Originally Posted by 2StgTurbine

It all depends on the aircraft and the pilot. Personally, in a low performance piston, I would fly the approach clean and add flaps when I breakout, but there are some caveats.

The FAF is pretty far out to be at full flaps in a trainer. It makes the approach take way longer which holds up the entire airport, wastes fuel, and increases your chances of over-speeding the flaps.

The argument against adding flaps when you break out are 1. The pilot could lose pitch control and 2. The approach is not stable. If you are concerned about losing control of the aircraft by adding flaps at 200 feet, than land clean. The better solution is to become more comfortable with the aircraft. And as far as stabilized approaches, don't try to fly a 172 like a 747. Pistons airplanes do not need to fly the final 3 miles at a constant pitch, speed, and glideslope.

Look back at old training manuals from the 30s-70s. They knew how to teach people how to fly pistons. You should always be in a position to make the runway when your engine fails. A light single engine piston pilot should be able to fly a tight pattern (1 mile or less) at 800 feet AGL. If your engine fails right before you turn base, do you have enough energy to complete the turn and make the runway? Abeam the numbers you should be able to pull the power and get to the runway without touching the power or modifying your pattern. In order to do that, you need to be tight and high. Once you are on short final and have the field made, then you can start adding drag. Learning how to do this not only makes your commercial power off 180 landings a non-event, but also makes adding flaps short final during a ILS no problem.

The problem is flight schools started teaching people to be airline pilots instead of pilots. Instead of teaching students to fly their plane at their airport, they started teaching techniques that will simplify the transition to larger aircraft at big airports. As a result, there are 172 pilots at uncontrolled fields doing 2 mile patterns and adding flaps based on their location in the pattern rather than their energy state. And then every 2 years during their flight review, they have no idea how to judge their glide distance during a simulated engine out.