Originally posted by gbotley
It would appear as though the DA40s don't achieve the performance otherwise claimed by manuals for such weather. This caused delays; many of which now rectified with amendments to SOPs for the fleet...
Other training facilities use DA40's in the Phoenix area without significant temperature related issues - is this genuinely weather related, maintenance or management? I appreciate that you are in NZ but is this what your classmates have been told? That said, it has been a particularly warm summer.
Originally posted by gbotley
In any case, the partnership behind the very operation in Arizona is to cease in 2018. Florida, i'm told, is currently undergoing approval for EASA and will replace it as the US base.
As far as weather is concerned, Florida is in fact poorer than the SW USA particularly for coastal airfields; the incidence of CB activity, high winds and the occasional hurricane makes ab-initio training difficult for a large part of the year. The geography is largely featureless leading to benign and repetitive navigation exercises and, as with Arizona, there is a high concentration of other traffic.
Look at the history of European commercial flight training conducted by large schools over the past 20 odd years and you'll see there's a reason why they left Florida for...well, Arizona.