Bringing Excellence Home: On-site Upset Training from Prevailance

Airborne upset prevention and recovery training (UPRT) is now recognized as the key to reducing loss of control – in flight (LOC-I) accidents, the No. 1 cause of aviation fatalities. Prevailance Aerospace Safety Academy in Chesapeake, Virginia, is one of the world's leading centers for providing UPRT and other specialty instruction, and its clients include government agencies, aeronautical universities and private-sector operators. Prevailance Aerospace utilizes a superior training platform — the Extra 330LX certificated aerobatic monoplane — and its instructors are all former military pilots and grads of the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) with extensive experience as trainers in the civilian world. Moreover, Prevailance Aerospace's convenient Virginia location makes its three-day program the best choice for many clients in the eastern U.S.

Indeed, some UPRT programs require almost a week when travel is factored in, and “finding open time to send pilots for training can be a challenge, even for the most safety conscious flight department,” says Vanessa Christie, Prevailance Aerospace’s Vice President for Strategic Development and a former F-14 Tomcat instructor and combat aviator. Now Prevailance Aerospace offers the perfect solution for such clients in the eastern U.S: “We can bring the training right to their home bases,” Christie says. “The number of quality providers that offer this instruction is limited, and most of them are out West, while the majority of customers for UPRT are here in the East. A lot of companies that want the training can’t spare their pilots for the time it takes to travel to an offsite UPRT training provider.”

With on-site airborne UPRT, Prevailance Aerospace can efficiently train flight crews while minimizing down time and eliminating travel and accommodation expenses, providing a significant savings over the cost of training at a provider’s facility. Multiple pilots can undergo the training during a single training house call. “We bring as many aircraft and instructors as the client needs,” Christie says. Those aren’t the only potential savings. Underscoring the effectiveness of the Prevailance Aerospace program, some companies and individuals who undergo UPRT may be eligible for discounts on insurance premiums, depending on the insurance carrier.

The on-site three-day UPRT program is the same course provided at the company's headquarters. It includes three one-hour flights complemented by classroom instruction, mission briefing and post-flight debriefing, including review of inflight videos taken from wing, tail and cockpit cameras. The instruction covers dangerous flight regimes and out-of-control flight, and recovery procedures and techniques. The Extra 330LX, the newest design from the German aerobatic aircraft manufacturer, is the world's highest-performing two-place aircraft. It can recover from any maneuver and provides a wide training safety margin, making it an ideal UPRT training platform. "Pilots quickly get comfortable and have complete confidence in the aircraft, and that accelerates learning," Christie says. Even low-time pilots can quickly master the fundamentals of upset recovery under Prevailance's tutelage. "Our instructors have experience with every level of trainee," Christie says. As a final component of the course, she says, "We ensure pilots understand how to transfer the skills we teach them to the aircraft they typically fly."

Signing up for this on-site training could be the newest maneuver to master in the ongoing battle against LOC-I.

Watch Prevailance Aerospace recover from an inverted spin.