Originally Posted by
F15Cricket
As a 3000+ hour fighter pilot, I think this is an interesting thread. As a guy who also flies GA and now for an airline, let me ask the group this: what is the largest cause of GA crashes? Of all crashes? Is it mid-airs, or low altitude stall/spins? I would say the latter, yet the FAA is requiring ADS-B. If they were truly concerned with saving the maximum number of lives, AOA gauges and AOA instruction in training aircraft would benefit all pilots greatly.
The simple way I think of it is the wing flies by AOA... It doesn't care about airspeed! When teaching aerobatics in the T-6 to a friend who has 13,000 hours (mostly on floats and no jet time), we had lots of discussions about AOA, unloading the wing, how you cannot stall below stall speed if you unload, etc.
ADS-B has nothing to do with GA safety, it's about improved air traffic management which has an aspect of protecting airliners from GA (but not GA from themselves).
I agree that AoA certainly has potential for GA, but current GA flying techniques (and training & testing) evolved based on other instruments. Individual GA users who have the inclination can certainly acquire and learn to use AoA instrumentation. IMO (and only my opinion) applying it broadly across all GA would require big changes from the ground up, which would be opposed by various interested parties due to cost.
AoA is a getting a more direct answer to the question at hand, but you can still get the answer through other instruments...if I'm flying the proper profile I already know what AoA is going to tell me (except in icing). It would probably be easier for private pilots to scan just an AoA gauge and the runway in the base-to-final turn, but it's probably too politically challenging and costly to mandate AoA. But no reason individuals can't take advantage of it, as long as they commit to learning and using it correctly...otherwise it's just another dust collector, and possibly a distraction.