Hello!
A few comments from me as well: I don't know which syllabus you are referring to, but I think the JAR syllabus is not so bad overall. What I would like to see is a greater distinction between a course that leads to a "pure PPL" and one that is a stepping stone towards CPL/IR and/or ATPL.
I instruct students from PPL onward, ninetyfive percent of whom will never fly cross-country VFR in their life again. Or piston engine powered aeroplanes, Or propeller driven aeroplanes. These girls and guys should be taught differently from those you will fly their minimum hours required to maintain their licenses for the next forty years. I have talked at length about this with our head of training on several occassions.
And regarding some of the points above:
- Open book exams: No no no no. Ok, get rid of useless stuff in the theoretical part, but the useful stuff must be memorised. There are lots of occasions (especially for pilots who really only fly the minimum hours required) where looking-up things up in the air is not an option.
- Emergencies: Train as many of them as possible. All kinds.
- Hours to first solo: Irrelevant. This only leads to a competition among students over which more important things are forgotten. If anything at all, the guideline should state the number of landings to first solo. (Our flying school for example is operating from an international airport with the nearest training airfield twenty minutes away. Every training flight, starting with number one! is a cross-country naviagtion flight of one hour minimum with only five to ten circuits. This way, our students typically need 25 hours to their first solo).
- Instrument training: The JAR syllabus includes this in a reasonable manner. We must keep in mind however, that a couple of hours under the hood or in a procedures trainer during the PPL will not save anybody who encounters bad weather five years later. We all know that instrument flying skills get lost very quickly (within weeks for some persons) and the best thing is to teach them to stay out of clouds.
- Modern avionics: Yes. In the year 2011, every pilot must be trained to navigate by GPS. He must know the good and bad things about it and know what his plan B can be. He must be able to pull information from a glass screen (almost every microlight is fitted with one now!) quickly and efficiently. Again: After their trainig, "my" students will never fly with conventional instruments again. Ever. Airliners (and bizjets too) have glass for their standby instruments since twenty years. Suction failure? Who cares, there is no suction that can fail. And even if, the latest iPhone will give you attitude, heading and navigation information for longer than the fuel lasts.
Get rid of the awful, useless ADF instead. We waste so much precious time during IFR training for this dinosaur. And if you ask me, no PPL holder needs to worry about VOR/DME navigation either.
- Radio telephony: Every student should come to his first practical lesson with a finished RT license. Training will be much more efficient and the instructor does not have to waste preciuos time (including briefing and debriefing) on teaching radio phraseology.
- And last but not least: I don't care about "pure PPL" students, but for those who train to become professional pilots: Please let them fly "point and power" approaches and teach them to fly by numbers (pitch and power) with proper speed control.
Happy landings,
max