Granted that GA flying training is only a part of the GA industry, but as the earlier post said, it is often the most visible part, and I suspect the part which has the greater through put of individual customers. In common with just about everyone else on this forum I have been a customer of a couple of flying schools over the years, and also run a business myself, although nothing to do with aviation. What seems to me to be a recurring issue throughout is funding.. .. .School do not charge anything like enough to make the kind of profits they need to reinvest in newer smarter kit, they pay their instructors next to nothing, even the non hours builders who are full time long serving staff earn next to nothing, and the schools almost never own the property from which they operate. This all leads to them being at the mercy of airfield owners, who in many cases it seems put up with rather than support aviation tenants, why invest in quality buildings etc if you only have a short lease, shabby old aircraft (would you expect to hire a car from Avis or what ever than was as knackered as some of the GA fleet, with dials missing , etc etc?)and a large contingent of bored youth instructors who frankley cannot wait to get out of flying schools into a "proper" job.. .. .This problem it seems to me is largley the fault of the clientle who's aspirations very often exceed their ability or willingness to pay for it. The whole industry is competing on the who can do it the cheapest basis which is a receipt for under capitislation, and corner cutting (I don't question saftey) You only have to look on this website and in the mags to see schools under cutting each other for hours building. Perhaps the best thing for the industry would be for the bulk of school to go to the wall, leaving a smaller number of profitable organisations who could run better operation, pay proper salaries to professional instructors, in newer smarter aircraft.. .. .In short we need to pay more for the services we want from flying school if they are to meet the standards we expect from other public facing businesses.. .. .Discuss