When I learned to fly gliders we practised spins and spin recovery. First time I did it, I botched the recovery and was mildly terrified. Went up a week later with a extremely experienced instructor and spent a whole hour thermalling up to altitude, stalling, then using the rudder to kick it into a spin, cancel the rotation, kick it into an opposite spin and back, stalled the whole time. Lose 3000 feet, recover, thermal back up, do it all over again. Very interesting to feel the complete ineffectiveness of the ailerons vs very effective rudder. By the end of it, I was pretty confident I would recognize the symptoms early and had the muscle memory to react quickly and correctly if I ever needed to. Best flying lesson I ever had.

Of course all that is with no engines. Assymetric thrust in a twin is more complicated, and I expect you've got less margin before you damage the airframe.

I haven’t done the training but friends have. My understanding is spin recovery is pretty standard. You enter the spin by a pretty intentional stall procedure.

From what I’ve heard it’s actually pretty frightening the first few times, but that’s the point - do it enough to recognize what’s happening and make the response automatic.

When I had US training in the 90s, stall and spin recovery were taught, but only stall was supposed to be practiced.

I was told that spin was not because it could damage some of the instruments which have gyros.

We did it anyway (in a Cessna 152), and it only took about 1.5 turns to recover. Great fun. Easiest way to induce a spin was flaps down during stall.

When I learned in the US, stall and spin avoidance and recovery was taught, but only stalls were actually practiced (because apparently too many accidents happened practicing spins). Not sure how the situation is in South Africa.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

Spins recover practice is required for CFI (certified flight instructor), but not for PPL (private pilot license).

Many commercial pilots (like skydiving pilots) have CFI (because while training, you need to meet a certain number of flight hours, and you might as well spend them on CFI).

Might depend on where you get your training from but I know for my private pilot's license I was instructed and practiced how to purposely get into spins and recover from them. It's a requirement in Canada: https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/publications/stall-spin-awa...

Spins are not required (USA, PPL), but you should find a CFI and a spin ready plane and have some fun.

The older CFI's usually seem to be up for it. :D

Spinning into cloud in a twin - absolute nightmare.

It's a mandatory training requirement before your first solo.