Cheap American PPL's A Waste Of Money?
Any other Instructors coments on the following will be warmly appreciated:
Working as an instuctor at a busy flying school in central England I am becoming increasingly agitated by a growing number of FAA PPL holders who are endeavouring to get "checked out" to fly in the U.k.
This post I must emphasis is NOT to slag off these pilots but more to voice my frustration at the apparent low standards of training of SOME of our Americano colleagues.
I am currently in the process of completing two such "check outs". Both pilots who by the way were taught at seperate schools, and I am very concerned at the lack of basic skills they posses as qualifyed PPL's.
General weaknesses are as follows;
1 En-route cx and pre landing cx very sketchy,
2 Radio skills and general RT handling weak
3 Principles of dead-reckoning nav not covered properly
4 Stalling only covered to Incipient stage
5 No method for PFL's (just aiming at any field regardless of speed and height)
6 principles of stable approach speed and also x-wind landings poorly understood.
7intermitent use of carb heat
plus many other less important quibbles.
Having done hours building in the U.S. on my good old CAA PPL I am well aware of the differences in operating in the U.S. (especialy on the radio) but I feel that buying a cheap PPL can be a false economy as both of my chaps have completed several more hours of Dual training than even they anticipated, and in my opinion more is required.
My message to anybody thinking of heading off to Florida or anywhere similar is to look at the basic cost of the PPL, add your flights and living expences for 4-6 weeks than add 5-700£ to get checked out in the U.K. afterwards and see what the difference is.
By the way one of the FTO's is British owned and offers an APPROVED JAA PPL.
How does it go again? you get what you pay for!
Cheers me Dears