Originally Posted by
Maoraigh1
"For example the forced approach is taught at a few "favorite fields" and instead of learning flight path judgment the students learns if they turn final over the red house they will get a good mark on their fligth test."
That is bad.
"The goal of ab initio flight training should not be "get a PPL", it should be "become a safe pilot". This sounds rather obvious but I would suggest that too often the point is lost. I see a lot of flight training that is completely designed to pass the flight test. This is accomplished with a lot of canned lesson plans."
Have you any accident/incident statistics to support your opinion that passing the flight test is not enough to make a safe pilot?
Extra hours will not change the pilots personality, but will provide extra income for the school.
Perhaps many of the schools you criticise are in fact good.
Cause and effect are hard to prove, however every time I read GA accident report summaries there always seem to be reports on airplanes flown by PPL's that went off the end of the runway after floating 2/3 rds of the way down the runway, hit nose wheel first hard enough to break the airplane, had a loss of control on a crosswind takeoff , engine failure due to carb ice etc etc. These are gross handling errors and speak to a fundamental lack of flying skill. They all passed the PPL flight test but then went out and crashed a perfectly serviceable airplane. I get the issue of maintaining proficiency after the skills test but I would suggest the shallower the skill set the less likely an acceptable skill level to handle all reasonable conditions will be attained and maintained.