"Young Instructor ordered to milk you"
 

I havent read an Australian Flying Magazine for years. i bought a copy of the November-December issue and finally got around to reading it over an early Sunday coffee.

In the "letters" section Jim Davis makes a number of derogatory comments that require a public response as they are obviously so detached from reality and inappropiate.

Basically he is addressing a query about an overly exhaustive Aeroplane Flight Review. It was 2.2 hours by the way. Jim, although i doubt it would ever happen, please make sure you NEVER set foot in any Flying school i am attached to.

He "reminds" the readers that an AFR isnt a test and cant be failed. Wrong! An AFR is an opportunity for an appropiately qualified instructor to assess that you are operating safely, have the required knowledge, and that you have a darn good chance of bringing your passengers and yourself back safely. If your not safe, trust me. You wont pass an AFR. Remember the pilot is putting his name to it.

He then suggests that the customer "tell" the flying school what will be involved. Hey Jim, how about a discussion between the two parties and coming up with a mutually agreed on, plan of attack. If a customer contacted me and started "telling" me how an AFR was going to be conducted, he wouldnt get very far.

This particular pilots last AFR had been completed in about one hour as had his previous ones. The new flying school then gets taken to task. They covered off on weight and balance, performance charts, a written questionaire, flightplanning and a 2.2 hour flight with 6 stalls demonstrated, forced landings, diversions etc. Very thorough by the sound of it. Probably quite wise of the flying school to pick up on the previous "tick in the box AFRs" and to actually meet their legal obligations and actually display some concern for the customers welfare.

Then the comment that gets the blood boiling "sounds like the young instructor was under orders to milk you". Jim, do you seriously think that the "young" instructor conducting an AFR. Who, by the way must be at least a Grade Two instructor with 400 hours instruction really received an order to that effect. I have been in the training industry for 20 years, worked beside about 150 different instructors, in organisations in Australia and overseas. That is without doubt one of the most ridiculous comments that i have ever heard. Do you seriously think that a CFI would seriously talk to a Grade Two like that, and that a Grade Two would launch an aircraft with that mindset. If you made that comment about my school in a public form, there would be lawyers involved.

Further comments by Jim, "a good instructor can tell before you takeoff whether you are OK". Most instructors will be able to have an idea but thats another ridiculous statement.

To anybody doing an AFR, please read through the CASA CAAP on AFRs and look at the massive responsibility and accountability that CASA puts on instructional staff to complete an AFR. Its impossible for an AFR to be ticked off in one hour unless the student and instructor have flown together extensively in the previous two years.

Jim, those comments dont enhance safety in any way. When you walk into a flying school make sure you have a good understanding of the responsibility that the flying school has. Treat the process with the respect it deserves.

Instuctors are universally hopelessly underpaid and have far more responsibility and accountability than the average punter can even comprehend. For those of you that want a proper AFR track down that instructor that completed the "disgruntled" pilots AFR. For those of you looking for a 1 hour AFR maybe contact Jim and see if he can point you in the direction of the 1 hour AFR.

Jim, you have enormous experience. You put out some trully brilliant material. I could be wrong but i will bet London to a brick you have negligible, if any civilian instructing experience in Australia. Your comments are dangerous and detrimental to flight safety.

How about you send one of your journos out to a flying school (not mine) and spend a week with an instructor to really find out what they have to do, and the responsibility that they carry.

In the school i work at now, we are dealing with a pilot who has had these previous "tick in the box AFRs". He has a great attitude but is paying the price of substandard AFRs that have made him "unsafe"

Fortunately, the vast majority of candidates presenting for an AFR display an exceptional attitude and it could just be that the letter writer and Jim are really just that little bit better than the rest of us. But i sincerely doubt it.

Next Sunday i will buy the Herald Sun for some more high brow reading.

Removed, words words.....

interesting post, some anger there for sure.
Now I'm not in the C&T business but would it be not prudent to make the length of a ANR or BFR or whatever they call them these days commensurate with the pilot under tests previous & current flying experience? I mean someone whom crawls from out of the bush who hasn't flown much at all in the past 6-12 months or so be checked accordingly IE somewhat extensively & a pilot whom flies reg say in his/her own A/C be also checked accordingly.

I imagine seeing as the business of flying at any level here in Oz isn't quite flourishing then there's always gunna be the opportunity for some to 'milk' as they say certain situations, that's being going on in any industry since man invented any machines that required some sort of reg testing procedures, aviation isn't unique in that area I'd say.

Wmk2

While I empathise with your frustration, most flight schools now rate their underpaid instructor at $100 ph. Maybe a reduction in the rate when you are performing tasks of multiple hours (2+) is the answer, personally my last BFR was performed while flying from Cowra to Townsville, I do like a new challenge from time to time and like use my instructor accordingly. For country pilots take advantage of some poor instructor in (say) Bankstown and go terrorise the Sydney basin (and the instructor) while you do the basics .... Nothing says you have to stay in the training area. :E

With all due respect, how does a couple of "dodgey" AFR's make a pilot unsafe?

The weight and balance, performance charts, written questionaire and some flight planning sounds more than reasonable, BUT 2.2 hours flight time??? I'm presuming it was one flight.

Something isn't right if the flight took 2.2 hours. I say this for several reasons. The flight review is supposed to be a review of standards and a learning exercise.

If a competent instructor and competent candidate cannot knock the requirements for a flight review in an hour to 1 hour 30 tops then there's something seriously wrong.

If the candidate is having issues that require addressing they will be well over learning anything by the hour to hour 30 mark. The flight should have been terminated with an appointment made for follow up flights.

The flight review isn't failed as such, it's just not complete.

In the absence of a like button ... What 27/09 said .... :ok:

Couple of points; whilst Davis sets my teeth on edge for a multitude of reasons, he does actually have some Aussie experience. Bunbury Flight School or some such if memory serves. I think he was there for 4 years or so and retained some interest in the place for several years after, although that hardly qualifies him as an authority on the local situation, I would have thought.

He is unfortunately used to a fawning reception from fans in the old country and tends to exaggerate for effect all too frequently, I find. That said, there is a grain of truth in what he says here and there are definitely schools and instructors where more is better when it comes to hours for a given task. Yes I'm looking at you, Mr "10 hours minimum" for an RA conversion!

I was a country instructor when the BFR came in, 1982-3?
There were PPLs with licences for many years with no oversight, some great, some not.;)
I finished many in an hour or so, trying to cover items the pilot would get the most out of as a learning experience, depending on the way they used their licence. Although you may not be able to "fail" a BFR it is certainly possible to not complete one. :uhoh:
One guy, with his own aircraft, was very poor in all respects. He had his own aircraft on a private strip for maybe 20 years with no oversight at all.
After a quick flight I was able to tell him where I felt he was at and work out a plan to get him up to scratch. I understand he gave up flying eventually having never flown with me again, a good outcome in that case. :ok:As a motor mechanic He did all his aircraft work and found a tame Lame somewhere to sign it out, definitely the worst GA aircraft I ever flew!:ugh:
These days with pilots doing the review every two years it should be easier!;)

Six stalls and in something like a Cessna 152/172:ugh: Talk about an overkill and would lend weight to the claim that the AFR is a good money spinner.
The 2.2 hour flight is also a bit suss, too. Especially when you consider that to qualify for a job in Jetstar, a candidate is assessed over 45 minutes in a Boeing 737 simulator - a type he would never have operated previously.

Unfortunately for our insurers, there are varying levels of skill, experience and recency among my colleagues and I, with me being definitely at the shallow end of the gene pool and as a result there were "incidents" allegedly caused by experienced, but not very current pilots.

A 2.2 hr BFR suggests to me that there was some serious "practice" required before a manoeuvre could be successfully ticked off as passable. Say three forced landings and stalls with recovery within 100 ft, etc.

I personally feel short changed if my BFR is shorter than 1.5 hours and doesn't leave me tired from having had a few curly ones thrown at me.

Sunfish beat me to pointing it out, but we weren't there, perhaps this particular person was not up to standard on some sequences, may be 4 of his 6 stalls demonstrated poor recovery techniques and it took a total of 6 before the instructor in question was satisfied. On the other hand the instructor may of been over zealous, without being there we will never know. There tends to be two sides to a story.

I do recall from my instructing days that you would get the occasional PPL holder that would feel that doing a BFR was a waste of their time and money because they were of the opinion they were good enough already and did not need to prove it, and they typically (not always) were the ones that needed a BFR the most (most likely due to attitude than ability). It is that type of person that I would envision writing the above mentioned letter.

A quick scan through my logbook shows that when I conducted BFRs they ranged from about 1.3 to 1.8 hours duration, though this to me does not mean that a 2.2 hour BFR would necessarily be excessive, it does depend a lot on the candidate.

Aircraft Flight Review
 

The author of the original article is quite correct that the AFR is not a PASS/FAIL matter BUT if he fails to come up to scratch, then the log book endorsement is not issued. As for a 2.2 hour assessment; I do not find that unrealistic at all in certain circumstances especially for a PPL holder. I say well done to the instructor in question!:ok:

the BFR/AFR is one of the greatest rorts ever inflicted on private pilots.

sure in airlines they do recurrent training on the complex machines that they fly but perpetual checks on pilots of simple light aircraft. give me a break.

and you wonder why the flying environment is dead and in terminal decline.
what clueless morons you all are to support the clueless CASA bull****.

dubbleyew eight, you can't really believe that can you? You're seriously going to have a go at CASA for introducing a law designed to try and keep Private Pilots in check?

We all have to share the same airspace, we all have to overfly the general public to some degree, Commercial Pilots obviously should be under more recency requirements, which we are, but why should there not be some mechanism to ensure that PPLs are also maintaining their skills to an acceptable standard?

Is it really that much of a burden every 2 years to go for a flight with an instructor for a couple of hours to ensure you haven't let yourself lapse into bad habits and to ensure you practice the necessary skills?! You seriously believe that a mere $600-$1000, probably less if you have your own aircraft, set aside over 2 years is CASAs GREATEST rort?

First off, not current at moment...

If you hate the idea of the AFR as a dead waste of dollars and time, then, do something productive before you fall due. Do an endorsement or go for a rating. I got retract added and my next goal is NVFR. However, this time, because I have been out of the game is a couple of hours dual, some bookwork and then go for an AFR. If you are flying regularly then seriously looking at training for the next step certainly keeps you honed as a diligent PPL.

make that AT LEAST, a couple of hours dual:ok:

This was your first mistake ...

Is there an AFR/BFR requirement in e.g. the USA, NZ, or Nigeria?

it seems an odd quirk in the british colonial mentality that if you create a system where people "can exercise a delegation" then you get all manner of dropkicks who come out with their tin whistles and officious looking hats to really make something of it.

consider two scenarios.

you are tested at the end of your training, deemed competent and thereafter go about flying and enjoying the life as a pilot.

or

you are tested at the end of your training, thereafter treated as an idiot, never seen as competent and are expected to enjoy a regime of tosspots and wankers who want to exert their authority over you. oh and every enjoyment you might make of it is considered a crime of strict liability.

I learnt to fly in the first environment. I can tell you that the current environment attracts absolutely no one.

Yes you need to do a BFR in USA, minimum of one hour ground and one hour in flight.

Many ways to achieve a flight review in the USA: Pilots - WINGS - Pilot Proficiency Program - FAA - FAASTeam - FAASafety.gov
All very sensible there.

Love the ones who complain, "but my last review was just three circuits!"

Well, seeing as it's my name on your license saying you're safe for the next two years, them I'm going to be damn sure you can actually fly.

I've been contacted by CASA after both AFRs and endorsements when the pilot has screwed something up. If I had done a shifty, guess who would've been in the crap?

Unfortunately, you can't help what they do after all your efforts.:rolleyes:

The only people bitching and moaning about long flight reviews, are probably the remedials that need the extra time. The things flight schools wont ever say to a "customer" is that you are crap. But I can guarantee you, just like any cross section of a community, some of us are awesome, some of us are middle of the road, and some of us are absolutely rubbish (same goes for instructors). Strangely the ego levels don't match the reality.

Just because you have a few hundred hours and own your own aircraft does not make you king, in fact it puts you right in the middle of the worst statistical group for deaths and accidents/incidents in Australia. Thats why CASA are targeting you.

Here's the thing.. If you had to put your name to someone's proficiency, have a think about exactly what that means. If you go out and royally screw up or worse, CASA will come looking for the instructor/s putting their ARNs on the line.

You can tell a lot about a pilot by the way in which he turns up and his basic preparedness, but people do the strangest sh1t under what they perceive as pressure, and if thats all we have to go on and see, we're not ticking all the boxes and you need to do more work.

You will never hear it spoken of like this in your flight school, not to your face anyway, but take it from me, behind closed doors, conversations like this will take place, and its not to be a pain in your butt, or fleece you of dollars, but to do our job (which is to make you a better pilot if we can), and protect ourselves legally.

If the industry paid instructors more, you'd be able to keep people who actually give a sh1t about standards and want to see things lift, stay in the game, but the good guys tend to move on, and the industry is filled with guys who see it as a dirty job they need to do to get in the left seat.

Dubbleweight:

I hope you are a MS flight Sim pilot and can never get your hands on a real aircraft.

The BFR is merely a subset of the checking and training that is applied to RPT pilots every few months. Do you wish to suggest their checks are BS too?

Personally, I have been asked where to check the oil on a C172 by a pilot much older Nd more experienced than I. His excuse? "Haven't flown this type for a few years".

I've only had two pilots decline to do an AFR with me after I had explained relevant parts of the CAAP to them. One called later to say he had done a floatplane endorsement rather than waste his money doing an AFR with me. The other said he always had another pilot in the RHS so didn't need a proper AFR - I hope he chose to hang up his headset.

Despite being in an airline cyclic program, recently I needed a BFR for my bugsmasher (recreation) certificate renewal. In the past the RA Aus people accepted that a pilot in some other regular checking system automatically qualified for RA. However, and rightly in my view, they now require some proof of competence in more representative aircraft.

Phoning around and making a few enquiries, I got varying responses from "we will just do a few circuits to see if you are OK" to needing a two hour question-and-answer review and "probably about two hours in the air". I don't do OTT, even at work, so scrub that guy. And I really could not see what benefit I would get from doing 'a few circuits' so scrub the el-cheapo guy as well.
I settled for the school that quoted a standard hour, but more if I needed it. Sounded professional and practical, and proved to be so. Their aircraft was immaculate and the instructor, although fairly new to the game, was enthusiastic and thorough. We did a couple of stalls, a couple of forced landing exercises, a steep turn and a simulated EFATO. The boxes were all ticked in 40 minutes, so I was then given the opportunity to practice what I saw as best for me. Because I don't like doing full glide approaches in my own aircraft, I took advantage of theirs to sharpen up this rarely-practiced skill.

This particular school had a minimum charge of an hour, which is fair on two counts: 1. Because there is no pilot on the planet who would not benefit from an hour's dual every two years, and
2. They have a substantial investment in new-ish aircraft and obviously need to run it as a business.

But, if a pilot needs more than an hour and a bit of coaching, there is no doubt that this school would insist on it. If the pilot did not accept those terms prior to the BFR, I would like to think that they would turn away that business.

Of course a pilot unable to accept those terms would probably go to el cheapo in the first place. Which is OK too, because in the fullness of time Charles Darwin will yet again be proven right.

what a load of codswallop you people write.

we have an environment now where people simply aren't flying enough to remain current. no amount of instructor time is going to fix that.

when are you going to realise then acknowledge that CASA are total effing nutters and have set aviation on a course that is a terminal end game.

you will not fix aviation in this country until you start structuring the environment so that pilots get out and fly their aircraft.

me, I went for a fly over the city on saturday. it wasn't a drama.
the area controller was so bored by the lack of radio traffic that he issued an "all stations, the qnh is 1014" just to relieve the boredom.

ffs you wankers put your tin whistles and important looking hats away and work toward getting aviation in this country working again.

you have no future otherwise.

Dubbleyew eight, the BFR is not part of the problem.

Decorum, please. This is a professional forum. Outsiders may read these pages and get the impression its just another teen-age facebook like rabble:E

sunfish this safety thing is such a pervasive part of aviation that you wonder why.

when you drive down the freeway at higher than suburban speeds I'll wager that you are never focussed on "safety", you are focussed on getting there without pranging or getting lost.

when you go out fishing in the tinny, you stow the safety gear under the seats so that you can get on with the fishing. you are focussed on finding where the fish are, not in drowning or "safety"

so why the great focus on safety in aviation? why not a focus on competent aviation?
I wouldn't mind betting that what is actually at play here is the fear of death.
some people succumb to the rituals of a religion to assuage their fears of the unknown. some people can never realise that while they can't see it because the air is transparent there are huge forces exerted on an aeroplane that will reliably occur if the speed is kept up.
biennials are more of a ritual to assuage the fear of flying than anything of real benefit.

on a personal basis I have no fear of flying. 40 years studying and playing with aerodynamics and a decade of aeronautical engineering study have removed my fear of flying completely.

lets just move beyond the BFR concept. the accidents still occur so what next?
will CASA require co pilots in every private aircraft because it is a demonstrated safety benefit in the airlines.

you have got to conquer your fear of flying or it leads to all sorts of nonsense ritual behaviour.

Are you actually serious?
 

W8

You ask why the focus on safety in aviation?

Really?

I think perhaps it's time to pass on your headset.

We want safety so that when we tell people we are pilots they say they want to fly, not start reminding us of all the crashes.

If this is seriously your attitude then I very much recommend that you give it up because our industry does not need you in the air.

An hour and a half every 2 years. Not that hard for a little peace of mind and to check you haven't developed any bad habits.

To answer an earlier question: yes NZ has a BFR for licenced pilots (can also be done as part of an instructor/instrument etc renewal, if those are being done). Sounds much the same as an Australian one. No minimum time, up to assessing instructors standard (which should be the book standard for the licence held) or it continues until that standard is met.

I've done a few as an instructor, some took about an hour, others a bit longer, some much longer. The much longer ones sometimes stretched to multiple flights.

No I did not milk it, being flown badly about the sky observing variations of incompetance did not make me feel like going back for seconds (or thirds or sixths) but some people were just that bad and there was no way my signature was going into that book until I was happy (same went for any paperwork, I was happy to help and correct, but I wasn't going to do the whole bloodly lot).

At least one had some 'funny' hours and it showed. That one was never finished and we later received phone calls for another training organisation and the CAA about him.

Guys/gals whilst I don't subscribe to everything that D8 mentions here I think some are getting a little over the top with all this.

I mean flying a plane is nothing special, it's just a learnt skill, much like handling any piece of machinery that requires training. I've said it a few times amongst these pages it's really just a trade, I personally don't call it a profession as such (& that's just my opinion), again it's just a skill that one gets shown, understands the reasoning behind it & then practices it 'till a level of proficiency of achieved, that is it no more.

A BFR is like getting yr car checked every year for road worthiness (not here in Vic which is astonishing!) same with pilots that I believe ought to be done but not go over the top with it as anyone can behave like a circus monkey on the day perform all the required tasks of the tester bluffing them then fly off with the tick/s in the box totally in his or her world.
The concept is a bit of ass covering which society has to have & at times for reasons that are not safety orientated.
Just because you sign someone off on the day does that mean he/she will be as safe the follwoing day? Hardly!


Wmk2

W8:

I fly, drive, sail and scuba dive. Fear doesn't come into it. I have a fair idea of exactly what is going to happen to me and how fast it will happen if I stuff up.

....That is why I practice risk management and that includes regular practice and consideration of emergency situations.

On that same vein then Wally Mk2, why do we bother we Police? Criminals still manage to commit crime anyway so why bother? We still see dodgy vehicles on the road that somehow passed a roadworthy so why bother with those either? Terrorists, drug smugglers and other nefarious fiends are going to find ways to get things onto an aircraft they shouldn't so why do we bother with that?

I know I'm going a little overboard with some of those examples but the fact remains, just because something isn't 100% effective by itself doesn't mean you don't bother, it becomes part of the overall safety net designed to try and make sure people are in good habits and capable.

You're entirely right with the AFRs, someone can pass one and go out and do something exceptionally stupid, in that case the instructor turns around and says "Well, I told him not to be a complete tool, he demonstrated he was capable of being a safe Pilot so I signed him off" Yes, it's a bit of ass covering to some degree but there are plenty of practical aspects to it, doesn't mean we don't do it just because people can go and be twits after the fact!!

"IXY" I understand where yr comin' & agree with you from but that single word used the world over "WHY" in all languages will always perplex mankind :-)
Why indeed do we do anything from cleaning our teeth to checking the the fuel in our tanks, why we do it is to keep the species alive & maintain some semblance of order & longevity.
It's a bit like insurance, why have it?................. 'Just in case' Doesn't guarantee anything.
Why carry a spare wheel? 'Just in case' Doesn't guarantee anything.
Why do we have a BFR/AFR? "Just in case' Doesn't guarantee anything.

If we didn't 'WHY" then there would be more 'WHY's":-)


Long live the Aeroplane:ok:

Wmk2

Hahaha, can't argue with that kinda fuzzy logic Wally MK2!!

You may ask "Why?" Me, I prefer to ask "Why not?" :E

Just for the record. I've worked for a flight school where the instructors were told to milk the students. In fact, I saw the owner ask for a $3000.00 fee to release a pilots log book after completing a CPL.

is the biennial flight review the right way to go?
 

on one of the threads someone asked me the question something along the lines of ...
"if a biennial flight review costs you $680 for two hours with an instructor, is that really a problem?"

as a private owner I don't normally bother to amortise my costs totally on a per hour basis but the last time I did it it was $55 per hour all in.

what I do is count my fuel costs and oil and if I have that in the wallet I go flying.
21.5 litres an hour fuel burnt at a perth price of $1.54 per litre is just under $34 per hour.
$680 biennial cost divided by $34 an hour is the equivalent of 20 hours local flying. I haven't rigged it, it just worked out that way.

I also looked at a flight Perth to Gawler just north of adelaide.
home to kalgoorlie, 300 nautical miles
kalgoorlie to forrest, 345 nautical miles
forrest to ceduna, 297 nautical miles
ceduna to port pirie, 238 nautical miles
port pirie to gawler, 90 nautical miles.
total distance 1270 nautical miles.

I normally cruise near 120 knots but for preliminary flight planning I plan on a cruise speed of 110 knots, that way I can ignore a headwind up to 10 knots.

at 110 knots I get a flight time of 11 hours 36 minutes.

so a 2 hour biennial with an instructor costs more than a flight across australia for me.
I know which scenario would get me more experience and hone the skills for the $680.

if I use just perth prices for fuel the biennial amounts to the cost of a flight across to gawler and back. obviously the fuel costs in the outback will be higher but a biennial is a significant waste of money.

btw last night my son said "what are you complaining about? every two years I have to have 5 biennials."

... and people wonder why aviation in this country is dead.

Perhaps not the correct sub-forum for a thread ending in a question mark, but I’ll leave that to the mods…

During your flight Perth to Gawler, do you practise a diversion, engine failure and forced landing?

For my part, if a BFR/AFR is considered an appropriate requirement in the USA, I don’t see why it’s inappropriate in Australia.