Just thought I would chip in again :)
I am suprised people consider an hour building FI's experience so unworthy. An ex-modular student with an FI(A) may have 'only' 275+ or so hours but those hours have been built in an extremely structured and pressurised environment. It isn't easy or simple flying. The P1 time is crammed into a pretty compressed period (so you take the best marginal weather you can get away with), the training is pretty expensive and difficult so there exists pressure applied both internally and externally. The flying skills are pretty well honed well beyond the level of a PPL, their judgement has been tested. All in all an ATPLs lot is a difficult one.

Those 275+ hours probably equate to double that for an average PPLer and possibly more. Hardly insignificant or inexperienced.

HWD.

With 275 hours TT you haven't really started learning yourself. So long as you remember that - and that the only time you stop learning is when you stop flying - you'll have something to contribute!

For any readers of this thread who don't usually venture into the Instructors and Examiners forum, there's a thread there at the moment making some interesting points about instructor qualifications and the possible way ahead.

PS: we can't all aspire to the type convertibility of test pilots, but is one of the problems that people are sometimes to taught ab initio to fly Type X or Type Y, rather than to fly aeroplanes? The amount of earnest discussion that we see here about someone changing from an aeroplane that has the knobs over here, to one that has the knobs over there rather confirms this impression.

High Wing Drifter; 275 hours may seem a lot but how many long solo or PIC flights are in there?? how many different a/c type??

And whats worse youll spend the next 500 hours being flown around the local area by a student. Where will the hands on experience come from??

TR

I'm sure you've all seen the notice in your Club "don't ask anyone in here if they are an instructor, if they are they'll tell you...."

That is unless they have about 10,000 hours, then they will look more like the cleaner and only admit under preassure that they even fly.

JB

Attitude is very important. Some People already have their prejudies and it is impossible for them to learn from someone who falls into their "hate groups". I'm open minded in my approach to aviation becuase some of the greatest aviation feats were accomplished by inexperienced pilots. If some of you chaps were born a few decades earlier, the wright brothers will not have taken off, lindbergh will never have crossed the atlantic and we'll be hailing the fuhrer, cos the RAF will have been a ground unit.
On the other hand, someone has pointed out that the demography of students has changed. A few decades ago, PPL training was aimed at professionals and hi flyers. Now flying is marketed at a less affluent and succesful clientelle. The latter are not as driven and talented as the former. They cannot also afford to maintain currency required to be competent.
So maybe instructing is not the problem. But if they are to blame, as a potential 24 year old instructor, i understand why alot of my age mates don't perform as expected. Nobody expects them to. Its funny that these same guys can fly senecas and electras in the worst weather conditions, handle emergencies impecably and pass rigorous selcion procedures.
Personally i would rather my family or friends fly with a 275hr 24 year old instructor than a experienced 'know all' PPL trained in 1975, NTSB/AAIB reports play an important role in my decision.
In my earlier post, i didn't intend to lay alot of blame in FIs. If FIs are not doing their jobs properly, the CFIs should take sole responsibility. BTW I've not heard of a 24 year old CFI, if anyone finds one we can take him outside the city walls and stone him. that should take care of this problem:E
Capt. manuvar

Some very good points made. There is, across a broad range of professions or hobbies where those that have been doing it for a long time know best, but, new blood brings new ideas, and without new ideas, things will stagnate, and we'll get stuck in a rut.

I still think, though, that it is important that the people who provide the training are able to impart their knowledge in a meaningful manner, and the only milestone that we have to go by are professional teachers - be that educational, or RAF QFIs - no I'm not saying FIs are unprofessional, just that 99% have an alterior motive which is to get a job with an airline.

The people who do the teaching should be able to effectively impart knowledge to all sorts of differing personalities. In order to do this, they have to be able to identify how to teach someone. Some will have a natural ability to do this, others will not, therefore some sort of formal training in teaching could help improve the training experience for students. I guess the problem is funding as I am sure already overburdened fledgling airline pilots would not want to have to fork out further - maybe an extra tenner on the cost of a PPL would help - if you can afford 6 grand plus to get the thing in the first place you could afford another 400 quid I'm sure - just so long as that money goes towards helping FIs become better teachers with some sort of vocational training.

Capt. Manuvar;
I would suggest that a 275 hour 24 year old instructor may be ok under the close supervision of an older CFI, but on his or her own they cannot have enough experience to do the job, as someone said, in most fields of employment it takes HOURS & YEARS to become proficient. Then it takes a good course on how to instruct.

And don't under estimate older PPLs, some fly very fast complex aircraft all over Europe just like your young friends do. Others fly very old, difficult to land a/c into very short strips. There is a lot of different type of experience out there, perhaps you and other young instructors should seek out and fly with some different pilots in different aircraft, expand your experience.


You should also read the US mags "FLYING" & "Private Pilot", there you will find a lot of "real pilots" like Dick Collins etc, who have been around for a long time and who might just know more than your average 275 hour instructor.

Age !!! AGE !!!!
 

Be careful of generalising.

An aquaintance of mine is 22 years old, a QFI, examiner, winner of numerous flying competitions, and has about 3000 hours. He's doing a degree in aerospace engineering as well and likely to graduate in a year or so. Oh yes, and he has test flying qualifications - I examined him and had no doubt at-all about his competence, nor have since. Presumably the panel who authorised him as a PPL examiner didn't either.

He's not as it happens a school CFI - the CFI at that (UK) school is about 20 years older with 3 times his hours and far more experience, but I can't see any reason he couldn't be. I did see him tick-off somebody who was old to be his grandfather for cutting somebody up in the circuit - it was a polite and fair ticking off, but you should have seen the offenders face :}


My point really is not to equate age with experience (or competence), they often go together, but not always. Having been running flight trials since I was 23 - at which point I was a graduate with 3 years professional engineering experience and a dozen types in my logbook varying from a glider to an EH101 (okay, the latter as observer on somebody else's flight trial at Westlands, but it still counts! - FTEs learn on the job), it's a subject I've always been fairly sensitive about - there are some arrogant people out there who naturally assume that youth equals inexperience or inability. Sorry, they are wrong. Not even slightly wrong, totally wrong.

Experienced, well trained, well managed aviation professionals please. Who on earth cares about their age?

G


N.B. At 19, as I made a complete balls up of a Bulldog sortie, my QFI rather forcefully reminded me that at my age some people were already Aces in the Battle of Britain. That would have made them about 23 at the end of the war.

N.B.B R J Mitchell was Chief Designer at Supermarine at 25 I believe.

N.B.B.B. Yes, it is a sore spot, and I don't care admitting to it.

G the E.

Quote from my first post on page 1;

"Seems to me we don't produce the goods anymore. Is it that we have lost most of our good old instructors? Or has the whole PPL setup become too easy?"

Why "did" we have so many talanted and experienced "young people" years ago??

TR

Because years ago we did not live in a nanny state. Children were givien a slap when they did wrong. The took part in competitive sports. They knew their place in society and strove to achieve.

Now they are protected, wrapped in cotton wool and handed everything on a plate. They don't have to earn there place anymore so there is little desire to succeed. So while there are some experianced and worthwhile young people out there as quoted in Genghis example generally speaking the balance are pretty worthless.

My grandfather flew in the war and post war. By 25 he was a wing commander, had flown 38 combat missions in Lancaster's with more medals than we can keep polished. He tells me that they were proud of there country, parents and selves and had the desire to succeed.

All most kids want to do these days is hang around on street corners in oversized clothes bitchin about how hard life is while
listening to dead losers music on there £400 iPods and working out which bush to go and shag in.

As the father of 3 teenagers I am pretty well exposed to this apathy!!

Ghengis

I agree that generalisation forces 'special cases' and it sounds as if your acquaintance is certainly one such person.

However, at 22 he has gained 3,000 hours of professional experience, but not acquired a lot of life experience. This may or may not be a limiting factor in his particular role, but in my area of expertise, which is not aviation related, there is certainly a high premium paid for experience as well as qualifications.

I guess that if I added up my working hours, say the last 10 years would be relevant at an average of 1500hrs per annum (somewhat higher than your average ATPL due to no hours cap), then my life experience (a fuction of age) and 15,000 hours relevant work experience, brings a premium of about 90-100% over a younger and equally qualified, but less experienced person.

It would be interesting to run an experiment to see if there really is that (or any!) amount of measurable difference in the value given and received by knowledge transfer, but there must be a reason that sophisticated organisations pay nearly double the price and I suspect that trainee perception plays a great part in this. If they perceive me to be "expert", then they are more likely to follow my advice, which of course is precisely what their company wishes them to do.

Extending this principle of perception, if a customer of a FI perceives (a) inexperience and (b) ulterior motive in working towards an ATPL, this possibly explains some of the emotions and thinking on this thread.

I don't think that it is arrogance in every case Ghengis, but just people 'norming' against their experience of society, where the authority figures and experts do tend to be the 'wrong' side of 40!

Have you ever noticed that newspaper articles tend to quote age - e.g. "Final 3 Greens, age 47, is an opinionated b@stard who presents polemic as reasoned argument." What is the relevance of age in this context? So why is it so often quoted?

The answer is that age and experience are unconsciously linked in society's thinking and are used as a benchmark for decision making - perhaps inappropriately.

Personally, I believe that PPL instructing is more oriented to algorithms than heuristics - e.g. the majority of learning is about "if this happens, then do that", rather than solving unstructured and messy problems.

Of course, there is some of the latter and it is very important (e.g. , WX diversion planning) but IMHO the majority of the course is about learning by rote - and that is no bad thing, the good practices learned become instinctive.

So one could hypothesise that the life and work experience of instructor at PPL is less important and that 275 hours is more than adequate for this role - I had a low hours instructor, working towards the airlines and he did a super job in teaching me how to fly. His attitude was totally professional and I never doubted his commitment to my success.

bose-x;

I think your right,

Did anyone hear a discussion on radio 5 live, Sunday night. Some Junior football league in Scotland have changed the rules. If a team is winning more than 4-0 at half time the score is back to 0-0 and the loosing team can bring on an extra player in case the kids are emotionally damaged.


What the hell is really going on in this Country.

TR

TonyR

Things were always better in the old days.

Every generation agrees that and it is fascinating to listen to old soldiers or airmen recalling their times in world wars in those terms.

With regard to society today, I do think that we suffer from those who tinker around with things that have worked well in the past, but which are felt to be past their time.

As Urusla Le Guin once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it and if it is broke and you don't know how to fix it, don't fix it."

Perhaps its time for PPRuNE in Parliament, I am sure we can agree amongst ourselves just as much as the others. Any leadership suggestions???

How about, bose-x & TonyR,

standing on a "bring back National Service and beat the hell out of all young people ticket"

JB

PS I,d consider being campain manager, for a good fee

I'm inclined to believe that flying experience is what we are really looking for in a flying instructor, life experience is important in some other areas (he might, for example, be a very poor Samaritan), but I can't quite see how experience outside of aviation is all that relevant in this context.

G

F3G,

A very very good post (the long one). Most insightful :ok:

One little thing in the short post:
We have to push boundaries though. If something is working well for a while it does generally pay in the long run to try to 'optimise'...not always though. Trouble is that it is not possible to know one way or the other until tinkering is complete :uhoh:

Ghengis

Who is 'we?'

So pilots and students cease to be human in the flight deck/cockpit and do not act in ways that are generic to life?

Put it another way, I run a very well received educational programme about "human factors in project management." Guess what body of research spawned that ;)

Actually, if you re-read my post, you will find that I was agreeing with you, but expressing an opinion as to why others may not - apologies if it was not clear.

HWD

Fair cop :O

You've obviously flown with me at some point, when was it?


Seriously, I think we are all heading towards broad agreement anyway - and I think that in answer to your point, I think that somebody who has managed to survive 3000 hours and become a PPL examiner (not a particularly easy achievement I understand) has probably demonstrated enough maturity that we need not worry unnecessarily.

G