A 500 or 1000 hr cowboy shouldn't be teaching anyone anything.
There is more to teaching someone to fly any aircraft than just handling engine failures....like how to fly it properly.
The GA light twin knowledge base in Oz is awash with stuff that is just plain wrong...you will NEVER learn to fly any aircraft properly if you never leave the circuit area or training area.
A pilot with his head screwed on properly and, preferably, with some good mentoring from senior pilots, will learn more in 500 hrs out in the real world than someone working in theory will ever learn...because he is dealing with variables all day every day rather than working within the extremely confined world of theory and repeating the same excercises, at artificially low weights, over and over.
Experienced instructors (who have never left instructing) are NOT experienced pilots...they are experienced teachers....innexperienced instructors are not even that.
In the flight instructing realm individuals get so caught up with the theory it takes on a life of it's own...hence you see people to scared and/or lacking in knowledge to fly slower than blue line when landing....or another common mistake I have seen around flying schools that 'teach' twin flying...innappropriately copying airline techniques in aircraft not certified as such.
Its flying by rote. To often long time instructors lose the ability to think outside the box...they spend so many years teaching one 'right' way of doing things that they forget that the method they are teaching is the basic way an innexperienced pilot will be able to handle...NOT necesarily the best way to do all things aeronautical.
I have had two real engine failures in piston twins, another two in piston singles and one in a jet...not one bore any relationship to a training engine failure...not even a little passing resemblance....the basics are important...but they are the basics not the be all and end all.
Thats what experience is...what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
It is bad enough that many pilots first job is 'teaching' but that is unavoidable to some extent...that young, innexperienced instructors view multi training approvals as a ticket to credible multi experience is a travesty....it should never be allowed.
I will say it again...NO-ONE with less than 500 hrs of REAL world multi experience should be allowed in the rhs of a piston twin teaching.
As far as airlines prefering Instructing over a broad experience base is concerned?
You'll learn the reality sooner or later.
Last edited by Chimbu chuckles; 11th May 2006 at 14:00.