I agree with your point completely. Most people who self hire are really on the look out for price, and why not. But to be honest the self fly hire cost doesn't really mean much to instructors. There are some places that do mostly training and very little Hire and there are places that are mostly about hire and a small amount of teaching. The two businesses are quite different and it does seem to be very hard to combine both a flying club and a professional school.
Personally I was taught to fly initially by BAe on a fantastic fleet of identical TB-10's, so maybe my judgement of what training a/c should be like is a bit skewed compared to reality.
This is why at some schools and airfields I've been to, I wouldn't even taxi some of the a/c, let alone fly them.
At the school I teach at we have a mixture of new planes and older machines, but all the older planes are in excellent nick.
I think that there does need to be a shake-up in the industry, but don't think that instructors are out to totally destroy it as it is. What really is needed is a change of attitude on the instructors part. If we had a union then there might be some feeling of solidarity, which could eventually lead to change. Nobody is demanding that all instructors should get £100/hr and £50K basic, because it's not feasible. (would be nice though!)
What we should do is to start a gradual change, starting with reducing the Government taxation. An extra £5-10 per Hr for most FI's would make a massive difference. I don't think this would be asking too much. Does anyone else agree??
Last edited by Say again s l o w l y; 7th May 2002 at 11:00.