Crosswind competency before or after the first solo - your comments.
Food for thought. Teenage student goes with parents to careers seminar at school at which flying school reps give their speil on learning to fly and being an airline pilot. Student eventually decides to give it a go and starts flying lessons. Due financial constraints (his parents are battlers) he only flies ten lessons in nine months with his log book showing five different grade three instructors. Books in for a lesson of circuits at Point Cook which requires two hours faxed notice of arrival in Point Cook circuit.
On arrival to fly, student discovers his instructor has omitted to fax Point Cook so rather than cancel the session, the instructor says no problem, we will fly to Moorabbin and teach you crosswind circuits and landings. Cost of exercise in region of $320 for trip to and from MB.
Whether or not this is a true story or not is immaterial. It may or may not have actually happened. Let's leave it at that.
The CASA Flight Instructor's Manual reveals that crosswind instruction is scheduled after first solo not before. This is because experience dictates ab-initio pre-solo circuits should be done into wind for ease of learning and advanced circuits including crosswind work is left until the student gains further solo experience and thus more confidence.
The flying school syllabus however apparently shows crosswind landings must be taught to a competent standard before first solo which in this theoretical case is what happened to the student although he seemed to have little idea of the mechanics of flying crosswind circuits and landings after the event. After all, would you expect a student to handle crosswinds competently with less than 12 hours in the log book? And yet not considered competent for first solo in good weather conditions?
The question arises of the wisdom/commonsense aspect of disregard of a long standing CASA documentary advice that crosswind landings should be scheduled after first solo and not before.
While it is understandable that new instructors wish to hour build in order to earn money - especially as they probably are only paid for hours flown rather than weekly wages, it is important they consider the student's side of things and not fly for the sake of flying. It is encumbent on CFI's to closely observe the conduct of every junior instructor who by legislation also requires close CFI supervision.
The common habit of allowing junior instructors to grab at the first student coming through the door of the flying school without first being allotted that student by the CFI, often leads to hours being racked up by the student that are not necessarily in his best interests and worse still, he may not even have ever flown with the CFI at any stage of his time with that flying school. Junior instructors must never allow their own enthusiasm for flying and hours building to disadvantage their students who rely on the integrity of their instructor and the CFI, to avoid unecessary flying training costs.
Unfortunately there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence from students that ripping off the student is not uncommon.