Triadic, you say that standards in pilot training have dropped considerably since the 80's.
What would you reccomend a student pilot like me do now, to maintain a high standard of airmanship, if the instructors are not pulling their weight these days?
I'm happy with the level of instruction I'm receiving at the moment, the bloke training me has around 800 hours, but I don't have a yardstick to measure against whatever was happening in the 80's.
As with any education, it's what you put in that counts. Through my uni days, I saw plenty of students pass with no talent for what they were studying, purely because they had good study skills, and were able to pass the minimum requirements. In many cases the skills they learnt had nothing to do with the skills they needed in their chosen industries.
On the other hand, I know other students who had great talent, but barely got by with a pass mark, or failed, because they rested on their talent, without putting much in.
It often comes down to quality of the student. Sure, a good instructor can make or break, but a good student will quite often make the best out of a bad situation, and will have a thirst for learning.
The way the uni's are run these days, they don't give a stuff about the quality of their graduates, as long as they can quote the numbers of graduates that have passed through their doors, instead of making a name for themselves through quality teaching.
In the end, do you want instructors to keep churning them out like biscuits, or do you want to attract quality pilots?
I guess my rambling point is, nothing is ever as good as it was in the old days, standards have been slipping since well before my grandad first said "the good old days were better", and this is the same thing that is happening across all industries, and society in general.
What is the cause? IMHO it's the rationalisation of everything, the quantification of everything that used to be based on quality.
What is the Answer? Who knows. But one thing might be to institute some kind of ISO 9002 style quality assurance framework. This might seem like another bout of over-regulation, but it is possibly an answer to the problems outlined in the other posts.
Would this increase the cost of training? For sure.
Would it ensure a standard quality of pilot? More than likely, although it would entirely depend on the definitions of quality and airmanship, as enforced by the quality assurance criteria, and like I say, quality is not easy to quantify.
Would some students decide to go with a company which did not have a QA structure in place, as a cheaper alternative? No doubt. But an employer would look at that, and hire accordingly. It might sort the wheat from the chaff.
Not knowing the aviation industry as well as most of you, I don't know if what I've had to say is valid, but I figure it's better to offer a possible solution, than to keep going on about how bad things have gotten.
As far as things change, my two cents worth now, was worth twenty cents back in the 80's! And I would have been able buy a pie and a can of drink, and still have change back then!
