Whirly - I said it is EASIER to be a good instructor if you are not paid rubbish and treated like it.
At Welshpool I earned a very decent wage flying an avergae of 85hrs a month and whilst the Boss was harsh I was always paid on time and was glad of the job.
You lot can bang on about 'professionalism' all you like but in the real world YES it does make a difference if you are earning sod all whilst risking your life day in and day out.
The term 'hours building instructor' is being taken as a term of denogration. Well fine. If you want a professional full time instructor then my hourly rate last year was circa £70. Fancy paying that? No? Well stop moaning then.
I hate rubbish Flying Instructors with a passion. I've seen up close what damage they can do. I can take nothing away from the personal testimont of those here you have had bad experiences (Whirly - I can't for the life of me remember you you flew with - do email me as I am intrigued now altough I do believe you).
On the topic of being told you are not very good.
If thats done by a poor instructor because of hi own lackof ability then its an utter disgrace.
However, lets look at the other side of the coin.
I've seen young Bloggs pitch up with the course price and a packet of smarties in his pocket and nothing else besides. He turns out to be 'average'. The 'average' PPL is issued with some 70hrs in the logbook. Is his intructor remiss to tell him to expect an extra 20hrs from the early days or is he remiss in allowing the student to continue down a path which will lead to a running out of cash and therefore the end of training? Tough call.
Taking it a stage further - is an instructor ever right to discourage someone from continuing wither with a PPL or a Professional Career ambition?
I think yes and and have had to do so.
On the PPL front the only consideration is safety and enjoyment. Some peope start and frankly they will never be safe. They may throw money at the problem and get themselves on a good day through their test. Two years later they become a statistic. Shame their instructor never advised them to take up another hobby eh? I've seen shaky students get through PPL's and then seen them have accidents shortly afterwards.
Its all very well being sweetness and light and adopting an attitude of everyone can do this it just takes effort and training. Yeah it does but it also requires some degree of aptitude - not a lot - but some. Some people don't have it accept it.
Then there is the Career flying training scenario.
All of the above applies its just that nearly everyone that starts down this path has the ability to pass the PPL stage. Its just that fromday one if you as an instructor can see that they are going to really struggle to pass the single pilot instrument rating flight test then they may as well not spend that first penny.
I had a student, a nice young chap with a very good attitude whom I bent over backwards to carry through his CPL course. But he wasn't going to make it - I knew. I told him. He shrugged it off and promised to re-double his efforts. I told him again and put it in writing that he was 'extremely unlikley to pass the full course'. Again he shrugs this off. By now he is having a miserable time, failing groundschool as well and is starting to dread flying. I'm not shouting, I'm not miserable - but you can't be upbeat when Bloggs has just made a complete hash of an exercise you are repeating for the fourth time.
Bloggs eventually fails a significant flight test once again and push comes to shove and he jacks it in.
The bill? £34,000. The outcome, not even a PPL.
He returns home to bewildered parents who are distraugt to find out he has failed - he told them everything was mostly fine. At a very young age he has a financial millstone around his neck, his family and friends are hurt, shocked and out of pocket and he is quite quite miserable.
All of this could have been avoided 10's of thousands of pounds earlier and with a lot lot less heartache.
It is a lasting regret of mine that I could not have spared this young man and his familt this terrible woe. Short of dragging him out of the college and throwing him out the gate there is little else I could have done.
Thats perhaps just a glimpse of the other side of the coin.
Good luck with any training - it never stops...
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