St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

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brett
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St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by brett »

Trying to decide between St. Catharines or Brampton Flight Center to start my CPL training. Any recommendations or opinions on these two schools?
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photofly
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by photofly »

St Catharine’s is the club that authorized a flight for a very junior flight instructor and two students to Florida and back to no useful purpose and got all three killed flying a barely equipped airplane into heavy instrument weather.

Unless they’ve had a complete change of supervisory staff, I’d stay clear.

http://torontosun.com/2016/10/19/his-dr ... eee24001bc

in fact why don’t you call them up and ask them what changes have been instituted to prevent that happening again? I’d love to know.
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DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
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rookiepilot
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by rookiepilot »

I am reluctant to comment, (ok perhaps not) knowing very little about the aviation industry.


I am curious if anyone would like to educate me exactly why this school still holds an OC.

Edit. Haven't heard anything.

I'd really like to see a comment from anyone with TC's perspective on this.

Why is a school doing paying "experience" trips that have NOTHING to do with any PPL requirements -- in sketchy weather,albeit--- continued to be allowed to operate?

I think the parents of those young students deserve to know.
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Last edited by rookiepilot on Sun Apr 08, 2018 1:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.
cap41
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by cap41 »

Brampton flight club has a great reputation, deservedly so. However I hate flying in and out of that airport. I am alway getting cut off, people make incorrect location calls etc. Going fro CPL you should have ok decision making.
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wan2fly99
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by wan2fly99 »

Brampton flew there a few times. For me to many airplanes in one small spot.

Maybe you would consider Oshawa Airport which has a control tower. There is Durham flight Center where I did my training. Not bad at all.

Might be out of your way though
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JasonE
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by JasonE »

My daughter did 1 lesson in Oshawa....very bad experience. More ground time than air time.
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PilotDAR
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by PilotDAR »

I learned to fly at Brampton, and would happily recommend it.
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photofly
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by photofly »

Cough.... recently? cough cough
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DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by PilotDAR »

Excuse Photofly, there's more particulate matter in the air at the foot of Bathurst Street than Mclaughlin Road!
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ogopogo
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by ogopogo »

PilotDAR wrote: Sun Apr 08, 2018 7:15 pm Excuse Photofly, there's more particulate matter in the air at the foot of Bathurst Street than Mclaughlin Road!
Pretty sure he wasn’t referring to air quality!
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pdw
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by pdw »

photofly wrote: Sat Apr 07, 2018 2:40 pm St Catharine’s is the club that authorized a flight for a very junior flight instructor and two students to Florida and back to no useful purpose and got all three killed flying a barely equipped airplane into heavy instrument weather.
An NTSB report eventually has come out in the meantime and was available for all to see, and nowhere in there suggests anything like what you are suggesting there ... how "got all three killed". It says right in there they'd made their own decisions to leave much later than other planes in the group, and only those aircraft were exposed to the fast developing weather not anticipated to affect their flightpaths that Sunday night shortly before arrival back home.

When studying the actual flight-aware tracks over PA it showed these two remaining aircraft abeam to each other on parallel course almost 20 miles apart at a time where desperately facing an unforseen need to deviate from a narrow pop-up band of rapid developement cloud (arising perpendicular to their respective tracks ) only encountered when nearly approaching the higher ground of Pennsylvania with less than an hour left. This is a tragedy ... PHOTOFLY ...
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PilotDAR
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by PilotDAR »

It says right in there they'd made their own decisions
Decision making is one of the most important training elements that a flying school can provide. Perhaps there was a training gap?
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upnatem
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by upnatem »

So pdw - it certainly was a tragedy and that begs the question - what changes have been made?
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photofly
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by photofly »

The point that’s probably not in the report - and I look forward to reading it - is that Class IV instructors are not permitted to as much as set foot in an airplane without the direct and immediate supervision of their supervising Class 1 or 2 instructor. So either said supervisor didn’t know what was going on, which is a 100% culpable failure of the flight school in my opinion, or else a more experienced instructor ok’d a low time pilot with a new instrument rating (and I mean the dead instructor here) to take two passengers into IMC in a piper warrior while flying himself from the right seat, which is the dumbest assed idea I’ve heard of in a long while.

Single pilot passenger carrying operations IFR require of the PIC 1000 hours flight time and some hundred or so hours of logged instrument time. And a working autopilot. And the pilot has to fly from in front of the instruments. How well served was the passenger in the back seat by the supervisory oversight of this flight, knowing that none of those criteria were met?

In the context of this thread, I’d merely like to know what personnel changes have been made as a result and how the supervisory system has been tightened to prevent this from happening again.
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DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
pdw
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by pdw »

EDIT:
Photofly, the flight organization rental/place has to allow a PIC his/her responsibility when renting an aircraft for building time towards whatever licenses they were working on. The responsibilities on this trip would have involved a basic understanding of how to stay clear of cloud, to plan/support alternately if that rule is not possible when something comes up. This accident was an example of that something unexpected.

Curriculum for passing a flight test will have to include doing an actual180 ..on time .. flying in some marginal weather to be certain no one has missed capturing a basic understanding of what that is. Practise more flights nearer to max gross weight rather than always light. Flying always just on nice days, which we seem to be getting more of around here as global warming progresses (noticing fewer poor weather days in this region over recent years), that can change, to teach on crap days that are still acceptable VFR (providing increased exposure to a variety of secondary VFR conditions) in order to mentor a new pilot to distinguish from what is definitely not.
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Last edited by pdw on Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:17 pm, edited 3 times in total.
photofly
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by photofly »

The details are that a flight school sent a very junior instructor and two pre-ppl students up in the air into night IMC to die.

I want to know what steps the flight school has taken to prevent this disaster happening again.
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DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
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rookiepilot
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by rookiepilot »

photofly wrote: Mon Apr 09, 2018 3:26 pm The details are that a flight school sent a very junior instructor and two pre-ppl students up in the air into night IMC to die.

I want to know what steps the flight school has taken to prevent this disaster happening again.
I want to know why they are still in existence, Photofly.

Either by TC or a lawsuit they should be terminated, unless someone has a factual defense for why they should not.

Who here would like one of those students to be their son or daughter?
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C.W.E.
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by C.W.E. »

I am sure TC is studying this issue and in time the results of the study will be shared with the flying industry.

I know for a fact that at least one of the T.C. employees reads this forum and I believe he is in the flight training department.

Maybe he will comment here on this?
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by CpnCrunch »

" The airplane was registered to and operated by St. Catharines Flying Club, under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91, as a personal flight".

So it wasn't training...they were just renting an aircraft using their PPL, rather than instructing.
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photofly
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Re: St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

Post by photofly »

A Class IV instructor "rents" an aircraft from the flight school at which he works and voluntarily flies on a "personal flight" two of his un-licensed students (neither of whom yet held a PPL) to Florida for the weekend? Not for hire and reward? In which universe are you living???

It doesn't matter which weasel words anyone uses, if an instructor takes two PPL students flying, and the instructor is sitting in the right seat, it's a flying lesson. Arranging things so it appears otherwise is merely evidence of a deliberate intent to flout the regulations. There is no way a reputable flight training organization could conceivably allow such a thing to pass.

If that is really the position of the St. Catherine's Flying Club - that it was a private flight - then were I a TC inspector I would examine the PTRs and personal logs of every single student and instructor that went on one of these regular death-jollies to Florida for the last twenty years, and if a single minute of any such trip was logged as instructional time I'd fine the directors the full $25,000 per occurrence for violating CAR 406.03(1).



Anyway, the point of my posting in this thread is that I would like the OP to ask at that FTU for their own analysis about why the accident happened, and what they've changed since then to prevent it happening again. Three dead. Let's see what's been learned there before giving them more money. Does anyone think that's a bad thing to ask?
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DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
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