Course time is not wasted time, but..
navy guys upon completion of dartmouth are taking approximately 3-4 years to get wings when courses only account for about 18-20 months, i think there is a massive waste of time during training and skill fade is huge!. Navy can have a hold after serw for 6+months the get a 5 hour refresher before OCU. The refresher can lead to air warnings, how is that fair!!

This effect actually applies in all sorts of domains apparently; it's not just extra competence that allows you to see how things should be done ideally and how what your doing differs from said ideal. There's a rather good paper on the phenomenon at http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html which is worth reading for some humourous anecsotes as well as the detail of the study it reports.

I would agree for the most part, but I remember at BFTS thinking that I must have been the worst pilot on the course from hearing my colleagues' post-flight banter. I flew with an excellent foreign fighter jock who set his standards extremely high, but in the early days I didn't cope well with his many negative comments and felt that I could never attain the impossibly high standards that he demanded. I reckoned that I would never go solo and felt that I was permanently on the verge of being chopped. My mates started going solo and that made me feel worse. I remember his saying, 'I know you want to go solo and I know I could send you solo, but you don't want to go solo until you are 100%, do you?' Wrong! I wanted to go solo regardless, as I'm sure the rest of you did. My confidence was at rock bottom. Then one day I flew with another instructor (ex V Force, as it happened) and he said things like 'Good', 'Nice turn there' and 'Well done'. Blimey, I was doing something right at last. But wait, nothing in my flying had changed, which meant that perhaps I had always been doing (at least) something right but nobody had told me so before. At the same time, a couple of colleagues flew with my instructor and came back white-faced and trembling, and they sympathised with me for having to put up with such a strict master. My confidence soared as I realised that perhaps I wasn't as bad as all that. I then found that I could absorb my instructor's comments far better and I stopped taking them personally, and our relationship improved no end and I began to enjoy learning from him. Furthermore I came to view my colleagues' chat with a good deal of sceptism and I had a far better idea of where I stood in the rankings. I also came to realise that compassion and encouragement were as important in teaching flying as skill and experience. So thank you, Flt Lt D R, for showing me that not all flying instructors were ogres.

One colleague who did get chopped was having real trouble getting to grips with flying and couldn't solo. He was given about 10 extra hours to try to get him through, which was a lot of extra time considering that most were soloing in about 6 to 8 hours. In the end he was chopped and he was mightily relieved. He said that the pressure on him to succeed had been unbearable and the extra attention embarrassing, and he had realised that he just did not have the aptitude for flying. He was delighted to go off and do something where he had the opportunity to succeed.

How many mates have you seen chopped?
 

Seventeen.

Flying training can be unnecessarily cruel....
 

I totally sympathise with Wee man 18.......my experience is through my son who, having entered the final week at Valley with two trips to go, had to cut short my 'phone call in order to placate his course mate who was in tears in the corridor having just been told he had been chopped!! :{ I believe a similar thing happened to a previous CAS's (Norman Wisdom!) son!
I completely understand that had they proceeded it would/may have been dodgy but surely the system is smart enough where these and similar studes could have been chopped much earlier in their training and then treated with some sympathy/humanity.

It quite shocked me that intelligent people that far through the system should suddenly, irrevocably and unceremoniously be dumped!!... :ugh:

Sad thought this story is, I'd far rather read something like this than experience the grief of his parents at his funeral. Student pilots are chopped for the right reasons, not at the whim of the system.

Does it matter how far through the training pipeline a student gets before they're chopped? It's a tragedy for the individual no matter when it happens. Do you think he should have been chopped earlier? How do you know? As someone posting earlier mentioned, the course starts relatively easy, then the pressure increases and increases. At some point we all cave in, the ones who pass are the ones who can show they can cope with military flying, which takes into account a range of scenarios and situations the candidate may encounter in his/her career. This particular individual clearly couldn't and for their sake, the sake of their colleagues and the sake of the community as a whole he was removed from the course. I doubt he will ceaee flying completely, there will probably be a slot for him somewhere, just not at the fast/pointy end.

I'd rather see the student chopped before he/she gets to a situation they can't cope with, than be buried after.

I went through Finningley in the late 80's and got through by the skin of my teeth, I even got as far as the Stn Cdrs review and sat in front of him with hat on and pleaded for another chance. I guess he felt sorry and gave me another go. I subsequently did 2 OCU's with no real hassle other than the odd duff day, I was was the classic late developer. However, the days and weeks on review gave me grey hairs and I remember praying for good weather before each chop ride.
For anybody on review reading this, never give up until the Staish has swung the axe. Be professional, work hard and fight your corner with dignity and respect to the bitter end, you just never know what might happen.

A chap who was chopped on my course at 208 flies Hercy birds now & loves it, honest!

Although he was gutted at the time the axe fell, relief took over and I think he accepted the decision quickly (in the bar). I don't think he had been enjoying the course for a number of trips and knew that the end was coming for him.

Why be an average FJ pilot when you can be an excellent multi/rotary mate?

Late Chop!
 

A fellow cadet of mine at Cranwell was chopped on his pre-FHT trip which was the culmination of 3 year's training, of which 2 years had been flying training. This was in the days when we graduated with our wings and then went straight to an OCU

Chop early for Christmas
 

Tombstone.
30 years ago, when Dennis Healy was giving us all a bad time, (and I'm not talking about the VAT on fags), some of us would have jumped at the opportunity of the 'other' streams. We had FJ or bust. I bust, and was condemned to 30 years in IT where the 'chop' rate is just as bad. At least the Indians/Chinese are not flying our aeroplanes, or are they.....

Friend of mine got chopped just a few trips short of 'Wings', we were all stunned. At the end of course piss-up in a local pub we raised the question with the instructors, 'How could someone get so far into a course and still be chopped?'
The answer was that the further one got was a measure of the chances you were given in the hope that you would eventually come good, obvious no-hopers were chopped early but if they thought someone might make it he would be allowed to continue, but eventually a decision has to be made.

1980's, Jet Provost BFTS course. Started with fourteen - ended with five. One chopped every two months or so.

Probably the hardest course of my life, so much presuure, such high standards. However, the imposed discipline certainly saved my life in a number of situations over the years. I remember the atmosphere being really oppressive. The QFI's really cared and tried hard to get us through.

I hated it at the time but learned so much from the experience.

TMJ,

Bloody hell!!


I'm sure it just means 'zippo of capacity'! Gotta love the psychologists:ok:

[quote=LFFC]I think you'll find it was always like that - perhaps even tougher.
Just reminded me of a dour welsh trainer, Taff John, on Hastings in the 60's who led a very nervous student into the debriefing room. After they had been sat opposite one another for what seemed an eternity to the wretched trainee, his nemesis looked up from the paperwork he was completing. "What's your name again?", he asked. "Jones, sir", was the reply. "No, no, not your last name, what does your mummy call you?". "John, sir". "Well, John, you're chopped!".
Sorry, inappropriate on so many levels!

As a non-qualified observer, but a passionate flier nontheless, who has experienced many superb hours flying with and behind some real professionals, I am personally quite satisfied the system works and the best get through.

I have been well-aquainted with three very good friends over the years who started out on Wings courses and were chopped and offered other Branches which all three accepted. Two were chopped from the basic course, and the third after he had gained his wings because he did some very stupid and illegal low flying. He was my best man in fact, and it took a long time and many beers before he finally admitted he perhaps should never have got his wings in the first place. He still wears them, of course, and who wouldn't?

The other two both admitted they were probably chopped fairly, one because "I couldn't fly basically", and the other because he could never find a QFI who actually agreed with the way he wanted to progress! The QFIs won because they were all correct!

Another graduate of a Wings course was grounded and kicked out because he actually hit a vehicle on a beach while low -lying, but even his CO stated that to recover the aircraft and get it back to base with a aileron dangling in the breeze was a superb piece of flying!

I remember being told on my "chop interview" that they could teach monkeys to fly if they had enough time, it was all a simple case of how much time they had available?"

... seems to me that somtimes there must be more time than at others!!!!

Wasteful wastage rates
 

Only lost one student chopped in 25 years of jet instruction in three air forces. Of course I'm not aware of how many are presently pushing up daisies. Only know of one really, a Malaysian prince who lost depth perception after a low flyby in a Tebuan of a Malaysian frigate in the Malacca Straits during a Navy Family Day. I knew Shamsuddin ("Sham") loved low flying at high speed but I thought that I'd taught him how to do it properly. Pity we had no oceanic LFA's to teach him the trix n traps over water.

The secret is the avuncular approach. It tends to de-terrify the students. Teach them to be relaxed and alert and their capacity and enthusiasm zooms beyond belief. About 3/4's of that is confidence in you the instructor - and their appreciation of the fact that you're trying your best to get them through, not chop them.

In many tours as a QFI/FIC, including three as Flt Cdr, I had the abiding impression that the wastage was needlessly wasteful. Some of the streaming decisions were criminal. One desk weenie was so impressed with our stats and the fact that an adjoining FTS had half its students wanting to join our Sqn, that he asked me what our secret was. He then wrote a staff paper on it, advocating a more familial approach to pilot training. Sounds like things have regressed back to the old unproductive adversarial system.

Belgique.

Whilst agreeing that a relaxed approach to flying training is desirable, one has to be wary of being too avuncular. Military aviation is a serious business and ,in my experience as an FTS, Sqn, OCU and Staneval QFI, it is not, after an initial few, the lack of polling ability that leads to a chop but an inability to cope under pressure and especially a lack of understanding of errors of judgment. A classic example might be an insistence to continue an approach through a thunderstorm on finals, not necessarily a chop in itself maybe but a sign of a greater overall problem.

I think the policy of totally binning students that have been chopped quite a way downstream in the FJ/RW route is crackers. Let's face it, those that were "streamed" multi-engine at EFTS have actually been chopped earlier than folks who get further along the other streams. Unless the student has an attitude problem, then I believe that candidates who have got, for example, to RW OCUs should get a stab at multis in preference to those were obviously did not do well at EFTS. This current policy runs a dreadful risk of studes trying to get multis at EFTS as a safer route for their career. Furthrmore, I think the common BFTS course would have weeded out some of those that have subsequently been chopoed on (very expensive) multi-engine OCUs. Perhaps MFTS will sort it all out....

I can sympathise with a lot that has been said as a chopped pilot myself.
It took the navy four years to realise that they didn't want my services. I was chopped at the very end of the ASW seaking course, already sent out the invites to the wings parade!!
Could argue the toss over the decision but it is always going to be looked at as sour grapes.
However if the guys on my course wonder why I didn't get to say any goodbyes I was ordered to leave the base within 24 hrs! The caring, sharing navy.
On my leaving interview I was told not to bother with a job as a civilian pilot, with no real reason behind it. I didn’t listen and am now flying at least 700 hrs a year as a commercial helicopter pilot and instructor. Not the same I know but….

FP. (Rev).