St. Catharines Flying Club or Brampton Flight Center

[brett]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[JasonE]

My daughter did 1 lesson in Oshawa....very bad experience. More ground time than air time.

[PilotDAR]

I learned to fly at Brampton, and would happily recommend it.

[photofly]

Cough.... recently? cough cough

[PilotDAR]

Excuse Photofly, there's more particulate matter in the air at the foot of Bathurst Street than Mclaughlin Road!

[ogopogo]

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!

[pdw]

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 ...

[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?

[upnatem]

So pdw - it certainly was a tragedy and that begs the question - what changes have been made?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[rookiepilot]

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?

[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?

[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.

[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?

[CpnCrunch]

Well, I assume the instructors told the club they were renting the plane, and there is no way the club would know any differently unless they do some detective work (which no FTUs do, that I'm aware of). If the instructors were chiselling the students then I don't know how the club would know.

To me it just looks like bad decision making on the part of the instructors (who were very young as well). It's unfortunate, but there isn't much that can be done to prevent accidents like this unless you want FTUs to interrogate everyone who rents a plane. You might say they should have instilled airmanship and decision making into the instructors, but isn't that what the CPL course does? They knew (or should have known) all the rules regarding flying for hire, VFR rules, dangers of flying in thunderstorms, etc. so I'm not sure how the club could have prevented this.

I know you're keen to have the club strung up for this, but sometimes it's just the individual responsibility of the pilots involved.

[photofly]

OH MY GOODNESS!
This was an official formal club-organized training fly-away. A regular event. Not some instructor gone rogue. And not some personal trip.

Club spokesman Conrad Hatcher said the trio were in one of five planes returning back from several days of training in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

“It was a trip to gain experience, have a little adventure. You learn a bunch of things when you travel,” he said, adding it’s a journey the club has made many times over the years.

Damn right you learn a bunch of things. And have a little adventure. And get killed flying into bad weather. Of course I hold the fucking FTU responsible.

You might say they should have instilled airmanship and decision making into the instructors

No, I say they should instil airmanship and decision making into the CFI and all the class 1 instructors they have on their roster who are supposed to be supervising every flight their Class IV instructors make. Jesus.

406.50 No flight training unit that conducts flight training in accordance with a flight training operations manual that has been approved by the Minister shall operate an aircraft unless the flight training unit has an operational control system that meets the personnel licensing standards and is under the control of its chief flight instructor.

operational control means the exercise of authority over the initiation, continuation, diversion or termination of a flight in the interest of the safety of the aircraft and the regularity and efficiency of the flight; (contrôle d’exploitation)

It can't get a lot clearer than that, can it?





And no, I am not keen to have anyone "strung up" for this fatal debacle, but I do want it to be acknowledged for what it is, and to know what they've done about it since then.

[CpnCrunch]

OH MY GOODNESS!
This was an official formal club-organized training fly-away. A regular event. Not some instructor gone rogue. And not some personal trip.

Club spokesman Conrad Hatcher said the trio were in one of five planes returning back from several days of training in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

“It was a trip to gain experience, have a little adventure. You learn a bunch of things when you travel,” he said, adding it’s a journey the club has made many times over the years.

Damn right you learn a bunch of things. And have a little adventure. And get killed flying into bad weather. Of course I hold the fucking FTU responsible.

I didn't realise that. Other FTUs do similar things, but the CFI or another highly experienced instructor generally goes along for the trip. Were there no experienced instructors on this trip?

[photofly]

It doesn’t really matter, does it? Th CFI went along, the CFI was at home... Either way, this flight was authorized, and it should not have been. Or, if it wasn’t authorized, that was a clear failure of operational control by the CFI.

Risk factors:
Inexperienced pilot...
who was a low time instructor...
with zero to little real instrument time...
flying a poorly equipped single engine piston airplane...
into real, heavy, weather...
at night...
over unfamiliar territory...
with passengers...
desperate to get themselves and the plane back for Monday morning...
at the tail end of a long weekend of flying and partying...
and the only licensed pilot was flying this night IFR cross country on instruments from the right seat, with no autopilot and the only instruments across on the other side of the panel.

Who allowed this to happen?

What was so urgent they couldn’t stay overnight and come back the next morning?

And specifically in this thread, what has changed at the flight school since then?

[HiFlyChick]

Is there another report with these details? The newspaper article actually says that there might have been some rain around, but there was no heavy weather. If bad weather wasn't actually in the forecast, you can't blame the club for that one. Also, it doesn't say anywhere how the plane was equipped.

While it does look on the face of it to possibly be a lack of supervision, I would like to hear more details before I crucify the club. I can recall different times over the years when I knew of pilots who were told to watch out for this, or be sure and get airborne before this time, and they either forgot or just plain didn't pay attention. That is both from my flying club years, as well as in a 703 environment.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but do we know that the club wanted them back by Monday? The rush to get back was probably self imposed. I also find it telling that most of the other planes left the day before - why didn't they? We can speculate about how the club should have done a better job at supervising, but if prior to starting the trip they were told to leave for home on Sat, and then they just decided to ignore that, what precisely was the club to do? If the instructor didn't turn his cell on during his fuel stops, how was the club to reach him?

Again, I'm not saying that there definitely isn't culpability on the part of the club, but until you know what instructions they were given prior to departure, we can't judge that.