vtango wrote:
"Its pretty amazing when i see fliers from some schools always arrive at the cross country trips with 2 persons in the aircraft! While talking to them they say each is acting as the sfatey pilot for the other on different legs of the cross country!
"But then they both log the entire flt as SOLO! something seems terribly wrong here. Mind you these were VFR X country flts! OH they have another term for it. they called it "SHARED flights" meaning you share the rental for the aircraft while doubling your solo time! Blatant violation regulations!"
In the end it boils down to economics. The students are being ripped off by their schools but the schools find ways to make up for their criminality by allowing students to log time not actually flown and certify it.
One large flying school that used to operate a transport category airplane with about 50 seats used to fill it up with students headed for their island training base. All the students were permitted to log the time in the big turboprop even if they were seated next to the aft lavatory.
All these students end up with padded logbooks. A pilot with a padded logbook is analogous to a con artist with a falsified bank book. If he's a really good faker, he may fool a lot of people for a long time. But it's only a matter of time before the truth reveals itself, often with tragic results.
That large school with the big turboprop has the dubious honor of producing most of the fatal accident pilots in recent Philippine general aviation history. In fact, whenever somebody crashes and dies in a small plane, we all say, "Oh, he must have been an Air Stink product," and most of the time we are correct.
One ex-Air Stink instructor told me he had to bring his own spark plugs and have them installed and removed each flight. He admitted to me that he and his colleagues were fearful for their lives most of the time, knowing AS pilots tended to crash and burn on a fairly regular basis. But they toughed it out until they could get decent jobs.
High horrors! The most prestigious pilot school in the country is now staffed almost exclusively by ex-Air Stink instructors. The quality of their products is pitiful. I asked one grad to describe a stall recovery. She said:
1. Apply just enough back pressure to activate the stall warning.
2. Count to five.
3. Release back pressure.
That's what you get in exchange for your PHP2 million?
As far as I know, the only instructors from that school that have made it into the airlines are those who did not come from Air Stink or similar outfits. Two of the most senior instructors either washed out or backed out of jet training.