual there isn’t a word about them in this video, showing that powered aircraft pilots keep reinventing the wheel. The best training a powered aircraft pilot could get would be to go to the nearest sailglider club and do some hours, instead of spending more fuel to get some very limited mountain flying experience using his Cessna or R22 to cross a few valleys. The mountain flying syllabus now part of the NZ PPL is going to be delivered by…powered aircraft instructors, usually themselves young and pretty inexperienced, and most of them having no experience in mountain flying, so even if the NZ CAA is showing good intentions, in the end it is a lot of gesticulating: just put some sailglider flying into your aviation life. The video is very well put together nonetheless and the quality of the images in this beautiful scenery is making the film worth watching.