Vetting potential flying club members

[mary meagher]

When somebody turns up off the street and wants to learn to fly, in the US of A they are nowadays making them jump through hoops big time. Photo identification, passports, forms, and what else only those poor furriners who want to learn to fly (but don't bother with learning to actually LAND !! ) have to go through before they are permitted to hand over their life savings to the flight school.....

Gliding clubs are a bit different, both in the US and the UK, the authorities more or less permit us to be self authorising, and true enough we do get to know our members fairly well in the course of their learning to fly.

Usually a flying club, whether a business or a social organisation that barely scrapes along financially, doesn't bother with passports, photo id, criminal records, possible child abuse, etc etc. Nevertheless some strange characters do slip through the net. We welcome uncritically anybody with the money, at least until we get to know them better! I feel so sorry for the Windsor Flying Club, mentioned in the Canadian Forum, when one of their members flew a 172 from Windsor to Nashville, across international borders, in night and fog, with nobody noticing until 9 am the next morning, when the wreckage was discovered in the middle of the Nashville International Airport.

Does your flying organisation vet its potential students in any way? Do you require references? just wondering....

[S-Works]

You would never get any students.... Or retain members.

You may have missed the fact but flying is a hobby. Some people take up cricket, football or birdwatching. Others take up flying.

It is our job in industry to try and weed out the undesirables but its not 100 successful. But then most psychopaths appear perfectly normal to those around them.

[Mariner9]

Well, I suppose if I fail my flying vetting in the US, I'll have to abandon my plans for mass killings using a C152 and will instead go and buy a mini arsenal from Walmarts using only a credit card for ID.

It does make the States far safer, apparently :rolleyes:

[Pace]

When we go to the USA for recurrents we do have to jump through a number of hoops TSA, Correct Visa etc.
Aircraft have had a massive amount of attention since 9/11 and here lies the crux! from that grew a huge security industry and equally huge employment in that industry.
The Security industry is forever looking at more and more ways to add work for themselves and expansion for their industry.
Why aircraft?
Go onto the London tubes any friday night at 1730 and see the thousands of people piling onto the tube trains, every person you can imagine from every country and religious background many dragging cases full of whatever and none challenged. No putting liquids into clear bags for examination by anyone!
An equal risk? Far bigger threat on the tubes.

Sadly the industry grew up around aviation the paranoia around aviation and it all filters down to our little aircraft

Pace

[Rocket2]

"Sadly the industry grew up around aviation the paranoia around aviation and it all filters down to our little aircraft"

I'd suggest that aviation has grown up around a paranoid Nation.

[Ebbie 2003]

Can anyone think of an instance in the UK where someone "slipped through the net" joined a flying club and went on to create mischief with what they learned (I'll discount those who learned to fly so that they could import Bolivian marching powder into remote places in the dead of night!)?

The situation in the US is fooling but the current system was not bought about as a result of 911 - there always was a requirement to get an M-1 visa to learn to fly in the US, the fact that hardly anyone bothered is neither here nor there - the TSA thing is quite simple and no where near as convoluted as one may think (the finger prints being the hassle). Do bear in mind that in the land of the free you can't do anything without some sort of permit (the real estate licenses and licenses to cut hair etc etc).

Not too sure how vetting someone is going to catch someone - unless of course they answer yes to the question "Is it you intention to fly one of the club airplanes illegally, in bad weather, internationally and crash it?".

Most people who do things like this don't have criminal records - if they have mental health issues (did this particular guy in the Nashville crash) that should be picked up during the medical.

This is not a problem that needs a solution unless it happens frequently and/or their is potential to do so.

Start putting foolish vetting in place and I am guessing that it will reduce even further the number of people flying - I'm sure that around the UK there would be plenty of pooters who would just love to be part of a vetting committee - maybe they could have regular meetings with MI5/6 to discuss their concerns about the applicant with the outré cardigan:)

[gasax]

Looks very much like a solution looking for a problem!

Given the less than overwhelming welcome that most visitiors get to flying or gliding clubs only the most determined - either to fly or create mayhem will persist!

I'm reminded of the Special Branch declaration the last time I was on the IOM - "are you, or have you ever been, a member of a terrorist organisation?" I'm told Martin McGuinness and Co, answered NO, because they belonged to an organisation dedicated to Irish freedom......

Given that we all supposedly have a 1 in 3 chance of developing mental illness at some time during our lives there would appear to be little point in screning - now apply that information to firearm licensing!

In practice the social pressures in most clubs produce acceptable behaviour from most people. Those people whose behaviour is unmoderated (and I speak with some experience of child molestation in a clb environment) are frankly so devious and dedicated that screening is completely useless.

[maxred]

Given the less than overwhelming welcome that most visitiors get to flying or gliding clubs only the most determined - either to fly or create mayhem will persist!

Never a truer word said. Add parachute club to that list. I pitched up to be the duty pilot, to drop the days meat, to be met by a total puffed up little piece of nonsense, who told me three times I am the boss, son. Get that!, I am the boss.:ugh::*

I endured the tirade, paying paras getting it as well, for an hour, before, wisely, I think, buggering off.

[hegemon88]

Go onto the London tubes any friday night at 1730 and see the thousands of people piling onto the tube trains, every person you can imagine from every country and religious background many dragging cases full of whatever and none challenged. No putting liquids into clear bags for examination by anyone!
An equal risk? Far bigger threat on the tubes.

I couldn't agree more with the above and other replies. I occasionally take a friend or a family member up from either Stapleford or North Weald and those who are nervous, are told that by coming to the airfield, they have already completed the most dangerous part of the experience. From now on I'll add "especially if you travelled on the Central line".

Given the less than overwhelming welcome that most visitors get to flying or gliding clubs only the most determined - either to fly or create mayhem will persist!

Stapleford sprang to mind again, I wonder why?


/h88

[xrayalpha]

Many years ago, coming home late at night to a top floor flat, I found a person at the door of the office below apparently trying to temporarily fix it closed after a break-in.

So, being a nice guy, I got a hammer and helped him nail it shut!

Of course, it later transpired he was actually a well-known burglar - caught outside the building because the ground floor resident just called the police when he heard the hammering. Police came round, saw well-known chap in the street and arrested him.

Moral is: if we have suspicions at Strathaven, we will have a quiet word with the police. As do most flying schools and airfields.

When they have suspicions, they also contact us. (one time being "do you recognise these names and photos" just a day or two before the hand-luggage ban)

What has been a learning experience for the police has been how to handle things on their side. A story from one Asian member of a nearby flying school was that every time he and his family went on holiday, he was pulled aside into an office at the airport. The school that had passed on the names of all its members, in good faith, was then rightly furious. Not the sort of thing that encourages co-operation.

But, to be frank. Border controls in the UK are a farce. (Google "Lille loophole" and the Stranraer ferry - no border controls now because it is an "internal frontier"! Or just take a yacht across the North Sea/Irish Sea/English Channel)

So the place to secure our borders is actually far away from them, using intelligence. And flying schools and airfields are part of that, as are marinas, the DVLA etc etc.

Remember, what got Al Capone was tax man!

[Dave Wilson]

The only vetting we do is see how much they can drink before falling off the stool.

[A and C]

Vetting for GA pilots ............ Good god no !!!!! A few flights with a good instructor will be enough to flush out those who are flying for the wrong reasons and those who are good enough to fool the instructor are far too able to even bat an eyelid of the so called vetting system.

The airport security system is only put in place to protect govenment ministers and civil servants from the press and the whole system has been hijacked by a few very clever people who employ minimum wage idiots to tick boxes to enable the regulations to be met, the result is not much security but a lot of expence for the aviation industry and big profits for the few at the top of the so called vetting company's.

Just one example of the stupidity of the system is the trouble I had getting an airside pass for a large London airport, the whole process took seven months during this time I was asked for criminal record checks in three country's that I have only set foot in for long enough to change planes and due to a foreign contract agency going bust and being unable to provide a reference for six months of employment, during this missing six months I was also a post holder for an EASA 145 company ( full reference for that !) and I HELD AN AIRSIDE PASS for the very airport that refused to issue the new pass on the grounds they did not have a reference dispite them having issued me with an airside pass for the period !

General aviation is having a hard enough time as it is without giving these worthless security idiots another income stream.

I would suggest that the vetting system put in place by Dave Wilson is likely to be far more effective....... In vino veritas and all that !

[m.Berger]

But then most psychopaths appear perfectly normal to those around them.
Fortunately I don't, so they haven't rumbled me yet.

[Piper.Classique]

We take anyone as long as their cheques don't bounce.

[dublinpilot]

in the US of A they are nowadays making them jump through hoops big time. Photo identification, passports, forms, and what else only those poor furriners who want to learn to fly (but don't bother with learning to actually LAND !! ) have to go through before they are permitted to hand over their life savings to the flight school.....


But what do you really learn from photo id, passports and forms. You might learn their true identity, but you still don't know what they are like.

[Desert185]

Just what we need in this world...more bureaucracy. :mad::ugh:

[piperboy84]

The cops and intelligence services are all over GA in this country, you may not think it but they are. I got a visit at the hangar last week from a guy from special branch ( a rather decent bloke) who stops by from time to time, his job is too keep and eye on airfields for any drug, terrorism and people smuggling, he mentioned during the visit that I had put incorrect info on a GAR I had filed several months back. He had noticed that I had entered my point off departure as Dundee but he knew that I would actually be leaving from the farm strip, I explained it was the first time I had attempted to file aGAR on my iPhone and the pull down menu did not list my farm strip as a choice so I selected the nearest option, which he understood so basically it was a non issue. But it does show ya they are on top of his stuff.

[dont overfil]

Hi Piperboy,
I asked the same gentleman why GA was targeted by Border Force when other travellers were not. The answer I got was "Because we can."

Serious security is too difficult on mass transport but the small number of GA (particularly in our part of the UK) makes the job easy with limited staff. We should consider ourselves fortunate as the small numbers means BF are able to their job on a more personal basis. Ally knows many of the local flyers so security in our area is handled with a light touch and as a result is genuinely a partnership.

Vetting for the lunies, crooks and the walter mitty's is another matter and is much harder to deal with. If they are renters the responsibility lies with the checkout instructor who will not be popular with the school owner if a customer is lost due to an "opinion." However the sole owner??? How many do you know?

D.O.

[onetrack]

Can anyone think of an instance in the UK where someone "slipped through the net" joined a flying club and went on to create mischief with what they learned (I'll discount those who learned to fly so that they could import Bolivian marching powder into remote places in the dead of night!)?

Well, not in the U.K. - but we had one fully qualified pilot Down Under, who was U.K. born, and most certainly of "undesirable character" - and he used a stolen aircraft in a suicide attack, to "exact revenge", in a fit of twisted bitterness.
It was long before 9/11, too, and I don't recall Australia going bonkers with airport and airline security, immediately after that suicide attack - until the Americans insisted it be so, directly after 9/11.

Connellan air disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connellan_air_disaster)

[phiggsbroadband]

Its not just terrorism matters that make someone undesirable; In three (non flying) clubs that I have been a member, illegal sexual habits have been the main problem.

In one case it was a 27 year old man having inappropriate relations with a minor in the (empty) clubroom. The second example was a 46 year old who went to a local city and made out he was a licensed taxi-cab, to lure girls into his vehicle. The third case was of a father having incestuous relations with a female member of his family.

I am not too sure of the extent of what happened in the legal processes that followed each case.

[m.Berger]

In which case, you ought to be more careful about the company you keep.

[Private jet]

The best "vetting" procedure i know of is to get a few drinks into them and then observe what they say and how they behave. Our company interviews are always conducted at some sort of "social" occasion, usually without the subject knowing they are being interviewed.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

The best "vetting" procedure i know of is to get a few drinks into them and then observe what they say and how they behave. Our company interviews are always conducted at some sort of "social" occasion, usually without the subject knowing they are being interviewed.
Once Upon A Time we conducted most of our interviews at 5pm on Friday, because the interviewee didn't want his current employer to know he was going for a job interview, and that way it just looked like he was skiving off early for the weekend.

So we'd do the formal interview bit in the office and then take them down the pub. The ones that didn't realise that how they behaved in the pub was part of the interview tended to do less well!

[Genghis the Engineer]

Once Upon A Time we conducted most of our interviews at 5pm on Friday, because the interviewee didn't want his current employer to know he was going for a job interview, and that way it just looked like he was skiving off early for the weekend.

So we'd do the formal interview bit in the office and then take them down the pub. The ones that didn't realise that how they behaved in the pub was part of the interview tended to do less well!

My current and last employers both have new applicants shown around before their job interviews by one of the senior lab techs. After the interview, the lab tech is brought in and grilled on their opinion. Several marginal candidates have failed to get the job as a result of that bit.

G

[Gertrude the Wombat]

My current and last employers both have new applicants shown around before their job interviews by one of the senior lab techs. After the interview, the lab tech is brought in and grilled on their opinion. Several marginal candidates have failed to get the job as a result of that bit.

My daughter was shown round [a certain well-known London college] by a student, before the formal interview. She was sufficiently unimpressed by the student that she let the authorities know they had a problem ... I assume your senior lab techs did rather better jobs!

[Genghis the Engineer]

My daughter was shown round [a certain well-known London college] by a student, before the formal interview. She was sufficiently unimpressed by the student that she let the authorities know they had a problem ... I assume your senior lab techs did rather better jobs!

We pick them carefully.

Mind you, when I was an academic I'd use one of the existing PhD students to show around the university a prospective new postgrad. They tended to be quite informative, not least because they were thinking in terms of whether the possible incomer would be pulling their weight or not.

G