A way to save on landing fees perhaps? eg company is paid £200 an hour, if each landing is £5 getting 3-4 landings an hours instead of 6-7 saves £15 or to put it another way makes an extra 7.5% profit

This decision clearly results from the number of runway 'incidents' out in Goodyear over the last 6 months.

Particularly - the really really bad runway incursion that left an a/c written off back in the Summer.

I'm not sure the decision rests entirely with the flying school in question but I suspect the FAA might have put a certain amount of insistence upon the school due to the increased regularity of these incidents.

Obviously it's a disadvantage to any student going out there to train.

I guess the only option would be to try and sneak in some touch n goes at Mobile, Gila Bend, Buckeye - and if you're likely to get caught go to one of the controlled airfields and do it, Chandler / Williams Gateway / Deer Valley?

I believe the flying school has undergone an element of restructure and the guys who are now heading up the operation are pretty decent guys - albeit strict and very much by-the-book but I expect the FAA have had a quiet word and this is the result.....

Wingo

Have a look at the schedules? I was a PPL flight instructor, I have no need to. Doubling the time for solo circuits is going to cost several hundred pounds, at no cost to the school and no increase in safety. It is a rip off.

Wow that is really absurd! As many people have said get out of there, find another flight school. I'm currently on my solo consolidation, if my instructor/flying club restricted me to doing full stops I'd definitely take my business else where. For an instructor to hop out of that plane for the first time and say off you go means that he trusts you to be able to cope with everything that is needed within the circuit, including the touch and goes. If they can't trust a student to take up the flaps on a touch and go then really that student shouldn't be flying solo.

Eh thats not always the case, imagine this scenario. You are on an integrated course, your agreement states that you solo after X number of hours and that you will take your skill test after X hours. Both are minimum numbers, so if you go over you will incur a charge. Its simple economic sense.

When I did my PPL my instructor hopped out of the plane at Immokolee and let me do my touch and goes, I did 5 approaches, 4 T and G's one Go Around and I was in radio contact with him all the time.

As I understand it; according management, this is a temporary restriction imposed by the H.O.T. for safety reasons while they investigate and remediate several recent incidences of unstabilized approaches during solo T&Gs.

Wingo, why would you not want to practice touch and go's. I did loads once I got my solo and even more once I was hour building.
Circuit bashing is dammed useful the more you do the eaiser it gets, sure beats just flying from A to B and back again, you might as well do some T&G's especially as it does not cost anything at most US airports. Hell I did loads of night ones with and with out my landing light. There is no skill in just flying straight and level you should try to improve your landing technique every time you fly.

I have no idea why this school have stopped T&G's but I can only imagine it is for safety reasons.

Wingo, just trying to help.
As to safety many many flight schools around the world allow students to do touch and go's and some even allow then to go cross country even before they have obtained their PPL's.
IF I was a student here then I would be very concerned I am sure the standard of instructing is fine, but if this is safety related, then is there a problem in the system? If so would I want to train here?

At nearly all of the schools I've trained at touch and gos were prohibited before private test completed.

If your school has Cessnas - I believe there has been problems with the Cessna flap switches.

Trust your CFI, and always check your flaps visually. It is almost definitely safety related.

As another student in the same school at the same airport in this affair I'd like to clarify a couple of things -

1. It is not a money making scam as our integrated course times are Take Off to Landing plus 15 minutes for taxi (which often works out better for us as taxi/hold times can be long). Students who do the full-stop and taxi back can stop the clock so to speak once they've vacated the active i.e. the taxi-back time is not counted as air time. The Hobbs time is only for maintenance use and has nothing to do with this. Yes it's a pain and the days of getting 8-9 landings in a 1 hour solo are gone, but we shouldn't be any worse off financially/flight time.

2. The local German school at the airport do NOT allow touch and go's on solo's either, although they do allow landings at uncontrolled fields whereas our school do not. There's no doubt that the full stop and taxi back would be alot easier at a smaller uncontrolled field than a busy airport. Perhaps this should be raised to them as any pilot with a few brain cells should be just as capible of landing at an uncontrolled field as controlled.

3. There have been a number of instances where aircraft have ran off the runway for a number of reasons, mainly because of bad piloting.

Therefore the school have had to do something, dont you think? It is really unfortunate for the rest of us that a few individuals who are clearly incompetent have ruined it for the rest of us, but sadly thats how life works sometimes.
Perhaps WG100 should discuss their concerns with management at the next weekly senior management meeting with students rather than complaining about it on pprune?

Restricted solo-flying in germany is a different thing to the US since we have about 15-25000 flights a day during weekends ( and of course in summertime) in mostly in class G airspace in an area having about the size of upstate NY ( don't blame me for geography :D ) just to give you a clue.
It is still possible but you can expect to end up with your first solo a bit later compared to flying in less congested countries.

I had my first solo after the 6th flight and my FTO is doing the practical training in Croatia where you sometimes end up being the only one on the frequency and I don't believe this would have been the case if I conducted that training in a german based practical training.

I think there's a bit of confusion, we're not talking about training in Germany, we're talking about Lufthansa and the GAF's training school which is located on the same airport.

I'm sorry! It's just getting late...

I just know about a student pilot of LFT crashing(fatal) during a solo flight max. two years or so ago. Was it always the case that no solos were allowed at all by LFT at GY? Not flying solo at least once and doing training on shiny new citation jets sounds a bit paradox to me?!

Doing t/g's solo helped me a lot during my vfr flight training and if the FTO provides strict minima and procedures to be sticked to it's no big deal. Proper qualification has to be insured before by an internal check flight with instructor anyway, dont you think?

just my 2 cents...

Solo's were and still are allowed! This post is about allowing solo students to carry out touch and go's, not about allowing students to solo.
You are quite correct about the solo fatality. I believe she crashed shortly after an F-16 passed quite close to her.

Perhaps if management hadn't cancelled the meeting this week then concerns would have been raised by the significant number of students who had indicated they would be attending.
As it is, I was simply enquiring if banning T&Gs was an accepted and commonplace practise, or something that was OTT.

Big Grecian,

The flap problem you refer to is the fact that the selctor lever often disconnects/ jams from the electric switch. So while the lever is moved to the up position the flaps remain down, as a result a student can get airborne with full flaps at a low airpseed, the switch suddenly un-jams on the climb out the flaps retract and the aircraft stalls.

However Grecian this is not a reason to not do touch and go's, it is possible to visually inspect the flaps during a touch and go, I always train student to select flaps before applying full power to prevent the above occuring.

Very intersting! Is there any solution brought up by cessna or the manufacturer of these switches?

Stalling would be possible as well during a go around with the flaps not set correctly, don't you agree? Anyway, don't the lufty guys fly beech 33 at gy?

In answer to the OP, I have seen this rule applied at Air Desert Pacific at LaVerne, CA.

To clear up the confusion, the school that has temporarily halted solo Touch and Gos appears to be OAT at their Goodyear, AZ training base. They use Piper Warriors for the solo flights. Lufthansa also train cadets at Goodyear, where they use Beechcraft singles.

The posts regarding Cessna's are relevant in the context of the discussion started by wg100 about whether this no solo T&G practice is common or not, but neither of the schools at Goodyear use Cessnas, so a bit of confusion has crept in.

I'm not sure why everyone is so reluctant to name the school, as this is not a slander issue, except maybe for the few who have jumped to the conclusion that greed is behind this rather than safety.

Very pleased
 

I am very pleased that this is not a money making scam and students are not being ripped off.

It would appear that it is OAT who have imposed this rule and they are one of the more reputable schools.

I think that untill more is known about the reasoning I shall not make further comment apart from saying that first posts on the subject hinted that it was another school who's business practices are not quite as ethical as OAT.

WingoWango

I don't usually correct spelling, but you are repeating your error like a mantra, and it is irritating. The word is "integrated". Only one R.

Why are you assuming that everyone must be on an integrated course and assuming that those students on an integrated course don't ever have to pay for extra lessons? I really can't understand your obsession with integrated courses, as far as I can see wg100 has not said the students are only on integrated courses. Any students on an integrated course who spend longer in the circuit so need to extend the course at the end will still have to pay. You don't think the schools give them free extra hours out of the goodness of their hearts, do you?

Why would one school ban the touch and go on safety grounds? There is nothing unsafe about a touch and go on a runway of reasonable length.

wg100

This is not a normal, sensible or justifiable restriction. Pure profiteering, and you should go elsewhere!

WingoWango

As far as I can see wg100 never said that the student doesn't pay for this time, which would be very unusual. In fact he said in his first post "2. We are paying a not insignificant amount for our course, only to loose out on time in the air in order to taxi on the ground."

balleyboley now says he is not going to pay more, but according to his description of the charging structure he might well be! Either he will pay for taxi on each flight, or he pays fist T/O to last landing plus 15 minutes. If the scheme is going to run completely differently, as he seems to believe, then the school should have briefed the students as such, which according to wg100 has not happened. Is balleyboley just assuming that the school will run a bizarre and complex charging system, or has he been told and wg100 not?

Notice that the runway at Goodyear is 8,500 feet long. That is more than adequate for a student to do safe touch and goes. It is considerably longer than the runway I used to teach from, although that was not so hot or quite as high high. I allowed students to perform touch and goes, and know of no school that doesn't, although I imagine some with short runways might. I can see no safety case for banning touch and go circuits at Goodyear.

I suggest you read all the posts yourself. You were assuming that no-one would lose out well before there was any suggestion of bizarre charging schemes.

balleyboley

If students are running off the runway then yes, the school should do something. It should look be retraining the instructors who who signed off those students' first solos (and banning them from signing off students in the meantime). I never saw such an incident either during my own training or in several years as an instructor at a busy field. I can't even remember hearing about one on a decent-width tarmac runway with a serviceable aircraft.

I cannot see why the competent students should be penalised, and even if somehow the school manages a very complicated new charging structure then training is being delayed unnecessarily, which is unfair on competent students.

Yet more rubbish about costs. It's already been clarified that none of this will cost any of us more. Its airtime + 15 mins, therefore time taxing back will not be counted. Yes its a pain having to keep some sort of a log of how much time was spent, I've seen a few people mange it quite well so far. We dont get charged on Hobbs time and therefore the concept is quite flexible. I have no concerns that any of us will be screwed over from a monetary position and quite frankly, there would be a revolt if they tried to. We dont get "charged" as such, we have an allocation of solo hours in the Integrated syllabus, of which our flights get taken out of. Likewise, I believe there are no more than 4 solo circuit lessons, after the basic training stage no one does touch and goes anyway.
I'm not saying the arrangement is ideal by any means, but there has been safety issues for one reason or another, which steps have been taken to make safer until the issue is resolved. Its not costing the students any more - what's the big deal?!

This training centre has gone about solving the problem the wrong way. The pilot who can not control an aircraft once landed, or whilst retracting the flaps for a t+go, should be sent home. If you shoot off the 6500 feet runway (due to a displaced threshold) or an 8500 foot runway, you should not be flying... apart from back to the UK with BA...
However this new set up is far from perfect but has been introduced as safety measure, and as far as people dislike these fools who cant keep a warrior on a runway big enough to land a 747, if someone died from losing control, the training school would be responsible, and that would be awful in both a business terms and in personal terms...
Also PPRUNE is not really the place to get the answers everyone is after, as other people have said before, maybe the senior management could answer questions and issues better...and should the answers be unacceptable, there are other ways to approach it than moan on a forum which will have misinformed or misled people, inaccurate gossip, and other silage redistribution machines!!...
Just my 50p's worth

PA28, good mechanical flaps so even less of an issue on touch and go's.

stabilized approach criteria ?
 

Please can some one please tell me what is the OAT stabilized approach criteria ?

Wingo

The cost issue had not been clarified. There had been one post about it, that did not seem to make sense considering how any company I have ever heard of charges for its aircraft! If it is not financial then I can't see what the issue is. You have still not explained how one company can have problems sending students for solo circuit training on a 2500m runway, when others do so perfectly successfully on less than half that with the same aircraft types.

I think we should be more worried if it really is a safety issue. If the instructors are sending students solo who are not capable of this basic exercise then the issue goes beyond touch and go. If there have been incidents then the students involved were sent solo before they were ready. Banning touch and go circuits does not solve the problem, it simply conceals it.

ballyboley

So why did they not brief the students about this? wg100 made it very clear in the first post on the thread that he expected to be paying more.

What is the safety issue?

A stabilized approach is an approach that maintains a course in along an extended centre line, and maintains a steady controlled decent along the slide slope. The only exception i know to this is when performing a forward slip to land when the decent rate will be faster. However this again is all being done as an effect to increase safety, which can not be a bad thing.

As to the rumours of barrel rolling a warrior, i'm sure the said school would take swift action if this were true, not only as its not a responsible action for a future airline pilot, but because unless i'm much mistaken, the warrior is not certified for barrel rolling and one could be taking there life into there hands by over stressing the airframe, not to mention other pilots in the vicinity!

I also totally agree with the said above. If this issue is continuing to happen, the instructors must be sending students up solo to early. This matter has also been addressed (or at least they have attempted to fix) by having a pre solo check ride with an in house examiner. What affect this will have is yet to be seen. But again it is all down to safety, and people should not forget that!

theflyingbishop
 

I think that we has all worked out what a stabilized approach is, what I wanted to know is what are the numbers that OAT use to define it.

The reason that I ask is that I reguarly fly a turning speed stable approach to about a mile from the threshold.

Wingo wango, NO the cost benefit or deficit has not been clearly addressed. What we have had is some differing views on what happens. Interesting regarding the time issue, do students carry a stopwatch with them?
I don't think this is a cost issue, there are far more eaiser ways to fleece a student.
It therfore must be safety related and with that in mind I, as a professional, am interested why students are not allowed to go and fly touch and goes. Are they allowed to fly cross country? It seems to me that there could well be a falling down in training standards that need to be dealt with and fast.
Aviation is a pretty safe industry and flying is great fun, but you must always give it 100% of your attention or you will get bitten rather hard.

What has been clarified is that two different students of the school have different impressions of the charging arrangements. One of the arrangements would be very unusual (unique I think) and also complicated to charge, the other financially detrimental to the student. The rest of us are unable to judge which is right, but have suspicion of poor communication from company to customer.

Beyond that we have personal comments you are making, and no idea of why this very unusual decision has been made.

Oh yeah, ADF's are really useful for telling the time, and every school has a transponder timer situated in the building.

Anyway Goodyear does NOT have a NDB the nearest is 29.9 miles away and just incase you are not aware, NDB's do not measure distance.

Sorry ww but thats just madness. How far are you into training?

And just for the record, I don't believe that the costing has been resolved.

Wingo, I could copy and paste a copy of my Licence but whats the point. However if you are serious PM me and I will gladly email a copy of my rating and log book.

In a Boeing 737-300and 800's we do not have a nice new shiny bendex etc transponder or even an ADF have a look on here: http://www.b737.org.uk/flightinsts.htm
Thats a 300 flight deck.
I suggest you calm down sonny this is a grown up area.

I have never flown an aircraft which had nice new NDB and Transponder and as such have no knowledge of these new toy's, I like steam powered ones.

You assumed that everyone reading this thread would know instantly that you can buy transponders's ADF's with timers etc well I don't and all the light aircraft I fly for pleasure do not have anything that new on board.

This was an imformative and thought out thread, you feel that you are right as shown on your previous posts and the rest of us are wrong, well maybe. I am not interested in debating the Cost Issue any further as I do believe that there are easier ways to fleece students.

However you are right that students should always carry their stopwatch.
T

Wingo, Please do not take this the wrong way, If I have rubbed you up then sorry. However you made nasty comments about me personally, I had to reply and did so in a calm manner, I aggreed re the stopwatch issue as I had got it wrong.

You do need how ever to calm down ,your last few posts have been rather heated, not just the ones aimed at me, I know that you are frustrated by people not seeing your side of the coin but that is life. CRM matters, you will learn about this when you come to do your MCC and indeed throughout your career.

This thread is about two things one Money and two Safety.
I think that it would be best to get back to both of those subjects rather than taking potshots at each other.

Just to add nice pic of an ADF, yep I have used those, although it was a long time ago. The classic 300-500 does not have such equipment and I had forgotten their use so appologies, but why did you not elaborate your post regarding using an ADF and transponder for those of us who are not used to such stuff?

Best of luck (and I mean it)
Tony

Edited to say, I see you are also a Red, at least I hope you are not from the Blue part of our great city! Shanks is God.

Money
 

Let me attempt to clarify things on the money side, as I see them.
We pay a fixed amount for our course and within that we are supposed to have 135 hours of flight time plus a CPL by the time we finish in the USA.
The time allocated is T/O to Landing plus 15 mins taxi.
As previously stated by another poster, we are able to stop the clock when taxying over the 15 mins allowed so that we get the appropriate time in the air. Hobbs time is used purely for maintenance purposes.

My original post wasn't intended to spark up so much debate! I mainly wanted to find out if it was a commonplace practise to ban T&Gs.
What I do find strange, and which is something I will be bringing up at a student-staff meeting, is that T&Gs cannot be made as an endorsement on our solo flight cards. It is good practise, in my limited opinion, to be able to conduct T&Gs as part of basic piloting skills.

Agreed, but there seems to be some confusion here; you don't stop the clock between landings - surely this would be very difficult to schedule as each lesson could potentially take hours.

Do you mean the GNS430? That's not a txpdr.


Solo operations at uncontrolled airfields are not permitted under the UK CAA approval.

I have to say i'm with BG on this. You can train PPL students this method until you are blue in the face, but human nature dictates that under pressure with a lack of experience sooner or later someone will become unstuck.
Picture this, T&G at an airfield much shorter then you are used to, you touch down and realise that there isn't much runway remaining, you select flaps up (on a h/wing cessna) and apply full power, in the high stress situation you are in due to lack of experience, you decide to continue the T&G instead of stopping and taxiing back, you forget to visually check the flaps and the flap switch has failed and you climb out with full drag flap...
Happened to a student I knew in 2005 who was pre-PPL solo, a/c entered a stall/spin at approx. 300ft and the accident was fatal.
I don't think that T&G's should be banned for students, but regulated far more by the schools. I can understand a school's perspective, a law suit from the deceased's family could put them out of business.
Like anything in aviation it is a calculated risk of safety vs saving money, a certain amount of hull loses/fatalities will be accepted per xxxxx if there is a chance of saving money, but try telling that to the deceased's family.

I hear the barrel role was done by a student on AP264 who got an award for it at the recent class awards ceremony. Why would someone be publicly given an award for performing an illegal maneuover in a non-aerobatically certified aircraft? To embarrass them for humorous gain of course since it happened in a flight simulator as a result of performing a procedure incorrectly.

Frasca was brought in to dismantle the simulator bit by bit and make sure all over stressed parts were replaced!:)

All sounds very bizzare. If the issue if with unstable approaches (as has been suggested), how does banning touch and go's help?

The barrel roll out in Phoenix isn't new. When I was going through one person;

1. Barrel rolled the PA28
2. Did solo touch and goes out on desert roads
3. Exceeded (regularly) Vne.
4. When solo, got into the back seats of the aircraft and took a picture of the aircraft flying without a pilot.
5. Without any related training, did close formation flying with his mates.

I'm sure there was more and all passing through will remember him. He got a !!!! report and when I last heard was, thankfully, still looking for work.