Someone, in my opinion, has hit the nail on the head by saying that only people with a childhood fixation with becoming a pilot will put up with the often sadly lacking conditions than many flying schools/clubs offer.
I passed my PPL about nine months ago, but my school, like many others, used to p*** me off something chronic. It wasn't instructors being late. it wasn't that parts of the trim on the door of my C-152 used to come off if pulled it too hard. It was having one of my lessons double booked.
Maybe it's a standard thing? But at my school, it was normal practise to give a PPL student a 2-hour slot. However, if someone rang up asking about a trial flight and there happened to be no spare slots, then a 'slot' would be squeezed in to an existing lesson.
I can see the reasoning behind this practise. 50% of trial flight lessons are cancelled by the prospective flyer, so in all probability, the PPL student will be none the wiser. And also, trial flighters have no sense of loyalty to any club, so if there isn't a slot available to them there and there, then they will simply ring up somewhere else. Wheras the PPL student will have already been reeled in, hook line and sinker, and so if they only have to miss the odd lesson now and again, then they, in all likelehood, will still remain with the flying school/club. This is what the schools/clubs bank on.
And so on quite a few occasions, I turned up for a lesson, only to find that my instructor was up with a trial flight. I would sit and wait, and eventually the instructor would return telling me that the once beautiful weather had turned for the worse...It was so annoying.
If I hadn't yearned so much for my licence, then I wouldn't have put up with such unscrupulous behaviour.
And though I am by no means a rich man (I'm a teacher) I think that the state of general aviation training could be massively improved. And like many have already said, I think the most fundamenal change has to be in customer care. And I say this, becasue on occasions, I felt as if I was a hinderence to my flying school, and that I was always hassling them to fit me in for a lesson.
A friend of mine later told me about his experiences. He had entered a flying school with the possibility of booking a few lessons. He waited patiently by the desk, whilst the ops guy was on the phone. The ops man didn't acknowledge him once, not even with a nod or a 'be with you in a minute'. My friend waited a few minutes and walked out. He learned to fly somehwere else. Sheer rudeness I reckon.
Customer Care! It needs improving.