... and whereas that is quite normal at places like Stapleford, they are starting to pop up out of the woodwork elsewhere now. :D

2D

I suppose someone has to clean the aircraft:cool:

How can you judge someones skill or personailty by a tattoo? You could be the most experienced/skilled pilot (or any proffessional for that matter) in the world and having a tattoo would make no difference, especially as tattoos are more and more common.

At the end of the day there are always going to be people who are better than others - the same goes for a sport - if everyone was the same then it wouldnt be a sport - so surely the people who are less proficient or skilled just need more practice or more challenges to become better at something?

I think they're winding you up mazzy!;)
My Father never had an aircraft......what an under-priviliged peasant I am!!:{

Yawningdog, I have to disagree with you. A non profit-making flying club, run by good quality volunteer instructors, will charge you less per hour than a commercial flying school. The instructors are usually much more experienced, and are either ex-military or professional pilots who instruct in their spare time. By being taught well, you will take less time to reach or exceed PPL standard, so you will pay less on flying time.

To expand on my earlier comment in this thread, when I say I am appalled by the standard of flying I have seen, I would list the reasons as follows:

POOR AIRMANSHIP - bad use of R/T (poor proficiency or excessive rambling), circuits the size of Switzerland, non-existent look-out, bad engine-handling, over-reliance on radio nav or GPS.

POOR FLYING SKILLS - flat or wheelbarrowed landings, no use of the rudder in flight, poor heading and height keeping, shaky navigation technique.

I didn't learn to fly that long ago, so don't class myself in the old school. But I was taught by excellent instructors with a wealth of experience behind them. They had no incentive either to rush my PPL training or string it out in order to make more money out of me. I went solo after about 10 hours and passed my skills test after about 50. Now I'm not immodest enough to claim that I am an above average pilot, but the level of skill and technique that I have seen from other pilots sometimes makes me think.

Yawningdog, are you saying that all FI's are monkeys?

Agreed flight training is a low margin business but in my opinion their is no more poverty in flight training than there has ever been. Certainly there are far more gadgets and gismos fitted to training airplanes now than fifty years ago and chapters more of regulations. It could be argued that training should be more extensive but then we could argue that for all types of training from doctors to car drivers too. The potential problem if flight training was made more comprehensive then the added training costs may well put potential students off of training altogether. It could be argued that that would not be a bad thing since there is a huge problem in gaining employment after commercial training anyway so an increase in training costs could be used as a sort of congestion charge! Bad news for new instructors in the short term because the reduction of bodies would be in the student department several years before the abundance of instructors was resolved.

The question of poor returns in the flight training industry will perpetuate all the time that there is so much competition by flight schools for students and there will always be competition as it is all the time that schools can set up on a shoestring using old wrecks of airplanes and have hour building instructors fighting each other for the privilege of flying them for tea money.

Back tom the topic, my view is that flight training is in my view becoming more and more complex and there are more opportunities to see the shortcomings in new pilots now than before. I believe that flight training for the new JAA licence is more difficult than for the old CAA licence and yes, I do have an old CAA licence. But no, I don't have a tatoo. :)

You can tell its pension day, Waitrose was full of blue rinsers, were any of you there?

Gone are the days when all you needed to fly were a pair of socks, some sandals, and a pair of slacks:E :ouch:

Back on topic, I have to say that there is a bit of "looking at the past through rose coloured glasses" here. It stands to reason that if you have had a licence for 30 odd years and flown alot in that time, you are going to have had many experiences that ultimately help you with your airmanship. Those of us who have received our nice beige faux leather JAR licences have lots to learn and benefit greatly from advice and help from "the older generation". Hopefully we will be able to do the same in the future (we'll be saying stuff like "trainings not the same anymore, fancy not having a propellor" - well you can dream can't you)

Thing is, technology moves on (albeit slowly in the flying world) and people need to learn how to use the new stuff - I suppose someone will be complaining that speaking tubes are no longer used for inter-crew communication.....

Well I reckon ...... errrrrrrr maybe not :E

SS

Dewdrop

I agree 100% that schools might try to string out training. I have never seen one school that cares at all about what happens to a PPL once he/she has got their PPL. Flight planning facilities aren't provided, for example. Unless the PPL is going to spend more money on the night Q or an IMCR, and once they've got that they are definitely not "interesting".

It's a great shame because doing a PPL is pretty tedious and not as much fun as it should be (for all the well known reasons, lessons cancelled due to weather etc) but a student going up with an existing PPL just for a flight would see how much fun it really can be. One could do that with an instructor but the "fun" is then costing you say £100-£120/hour - awfully expensive if one is going to actually go somewhere!! Also an instructor isn't going to show you the UNAPPROVED things which make flying to real places a whole lot less uncertain e.g. a GPS :O

But I think one has to come back to the same old theme (here I go again...) as to why the whole business is attracting so many people who cannot afford to do a PPL never mind fly afterwards. This is indirectly responsible for the wreckage that most people train in and fly around, and is directly responsible for the very low currency of the average PPL.

After you've done 100-200 hours, you've forgotten the training anyway. Especially as the great majority of PPLs never even make 100 hours, and those that do usually take years and years to get there. So we are looking at VERY low currency all around.

And pilot currency must have deteoriated compared with say 20 years ago, simply due to the decline of flying as a trendy activity with an interesting social scene.

So.. I would suggest that IF there has been a reduction in competence of PPL pilots (I really don't know if there has; not been around for long enough) then it is much more likely to poor currency than poor training.

It's a pity that nobody from the CAA is officially contributing to these chats because they have all the data at their fingertips.

Look, My point is that the basics have not changed in the 33 years & 5,500 odd hours that I have been flying. I still push forward on the sitck and cows get bigger pull back and cows get smaller.

Many new PPLs seem not even to have a good grasp of basic airmanship. Yes they can work their GPS sets better than me but many cant fly the darn aircraft.

So I think it is down to the instructors not being experienced enough to make a good pilot. Many have 2000 hours round the local area with a student but not enough actual personal flying.

JB

Why does every generation criticise the one below it? My parents did it...now my friends do it, whether it's flying or school standards or behaviour or anything else. It's always looking back nostalgically at the good old days.

Maybe it's me, but I don't see that people, or their standards of...well, anything...have changed much. But then, I was "old" when I started flying, so what do I know?

Hearing that makes me, once again, very glad that I trained, and continue to fly, at the airfield that I did. Full flight planning facilities available to all pilots. An hour's free instruction each year (that's every year, not every two years as per the minimum requirements) for every club member. Several aircraft on the fleet which are actually suitable for real-life IMC flying. Regular seminars (which unfortunately always seem to be a Wednesday night, when I have a regular engagement, so I haven't been to any of them) on things like how to use your GPS.....

As for people not having the ability to handle an aircraft, do you (and by "you" I'm refering to anyone who's more experienced than me, which means most of the posters on this forum!) really expect us to believe that the day you passed your PPL you were just as competent a pilot as you are now? I know I'm a far more competent pilot now than I was the day I passed my PPL. I also know I'm a far less competent pilot than I'd like to be, and that the only way I will ever get close to the same level of competence as those who have logged thousands of hours is to log thousands of hours myself (and make those hours useful, as well).

FFF
---------------

Bad airmanship exists across the entire age spectrum of PPL holders in the UK!
Surely airmanship is something gained through experience....its not taught by an instructor!
I agree with IO540.....poor currency is the problem NOT poor traning or bad instructors.:}

The big problem is that flight training has refused to modernise. Pilots are being trained to yesterdays standards. The ONtrack report showed that about half of airspace infringement happened with a GPS onboard. Its not the fault of the pilots, the flight training industry failed to provide them with the necessary skills required to fly in a modern environment. It a bit like trying to teach 21st century soldiers to fight in trenches with bayonets. Or teaching a wordprocessing course using word perfect and dot matrix printers. No matter how good the training is in the two scenarios above, the trainees will be out of place in a modern environment.
I think that flying schools can be more creative with the products they offer. Most schools offer the same product(Bare minimum) as far as i'm concerned. In the US there are schools where you can choose from 5 different types of PPL courses. Basic simulators (PCATDs) can be used to add variety, a lot of PPL schools in the US and Canada do this.
I also think that in the UK there is this believe that our training is the best in the world. Unfortunately, the end product tells a different story, if not we wouldn't be having this debate. People who knock foreign training tend to know nothing about it. The frequently-bashed american system can have you flying IFR in as little as 70 hrs.
Instructor pay is another major factor. Looking at what instructors are paid, then end product doesn't suprise me at all.
Capt. m

You can't blame instructors for everything, Captain. We have to take responsibility for what we do ourselves. I was lucky to receive excellent training from non hour-builder instructors, who taught for the love of it and emphasised old-school flying skills. When I busted airspace as a newbie PPL, the chain of errors that led to this were all mine, and stemmed from my neglect to do what I had been well trained to do.

On the more general topic, I share the concern about the quality of instruction on offer at some establishments, and the unadventurous, ATC and GPS dependent pilots which this may produce, but would be cautious in generalising about standards now or in the old days, good or bad. I also agree with IO that, tough as it may be, if people can't afford to fly, they shouldn't try to. Sorry, but life is harsh.

Sorry FNG but that last bit sucks!

Over the 20 years that I've been flying (first gliders then power) I have had plenty of periods where I really couldn't afford to fly. Some how I managed to keep going and only ever lapsed once for a short period. I'm only just starting to really be able to afford to fly but I feel my hard times actually helped make me a reasonably good flyer. Instead of simply flying expensive club aeroplanes I was forced (actually I went willingly) to fly cheap single seat PFA types, fly gliders, microlights and cadge flights with others.

Being an impoverished pilot did me NO harm and in many ways made me a better than I might have otherwise been. It's totally arrogant to suggest anyone shouldn't fly simply because they can't really afford to ... If you only ever did what you could afford to at the time, most of us would have never gone to college, got married, had kids or experienced many other of lifes treasures.

SS

Well said ShortStripper - couldn't agree with you more :ok:

I feel the same. Little bit more of a beer gut, but otherwise the same. Doh, but I'm not "near 50", oh well......

I'm sorry if my comment about affording flying came across as arrogant. I am all in favour of cheap PFA-style flying. Some pilots who train at the standard spamcan schools somehow fail to notice that, if they are a bit strapped on the flying budget, they could fly the PFA way and incidentally learn a lot about airmanship whilst reducing their outlay, instead of settling for the occasional local bimble in the rented POS that they learned in. Even allowing for this, however, it's only ever cheap in relative terms. Sometimes we stretch ourselves financially to achieve a desired goal, whether it be going to university, getting married or purchasing pink headsets, but when it comes to keeping up a skill which becomes dangerous to use if not used frequently, dreams and aspirations may have to give way to harsh realities.

Do you remember when some plonker popped up here and moaned because his mates would not pay for passenger rides to subsidise his ATPL training? He seemed to think that he had a right to fly, because he wanted to, but on that basis I would have a right to a new DB9 every three months.

Quote

"learn a lot about airmanship"

Yes and some people would look down their noses at the "pfa types"

To me this is much more important than learning a lot about your new toys.

So to all you instructors out there get back to basics and the rest will sort itself out.