Free Flight Training For Fixed Wing Pilots

[Blackmac]

One of the best things that could happen to all flight schools is that they only be allowed to teach up to a private license and recreational flying.

Once a pilot wants to become a commercial pilot, he/she would have to attend a flight school recognized and funded by the federal government.

Tha actual cost of running the school would be taxed to the industry on an equitable basis.

The same criteria could be applied to AME schools and that way you would have all your robots trained to the same level, upon release.

If by chance you think this idea is crazy, how the hell do you think the militaries train their people to the same standard.

Food for thought.

Cheers, Don

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Magseal

In my opinion flowers and pretty things don't belong in the hangar. So I guess you get the job buddy.

 

[saturnman]

As a current CHL'er, I have heard of no such programme...so all the CHL bashing posts should probably be relocated elsewhere...like the trash bin!!

 

[MagSeal]

Saturnman,

doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I never heard of the "base closure program" until it was all said and done.

I also don't think you could ever find a trash can big enough.

Puddle Jumper,

The hanger will look beautiful when I'm done, the toilets will glisten, and the windows will have as clean a shine as the hanger floor.
Winnie what colour pansies do you want around the hanger?

Blackmac,

I'd question the statement that the military trains them all to the same standard, but we know where that conversation would end up

 

[Vortex Ring]

We in the military train all our folks to the same standard, true.

Such training imparts knowledge on a young cone, but the cone then goes out and becomes a pilot, nav, tech...whatever. Along the line he grows, learns, or not, and eventually goes on his/her way from our sheltered little world.

What happens next as he/she enters civilian employment is where the "military standard" runs into interpretation. We, the Air Force, no more than any other employer cannot be responsible for individuals who fail to develop personalities, common sense or any social skills for that matter.

Companies fire morons, we unfortunately cannot simply fire someone unless they commit a crime so they usually end up moved about and or promoted on totally unrelated to their original trade sort of merit. Scary thought but true.

I've met great folks in aviation, in and out of uniform. One common factor for the good guys always is their attitude, commitment and the fact that they are generally decent folks with a modicum of social skills and they love aviation. I've also also met my share of arseholes unfortunately and they lack all those desireable skill sets.

So if you come across an ex-mil guy/gal and they are decent people, they will make great employees and will learn how to do business for you. If you come across one of our unguided missiles of human imbecility, sorry, some of them just get away.....please try and put them with the morons you already have in your organisation and maybe they'll do us all a favour and go off to start a new colony on uranus.

So the "Standard" as you see remains and always will remain, the standard. Arseholes in the mirror are larger and more annoying than they appear, sorry. :unsure:

NOTE: No actual pilots were harmed in the making of these comments but one or two navigators had to be sacrificed. (excellent, now we can take an additional 500 lbs of jet fuel)

 

[Blackmac]

VortexRing:

Coming from somebody in the know, very well stated.

Standard:
1. level of quality or excellence: the level of quality or excellence attained by somebody or something

2. level of quality accepted as norm: a level of quality or excellence that is accepted as the norm or by which actual attainments are judged ( often used in the plural).

One of my further "thinks" was civilian colleges could be set up alongside the forces in Portage for the pilots and Borden for the AME's.

The government is already picking up the "tab" on the infrastructure, why not put it to could use and only people required by the industry would be allowed to attend.

If a scenario like this was put in place a certain standard could be maintained as VR stated.

Remember this industry was started by people from the military, trained to a standard.

Then the civilian schools got involved using a Transport Canada standard which is interpeted and applied differently in every sector.
How the hell do you expect to get people trained to a given standard.

Kep the comments coming.

Cheers, Don

PS: Winnie stated that a certain company was possibly training f/w pilots to r/w pilots when their school had tons of 100hr pilots looking for jobs. Did you ever stop to think that, maybe, you are part of the problem????

 

[MagSeal]

I'd like to just clarify my statement so that nobody thinks I'm an ####, or at least nobody new thinks that. But then again, they probably will anyway.

When I implied that Blackmacs statement about military training to a certain standard, was open to debate (not bickering), I should have included training about all organizations.
There can be a curriculum set-up to attempt to teach a standard, but that all falls apart as every individual learns at a different rate, absorbs different amounts and different views of material. An open forum type teaching atmosphere, where the students are allowed to ask a free range of questions , can conceivably derail the set curriculum.
If you believe that a set standard can be achieved then all students would recieve the same exact grade on everything. But since all institutions allow a variance in marks in the grading system, you can no longer say that a set standard was met. Even dumbasses with an ability to answer a mutiple choice question have a 20-25% chance of flubbing their way thru.

 

[Winnie]

Blackmac, clarify as being part of the problem? Training Students to the 100 hr mark?

Sure we are training people, and not refusing t0 take new students, that would be idiotic, but we also never advertise that it is esy to get hired, and i ALWAYS tell the prospective student that it takes a lot of persistence and hard work to get that first job, and NOTHING is guaranteed.

If you think we as flight training institutions are amoral, then tha would have to be something we had to look at... :huh:

 

[Blackmac]

Winnie, I will send you my address, if you will send me a bottle of Old Sam. What ever happened to the "Albatross" were all the stew's used to hang out, speaking about Gander,of course.

On the other subject of flight schools. There are to many and everybody is supposedly turning out the best.

Why are people waiting two years and more to find a job pushing a broom?

With the money being spent a guy/gal good become a doctor and be hired immeadiately.

When I became a helicopter pilot I had 170 hrs f/w and 25 hr checkout on a Hughes 300 and then I took another 20 operational checkout with the company and went to work flying a Bell 47G2/G2A/G4/204B when I had 1700hrs.

Last Fall I was interviewed for a job as Manager of the Ottawa Flying Club. I was asked how I was going to increase the amount of students in the school. Prior to giving my answer I asked them why they wanted to increase the amount of students??

The answer was that it offset the costs for the permanent members.

I informed the interview board that they were interviewing the wrong person and as far as I was concerned the school part of the club should be shut down for at least a year as there was already atremdous baglog of people looking for work in both the helicopter and fixed wing charter operations.

The fiasco with de-regulation and the airline industry in general did not bode well adding more people looking for work.

IMHO the private sector should not be running flight schools.

Cheers,Don

PS: On another thread somebody said to always go with the an experienced instructor.

If an instructor holds a rating he is experienced enough to give lessons.
I would state that the best thing is to always fly with the same one.

 

[Winnie]

Blackmac, I wonder if the Albatros is now the Irwing West Hotel, but I may be wrong, the Albatross may still be there on the highway...

Anywho Legends is the spot now, Reflections is OK but all the other places aren't any good anymore...

Onto the subject, then we agree to some part! Like I say, I'll always tell my prospective students and their parents that this is not a "dance on roses" and finding work is hard.

But then again, when all the old timers leave, where will all the young guys come from? And as you've probably seen, it is the ones that are willing to work, that still hangs on, the others drift away.

I feel that a school like Canadian (since that was what brought the subject up) that tell freshly graduated students from elsewhere, that they'll only hire from own graduates, if they went above their own graduates to hire someone whom they'd paid training for (Conversionists?(That's a new word!)), they are spitting their paying students in the face! But then again, that will work to other schools advantages!!

Cheers
Harald

 

[Blackmac]

Winnie:

Going back in history, the industry never seams to learn anything from their mistakes or screw-ups.

The helicopter industry was bad enough prior to de-regulation and only became worse after, and that includes training.

The northern operators should never have come under de-regulation and lose their protected base status.

A northern operator payed through the nose to build an infrastructure in the north and then was undercut in rates by any joe blow from down south with less overhead, after de-reg.

De-regulation was the biggest BOONDOGGLE ever instituted by the Federal Government. :down:

It effected SAFETY, LABOUR RELATIONS, THE COST OF TRAINING and God knows what else in the name of POLITICS and Free Trade under open skies. What a laugh. :down:

The Aerspace Industry does not do any lobbying for the Charter Operators, neither does ATAC or CAMC or HAC.

Very few companies can afford operational training for new hires.

So who is left???????

Cheers, Don

 

[HeloTeacher]

Blackmac. Just to look at the counterpoint. If only enough pilots were trained to satisfy the jobs available then those dipsticks that shouldn't be working but got a training slot because their brother-in-law's buddy was the chief pilot at Low Budget Air would be around for ever. How can you 'justify' a quota-ed training slot when there is a guy out there who isn't working?

Military or civil, all training is completed to a particular 'minimum' standard. Some will meet the minimum and some will exceed it by a little, some by a lot. Some will continue to excel and others will degade without someone kicking their a$$ all day. We live in a free market economy, get used to it.


Vortex Ring. Well stated.


Saturnman. Sorry, but CHL bashing is just TOO EASY if you've worked for them. You must agree......

 

[Auto Relight]

Having been involved in both sides of the industry, I think the major issue facing our industry as a whole is quality.

By that I mean that any person who has $50-60K and a reasonable set of motor skills can get a Commercial Pilot's license. The first problem is the standard to which we train. Not only is it far too simple, and heavily based on book study, but it's stuck in the stone age.

Students are wasting time and money learning navigation through the drift line method while actual low-level map reading is non-existant. Countless hours are spent practicing exercises that will have very little bearing in real world flying. Aerobatics in FW are non-existant which is a crime, and in helicopter schools essential skills like the use of wobble pumps, drums, elementray machine maintainance, net repair, and the use of GPS in conjunction with maps is entirely missed or barely glossed over.

If we produced students that were actually able to function on their first day on the job, we might be getting somewhere. Back to the flight test standards. Do we really care if a 100 or 200hr(FW) pilot can recite the CARS? As long as people know where to look things up, they'll be fine. Why is low-level flying not taught as a componet of the CPL?? Where do you go when the wx goes for a #### under VFR? DOWN. Reading a map on a CAVOK day from 5000ft is a joke, counting drainages when it's anywhere never VFR mins is a whole other story. We write a completely ridiculous exam that has one maybe two pertinent questions on it,(ATPL being een worse) while winter ops for example are not even touched upon.

The whole system needs a complete overhaul from the written exam, to the flight test and content of the training. Students are routinely discouraged from any sort of low-level flying,(and not shown how to being with, and it is an art) some schools in FW ban solo night flying, and yet 5hrs. of instrument time are required in a helicopter. WTF?? Transport should mandate a dual demonstration of low wx ops, particularly in rotary, 5 hrs. staring at some gauges that probably hardly work is not going to save any young helicopter pilot in inadvertant IMC. Spend the time equiping these kids with some tools to AVOID invadrtant IMC and show them what can be done when these conditions may be encountered. Emphasis on pilot decision making is essential. Teaching it in the classroom, then flying in perfect conditions doesn't cut it.

How a flight instructor with 2000hrs in the right seat of a C-172 can aquire an ATPL is beyond me. How a student with 250hrs. TT can become a flight instructor is beyond me. Make these things more difficult to acquire and we may see a natural weeding process start. Everyone is free to do what they choose in this country, but some people should just not be doing what they chose...

Becomming a good pilot takes many things, and many of them are very obvious from the beginning. It is Tranport's job to recognise this and set a standard high enough to weed out those who do not meet it. Once a pilot graduates a tough system, they'll at least be able to take care of themselves and maybe 2000hrs rotary mins to fly around the flat oil patch in Alberta will be lowered to a reasonable level.

AR

 

[Blackmac]

HeloTeacher; I really appreciate your comments, but you seem to have a different point of view.

You and I both agree with Vortex Ring, but I didn't understand your so called counter point. I was born in Quebec.

Auto-Relight: As person who is from both sides of the track and perceptive, we good sure use guys with your experience on a committee in HEPAC.

Cheers, Don

PS: Keep the constructive comments coming.

 

[HeloTeacher]

OK, the counterpoint. I, too, hate seeing guys blow thousands of dollars on flight training and get nothing from it. But, the only way the industry is assured of getting the best possible product is if they they have a selection of potential employees. If only certain people get a chance to train (as in your scheme, and in Nigeria for instance) then they are the only people you can hire. If they are crap, then tough, you are required to hire them.

I'll be damned if I will ever endorse any industry being controlled by governement, the most corrupt and self-centered industry there is!!!!!!!!!!!!