Just curious

[Prangster]

Just curious to know how flying schools balance the need for income against flight safety. I'm thinking of the sort of situation where a 'student' is obviously so unsuited to aviation that he/she is a positive danger to all concerned. Where do you draw the line between perseverence, hoping for improvement and desperation for the cash that might led to the (avoidable) crash.

Do civil schools operate the equivalent of the dreaded military 'chop' ride?

[justmaybe]

Honest and accurate records help, with adherence to the Flying Training Syllabus and Phase progress checks. Third fail to satisfy any Phase check should bring training to an end. To be honest nothing much turns on any of this until you see litigation, and then it suddenly all becomes very interesting

[Reverserbucket]

Honest and accurate records help

Until they are 'adjusted' under the instruction of management to preserve the customer's chance of finding a job. I've seen this frequently, where the student doesn't accept a poor (or even quite acceptable, but not the best) grade in their training record and demands the school changes the score and edits or deletes quite reasonable and accurate, and importantly, helpful narrative for fear of compromising the chance of an interview.

Among those that stick in my mind was an integrated student who clearly suffered some form of mental health issue and was totally unsuited to flying. Not even close to solo after 60+ hours and multiple reviews yet was allowed to continue training through management intervention and was still working through the VFR syllabus some 18 months later. Unsure whether success was finally achieved in that case. Another, who now flies for a big EU loco, was so clueless, that training had to be stopped after about 40 hours (not yet solo) but again, miraculously was sent solo quietly at a satellite airfield by an instructor who had been very carefully briefed by senior management as to the expected outcome. Lots (and I mean lots) of additional training but got to a point where the customer was able to pay for a type-rating so all worked out in the end

[Prangster]

Totally shocked by the responses so far. I was thinking of ppl students not commercial jocks. I will now board my holidy flights with just a tad more trepidation than before.I was prompted to ask the question as I knew a ppl student who never made the grade after spending an absolute fortune. It was of course everyones fault but his own. A friend who was an air trafficker at a local airfield also knew of many instances where fees overode sense. Time for a rethink?

PS I was only a glider pilot

[sapperkenno]

Not to tar all the CPL/MEIR bods with the same brush, but we had one come to us, who had "graduated" from Oxford, then 8 months later come to rent one of our Cessna 150s. So bearing in mind he had all the ticks in boxes from one of the more prestigious schools, having done an integrated course, I looked forward to checking him out... and he was absolute garbage. Couldn't fly straight and level, or perform a co-ordinated medium level turn, didn't remember any "pre-landing checks" (our CFI later flew with him after I passed him on, and said just use the one you learned in the Seneca - which he couldn't remember) and we went on a bit of a land away jolly where I had to hold his hand totally as he had no concept of airspace or R/T or what a MATZ was, or how to get a basic service... long and short of it was he was terrible. And after 5 hours flying with us he still struggled to land the thing with any finesse and we wouldn't allow him to solo, despite having a great day for it the last time he showed up, when we had some of our PPL students happily flying solo.
Anyway, he was a nice enough chap and said he'd come back later to finish off, but was going to Ireland to do some interview prep and fly a fixed base 737 sim...
Luckily we'll never see him again, or risk our aircraft on him as he's got a job at Norwegian Air Shuttle! You absolutely couldn't make it up!