Wind and Weather

[trey kule]

After reading so many threads that dealt with go/no go decisions, I thought it time I bring up a subject that seldom gets discussed. I chose the flight training forum because, as you will hopefully see, that is the root cause.

When I read over threads, the continual message that comes across is that you should only do what is comfortable. Well, after decades in the business I have observed two things.
First, pilots, in general are not really good at self assessment of their abilities, and secondly, that I have witnessed pilots destroying perfectly good aircraft while doing something they were comfortable with. I dont buy into this whole comfortable thing. If people are going to hire inexperience then there is an onus on management to provide supervision.

I was going to bore you all with some examples, but instead, lets have a look. There is a preception that employers are putting pressure on pilots to flyin conditions above their experience level. I have to wonder how many of those that make this claim are the same ones who demand that employers hire them without any experience. My experience is that , as a CP or Safety officer you generally have to watch the new inexperienced pilots from going out into bad conditions and killing themselves. The fact is, while many of them give lip service to experience, few really believe that they need it, and if they do, well, there is only one way to get it...push your personal limits. The second thing , and the most important one I have witnessed is pilots that are simply not that good, who use wind and weather as an excuse .
And by not that good, it usually means with new pilots, not trained well.

New hires with fresh CPL's who dont understand that a demonstrated crosswind number is not a limitation. And who , because of "safety" have never been allowed to experience crosswinds that challange them..Yep. Safety..FTU's dont want accidents. Not to worry as they can get the experience when they get out in the "real" world. IFR pilots, who as it has been pointed out, should not be jumping into minimum approaches. Operators are not learning centers . There is an expectation on the pilot . Once I remember a pilot not wanting to do a trip (VFR)..and the owner telling him he had two miles and clear of cloud. He could do the trip or find another job..Huge presuure. But the fact was that with his CPL he should have been able to do it. More recently I witnessed a pilot who refused a flight because of a high crosswind which he stated exceded the aircraft limitations..He was really pissed when another pilot took the flight and filed a formal complaint with the safety officer. The question is was he really being put under pressure or was he just expected to do what he should have been able to do?

The fact is that the new CPL/IFR pilots, are for the most part, not able to do the job which their license allows them to do. And it is difficult for a company to keep substituting pilots or start making operational decisions on their pilot's inability or experience.

So what is the solution. Wish I had an answer but I am going to take a stab at it.

FTU's have to train their pilots better, and expose them to conditions that allow them to fly to the limits their license allows. That means no pilot should come out of an FTU that does not understand how to fly in a crosswind, or that cannot do it well. It means that student IFR pilots should be actually allowed to fly in IMC and to do enough approaches in IMC to be comfortable. Yes it can be done. But it means more discipline in the syllabus,and much more experienced instructors. It also means that people should not be arriving at the CPL level with the bare minimum cross country time. Cross country time is, in my opinion , a super valuable experience generator, as you cant always cherry pick the weather at the other end.

TC has upped the ground school requirements I believe. The right solution to the wrong problem. The fact was for many many FTU's their groundschools simply were substandard, not well organized, and taught by rather incompetent instructors. A year of so ago I had the opportunity to review one of those on line IFR courses..The instructor who seemed to believe that voice modulation was unnecessary and every sentence should end with OK, actually gave out wrong information. I jade it through about 25 minutes of the course. I think there should have been an award for anyone that could make it through the whole course. It was quite obvious that the contents had not been reviewed for quality, accuracy, or even interest. Set up the video camera. Video someone at the front of a class with two students, and market it...absolutely disgraceful.

If pilots came to operators able to perform what their license allows for it would be a great start.

Lastly, it seems, for some reason, the last few years, that pilots think a GFA is not a forecast, but an actual snapshot of the weather, 100% accurate, and taking precedence over a TAF for IFR flight. And from what I see, that is not an FTU issue.

My rant is over. I will head back to the coffee pot and await the comments of others.

[Shiny Side Up]

FTU's have to train their pilots better,

Full stop. Over and over we go through this. Yes there is a problem with flight training in this country. No its not all within a pilot's first 200 hours. Some yes. Case in point:

It also means that people should not be arriving at the CPL level with the bare minimum cross country time.

Then why have a minimum? Remember, students are working at this from a bottom line of how much it costs them. If we make students do more cross country time it means less time on something else - what should it be? If I add my own requirements to the CPL, say make it 250 hours with an extra 50 hours of cross country time because I'm on a crusade to make better pilots, I won't get any students no matter how awesome of an instructor I am. Unless of course I find a way of giving students 250 hours with the same price of everyone else giving 200 hours. Have you figured out a way of doing this?

Operators are not learning centers .

Actually, they are. With a current CPL/Multi/IFR license set up, there is no way to prepare every commercial pilot for every possible job they might do. The current system is based upon pilots learning as they go. No offense, but give your head a shake. Experienced pilots have been teaching inexperienced pilots on the job since Kittyhawk, Just like every other job out there.

200 hours flight time and 80 hours of ground school so that you can step into any other working pilot's shoes with no extra training? Really?

[trey kule]

The head shake was not nearly as good as a milk shake...but I digress.

When I referred to operating companies not being learning centers, I meant it as not being the primary business of the company. Of course companies have training departments. But training for the job should not entail basic training.

As to the cross country requirment. I am not all that familiar anymore with Canadian requirements but if it has not changed much,it goes something like this.

45 hours for PPL (which it seems can pretty much only be approximated if you are an air cadet)..15 hours night rating. 40 hours for commercial training..200hours tt. That leaves about 110 hours left I dont think students need to be missing out on anything to use more of that 110 hours for x-country flying, then the bare minimums.

Your comment with regard to minimums is revealing. do I understand correctly then, that you are perfectly willing to train to minimums? There are not minimums for having to actually fly in IMC I dont believe, or having demonstrated ability to handle decent x-winds....so by that logic it would seem that pilots dont have to bother much with that...which is exactly the point I was trying to make initially.

Look at what the privleges granted for a license or rating. My thought is that a pilot holding the license or rating should be pretty much able to exercise those privleges. The truth is that in many cases, they cant, or worse, they cant but think they can.

I am going to restate the operators position. Operators training programs are not designed to provide basic training that should have been done at an FTU. And yes, new pilots are weaned into the operations, but again, that is about experience, not basic flying skills.
I dont expect an new IF rated pilot to do a minimum approach. But I expect that they are able to do one.. There is a big difference, and I think you are choosing to ignore it. I dont expect them to initially do a take off in, say a 20kt direct x wind. But I expect them to be able to do one in a 5 kt x-wind.

I dont believe I am being unreasonable in expecting a better product from the FTU's. Students are paying huge money and they deserve top notch training..How about , instead of telling me to give my head a shake, FTU's only have very experieced flight instructors teaching multi IFR.

Would it cost more...I think that is open to debate. Quality vs. quantitiy.

And before anyone posts how much more it would cost for what I am suggesting, I would like them to explain first how they think they could improve the qualitiy of their FTU's training, in order to achieve better results in the same time...and it would go along way to increase the x-wind limitation and Wx limitations some school impose..yah..all about safety I know...and when they get the license then it is the operators problem to handle the exposure to get them experience.

[Shiny Side Up]

Your comment with regard to minimums is revealing. do I understand correctly then, that you are perfectly willing to train to minimums? There are not minimums for having to actually fly in IMC I dont believe, or having demonstrated ability to handle decent x-winds...

What I would like to to with flight training and what I'm willing to do aren't relevant. If you want pilots held to a higher standard of flight training, then raise the standard. You're right, there is no requirement to actually fly in IMC. There is no requirement to be proficient in crosswinds up to x knots at more than y degrees off the nose. The only cross country requirement for the CPL candidate is to complete the 300nm one. A poor requirement at that.

The point is that we do have training standards in this country and if you're not happy with them then petitioning the schools to arbitrarily raise them isn't the right place to do it - Transport is. So who's fault is it that you're not happy with the standard of flight training? To be honest I ain't either, but that's beside the point. As an FTU operator I can encourage people to go above the standard, I can't enforce it. The students will simply go elsewhere if it means a) it will cost them more or, b) it will increase their time until completion. It then makes no difference - like I said; how awesome I might be makes no difference if I have no students which are learning that way.

Look through a hundred threads on this forum alone when people are asking about flight training - the first question is how much, the second, how fast. That has to change too.

I am going to restate the operators position. Operators training programs are not designed to provide basic training that should have been done at an FTU.

You speak as though the operators are forced to hire half trained pilots. Why do they hire half trained people? Here's an avenue for change in the flight training world - why aren't the operators out there demanding better? In most cases its because half trained pilots have one redeeming quality - they're cheap and plentiful. Operators do after all have the choice of hiring experienced pilots... but they cost money. For that matter, the quality of pilots is rarely a consideration when pilots get hired - hours are and paper is. The world ain't fair after all. There are some people I know flying big planes who are horrible pilots, and hardworking guys who are good sticks stuck in the bottom of the flying world. Life's a bitch.

[LEAFS SUCK]

After reading so many threads that dealt with go/no go decisions, I thought it time I bring up a subject that seldom gets discussed. I chose the flight training forum because, as you will hopefully see, that is the root cause.

When I read over threads, the continual message that comes across is that you should only do what is comfortable. Well, after decades in the business I have observed two things.
First, pilots, in general are not really good at self assessment of their abilities, and secondly, that I have witnessed pilots destroying perfectly good aircraft while doing something they were comfortable with. I dont buy into this whole comfortable thing. If people are going to hire inexperience then there is an onus on management to provide supervision.

I was going to bore you all with some examples, but instead, lets have a look. There is a preception that employers are putting pressure on pilots to flyin conditions above their experience level. I have to wonder how many of those that make this claim are the same ones who demand that employers hire them without any experience. My experience is that , as a CP or Safety officer you generally have to watch the new inexperienced pilots from going out into bad conditions and killing themselves. The fact is, while many of them give lip service to experience, few really believe that they need it, and if they do, well, there is only one way to get it...push your personal limits. The second thing , and the most important one I have witnessed is pilots that are simply not that good, who use wind and weather as an excuse .
And by not that good, it usually means with new pilots, not trained well.

New hires with fresh CPL's who dont understand that a demonstrated crosswind number is not a limitation. And who , because of "safety" have never been allowed to experience crosswinds that challange them..Yep. Safety..FTU's dont want accidents. Not to worry as they can get the experience when they get out in the "real" world. IFR pilots, who as it has been pointed out, should not be jumping into minimum approaches. Operators are not learning centers . There is an expectation on the pilot . Once I remember a pilot not wanting to do a trip (VFR)..and the owner telling him he had two miles and clear of cloud. He could do the trip or find another job..Huge presuure. But the fact was that with his CPL he should have been able to do it. More recently I witnessed a pilot who refused a flight because of a high crosswind which he stated exceded the aircraft limitations..He was really pissed when another pilot took the flight and filed a formal complaint with the safety officer. The question is was he really being put under pressure or was he just expected to do what he should have been able to do?

The fact is that the new CPL/IFR pilots, are for the most part, not able to do the job which their license allows them to do. And it is difficult for a company to keep substituting pilots or start making operational decisions on their pilot's inability or experience.

So what is the solution. Wish I had an answer but I am going to take a stab at it.

FTU's have to train their pilots better, and expose them to conditions that allow them to fly to the limits their license allows. That means no pilot should come out of an FTU that does not understand how to fly in a crosswind, or that cannot do it well. It means that student IFR pilots should be actually allowed to fly in IMC and to do enough approaches in IMC to be comfortable. Yes it can be done. But it means more discipline in the syllabus,and much more experienced instructors. It also means that people should not be arriving at the CPL level with the bare minimum cross country time. Cross country time is, in my opinion , a super valuable experience generator, as you cant always cherry pick the weather at the other end.

TC has upped the ground school requirements I believe. The right solution to the wrong problem. The fact was for many many FTU's their groundschools simply were substandard, not well organized, and taught by rather incompetent instructors. A year of so ago I had the opportunity to review one of those on line IFR courses..The instructor who seemed to believe that voice modulation was unnecessary and every sentence should end with OK, actually gave out wrong information. I jade it through about 25 minutes of the course. I think there should have been an award for anyone that could make it through the whole course. It was quite obvious that the contents had not been reviewed for quality, accuracy, or even interest. Set up the video camera. Video someone at the front of a class with two students, and market it...absolutely disgraceful.

If pilots came to operators able to perform what their license allows for it would be a great start.

Lastly, it seems, for some reason, the last few years, that pilots think a GFA is not a forecast, but an actual snapshot of the weather, 100% accurate, and taking precedence over a TAF for IFR flight. And from what I see, that is not an FTU issue.

My rant is over. I will head back to the coffee pot and await the comments of others.

Sorry didn't actually read your whole post. Next time make it a short story. If it's to windy don't fly, if the weather is to bad don't fly. Someone else will.

[Hedley]

TK has a valid point about some FTU's producing pilots with (IMHO) sub-standard stick & rudder skills.

There is a nearby flight school (not Seneca, ok?), which has a policy of 5 knots maximum crosswind. Any more than that, they use the perpendicular runway. The result of this is no accidents for the FTU ... but their pilots simply can't fly.

After graduation, they rent aircraft here, and they simply cannot handle any crosswind. 10 knots blows them off the runway. That is not a limitation of their aircraft - their stick & rudder skills are simply substandard. And this is not just a single pilot - this is a clear pattern in a reasonably-sized sample. They typically have poor airspeed control on final. They approach too fast to try to compensate for the crosswind which is obviously foreign to them, and then land on the nosewheel, wheelbarrowing down the runway, then they lock up the brakes, which shears the valve stems. It's just f_cking horrible to watch.

I really don't think a graduate of an aviation college program should have such abysmal stick & rudder skills. How they pass their flight tests is a mystery to me.

But I'm just a grumpy old guy that values good hands and feet too highly.

I teach as little ab initio as I possibly can, because people don't want to bother how to do it right, they just want to fly plastic nosewheel trainers with big colour screens in them, and not look outside. Blech. Go somewhere else for that white shirt / gold bars crap.

When I teach ab initio, it is tailwheel only. Aerobatics and formation are a normal part of the training. My students have absolutely no problem landing when the windsock is standing straight out across the single runway here - I don't even bother to watch them land, because I know they will do it perfectly.

People have different standards, I guess.

http://www.pittspecials.com/images/eric_form1.jpg

[trey kule]

Leafs suck

Wow..is that what you got from my post?

Ok. here is the short version just for you.


Is that better?
I am sure you got just as much from it.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Trey Kule

Your question is the age old dilemma in flight training.....the difference between "what is" and "what should be" the skills and knowledge of a new CPL

The "what is" represents the sum of the not very demanding CPL requirements combined with the understandable desire for the average young and poor wannabe pilot not to have to spend more than he/she needs to get the piece of paper. This means they will not want to pay for any extra flying hours and want the cheapest possible instructor even though this guarantees they will get training from the least experienced pilots in aviation.

The practical reality is that the person who spent more money to get that "extra" training that goes beyond the bare minimum TC requirements and actually produces a work ready pilot; will in all probability not have their skills recognized and will have no hiring advantage over the the bare minimum CPL wannabe chasing their first job.

The "what should be" will never occur unless the TC CPL sylabus is upgraded to a considerably more demanding standard and, CPL instructors have to have significant industry experience, and Industry starts to discriminate between folks who have gone the extra mile and those who barely meet the standard when looking to hire a new CPL for their first job. I see no evidence this is going to happen in my flying lifetime.

If you really wanted to have new hires actually know what they are doing there is nothing stopping you from starting a sponsership program for PPL's. You could then specify what they would actually be taught/practice and get exactly the product desired at the new CPL level. Of course that would require operators to take some ownership in the next generation of professional pilots. It is so much easier to just throw rocks at the flying schools isn't it......

That being said their is room for flying schools to do a better job in ways that will cost the student little or no extra money. For instance they could
-Not let low time Class 4's teach the CPL course
-Have the CFI or a very experienced instructor do a dual session in the circuit on a really windy crappy day with every CPL student.
-Set up a pretend Air Service. All CPL training flights would be treated as a revenue charter for "Acme Air Services" including filling out the normal 703 paper work and treating the instructor like "John Q public" untill they are in the air or the training has started.
-Invite some former students over for lunch and ask them the question " Now that you are a Navajo FO or PIC on a 702/703 single what things do you wish you had been taught but were not covered in your CPL training" and where possible and practicable adjust/augment their program

Like Hedley I am in the nice position of doing flight training part time in between my principal flying job. This allows me the luxury of choosing my students based on aptitude and attitude and demanding a high standard. I do not miss the days when I first started my flying career as a full time flying instructor and had to take anyone on who walked in the door.

[LEAFS SUCK]

Leafs suck

Wow..is that what you got from my post?

Ok. here is the short version just for you.


Is that better?
I am sure you got just as much from it.

Hi trey kule

I went back and started to read your whole post. Then went and made a pot of coffee, came back and finished reading it. I agree with you 100%. Are we good now? For you guys and gals just starting out..... a flight school will be able to teach most people the basics of how to fly. After that it will be up to you to get some real life flying experience whatever that may be. Use your head, common sense and learn from others. Most off all remember flying is fun and don't forget to have a sense of humor, oh yes and the gear.

[Shiny Side Up]

The "what should be" will never occur unless the TC CPL sylabus is upgraded to a considerably more demanding standard and, CPL instructors have to have significant industry experience, and Industry starts to discriminate between folks who have gone the extra mile and those who barely meet the standard when looking to hire a new CPL for their first job. I see no evidence this is going to happen in my flying lifetime.

Hit the nail on the head. Some day, but not soon, pilots might realise that we're all in this together.

Invite some former students over for lunch and ask them the question " Now that you are a Navajo FO or PIC on a 702/703 single what things do you wish you had been taught but were not covered in your CPL training" and where possible and practicable adjust/augment their program

Unfortunately I find that usually once people get farther on in the aviation world they wash their hands of the training world. Flight training is really the red-headed stepchild of the aviation world. Its been rare to find an experienced pilot who is interested in improving the training world, but many who just "throw rocks at it".

[trey kule]

I have to throw rocks Someone said only those without sin should be throwing rocks,
and as there are just a few of us, I like to do my share.

Seriously, I think I fall into the experienced catagory and I am passionate about improving flight training. But to start, we have to be brutally honest about where the industry fails, and then seek solutions. Pretending issues dont exist, rationalizing them , or marganalizing those who dare to mention them simply precludes advancement

for example: Crosswind training issues can simply be addressed, for example, by removing the 5 kt x-wind restriction Hedley mentioned, and teach the students how to handle stronger x-winds. And I have to wonder why any school would have to have special instructors to do this. For those who are always telling prospective students to ask questions...there is a good one...does your school have x wind limitations..Might also ask about general Wx restrictions and compare the different schoold on those answers. As far as IF ratings go. It doesnt take much to do your training in actual IFR, or atthe very least on dark nights, and does not add to the cost. You can get all the sim time and flight training you want, but it takes a few actual approaches to build the kind of confidence that is needed.
And perhaps instructors could spend a bit more time on basic flight skills rather than a continual litany of simulated emergencies. These are simply philospohical and operational changes.

Now a couple of specifics. My apologies to PPL students as Ihave focussed on CPLs here, but the same standards should apply. As to the pretend 703 ops..some schools are doing this already. It has some benefiits. As to the suggestion not to hire freshly minted pilots. Our company does not, in fact hire freshly minted pilots. Gotta be some CPL students who loved the comment made to pay more and hire experience. I am sure some of them would agree with the pay more, and have CPL pilots that can be hired direct as something else than a $1200 a month right seat warmer.

It will come. Maybe not in my lifetime either, but maybe we can get people moving down the right path.

[Hedley]

rare to find an experienced pilot who is interested in improving the training world, but many who just "throw rocks"

Yes, it's amazing how little gratitude (or debt) pilots feel to the people that helped them along the way. It's all about looking out for #1.

The impression you get from many pilots is that they climbed out of the womb clutching a pilot logbook with 10,000 hours in it in one hand, and an ATPL with a long list of type ratings in the other

[Bushav8er]

rare to find an experienced pilot who is interested in improving the training world, but many who just "throw rocks"

Yes, it's amazing how little gratitude (or debt) pilots feel to the people that helped them along the way. It's all about looking out for #1.

The impression you get from many pilots is that they climbed out of the womb clutching a pilot logbook with 10,000 hours in it in one hand, and an ATPL with a long list of type ratings in the other

I'm not an instructor but do try to help out on this board when I can.

I'm not an English major and sometimes my wording could be different but I do value instructors and they are very knowledgeable. I have, and continue to, learn from them.

There seems to be, in general, two issues; first the instructors. How much experience should they have? And Second, how much and what type of training should students receive?

Should someone that went PPL-CPL-Instructor direct be teaching? Or should they get RW experience, of X many hours first? I've always thought so, just so they can experience situations outside the 'circuit and training area' routine. Some of the ones I've seen, I've said it before, are mechanical. Mid downwind do this, power here, at this point flaps to here etc. They are slow to readjust when outside the 'box'. That's not a 'fault' merely a lack of 'other' experience.

Where the minimums raised because people take that long 'on average', because schools want more cash, instructors more hours or because there were 'faults' in the curriculum? Was the 'average' due to real student 'problems' or because of a judgment of the instructor(s). Lets face it, if a school is limiting, for example, cross winds to 5 knots, the student should catch on to that fast - why the 75 hours average? What happen over time that a student in the past could take a high torque tail dragger solo after 6 hours and a C150 student today needs X hrs?

More theory or more practical?

Should the cross country, instead of placing a mileage figure on it, include instead two stops at grass or gravel strips under 3000', including cross winds of X degrees and X speed and at least one stop at a minimum VFR / SVFR field be of more value?

Commercial, rightly so, involves more CARs/Reg knowledge but should really go beyond PPL to expose RW situations, this is where an 'experienced' instructor becomes important. The student should really be put through a 'week-in-the-life' (of charter or bush pilot, or both) and not rehash circuits for 'refinement'. The 'refinement' should come on every flight, doing every thing over the course of the training. Its also where PDM can be taken from the class room to the flights - lots of 'what-ifs' being thrown at the student. CPL should be just that, exposing them to Commercial Ops, not training for an exam/flight test.

(Regarding the Yellow Wings)

Those trainers were much harder to fly than the trainers we use today. Quite humbling actually to realize that they were putting students up solo in them in 6 hours or so.

Kids were also sent out in command of 4 engine bombers in situations, and with instruments, that would scare any of us - even without the shooting. Now when pilots (not usually instructors) speak they make it sound like a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering and 10,000 hrs is required for fly a light twin. It seems that despite technology to the contrary, egos have inflated dis-proportionality over time.

Operators training programs are not designed to provide basic training that should have been done at an FTU. And yes, new pilots are weaned into the operations, but again, that is about experience, not basic flying skills.

I agree. We don't expect the fresh commercial to know everything but the basics, of flying and Commercial Ops should be there.

I'll qualify all the above with this; the training is based on my training decades ago and the instructors/students today on seeing them come into operations today.

[Hedley]

Lets face it, if a school is limiting, for example, cross winds to 5 knots, the student should catch on to that fast - why the 75 hours average? What happen over time that a student in the past could take a high torque tail dragger solo after 6 hours and a C150 student today needs X hrs?

I just pulled my father's RCAF logbook down from the shelf and flipped through it to the first page. It says he went solo in a T-6 in 1951 after frighteningly little dual ab initio instruction, in my opinion as a class 1 instructor.

Fast forward 45 years to the mid-1990's. I hold an ATPL. I'm flying a T-6 in Florida for the first time. I'm told it's "fire breathing dragon".

Are we making progress?

PS I have been told by many different people that both the Stearman and T-6 (Harvard) were extremely difficult to land - you're holding a "tiger by the tail", one guy actually told me.

What complete nonsense. First, go get a thousand hours in a Pitts, and you will find they're both pussycats. Both were used as ab initio trainers, during and after WWII.

However. I am reminded of the time that Jimmy Buffett bought a Stearman. My buddy Freddy asks Jimmy if he wants some dual. Jimmy says no, I'm fine. Jimmy wrecks it on the runway at Key West the very next day. FYI: Key West has only one runway, 09/27. Sometimes there is a pretty good crosswind out of the north. There isn't a perpendicular runway to save your bacon, if you can't land your airplane in a crosswind.

[Geo]

Hi guys,

Interesting thread, thanks.

I have one question on this discussion re: 6 hours to solo in the old school days (or thereabouts)... what are your thoughts on their training accident rates? Did they not have (and tolerate) a much higher rate of student losses? (our modern, non-wartime tolerance is effectively zero. At least I hope it is!)

g

[Hedley]

Yes, back in WWII airplanes were crashed and people got hurt, and that was just the way things were, because aviation was understood to be dangerous, and no one had the luxury of unlimited time and resource. There was a war to fight after all, and war wasn't always safe. People understood that, back then.

However, today we have zero tolerance, because aviation is no longer dangerous. Heck, an instructor can lose his rating if his student's simply don't perform well on their flight tests.

Another thing to remember: BCATP airports were all triangle runway layouts. This means that regardless of the wind direction, the maximum crosswind a student would ever deal with would be the sine of 30 degrees (or half) of the wind. Absolute worst case.

Back then, airports were literally square fields in Britain, and people took off and landed into wind, on grass. And they still bent a lot of airplanes, even when no one was shooting at them.

You may remember that Douglas Bader, one of the great RAF aces of the Battle of Britain, did an idiotic low altitude roll and crashed, which is how he lost his legs. Incredibly, he kept on flying, and later in his career he was just trying to take off his spitfire, but simply forgot to select full fine prop pitch, and crashed again, bending his artificial legs. If he had real legs, they would have been crushed. Again.

And that yo-yo was one of WWII's finest.

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.

I used to fly airshows with an old German guy, who was an "ace both ways". He shot down 5 allied aircraft, but in the process of doing so, crashed and was shot down 5 times himself, destroying 5 German airplanes. Neat guy, actually.

The world is surely a different place.

[ogc]

There should be some motivation to actually have IFR students fly in IMC.

The facility I did my IFR rating at encouraged flying in actual IMC it is very different than wearing a hood I find.

[Hedley]

Now when pilots speak they make it sound like a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering and 10,000 hrs is required for fly a light twin

Yeah, what nonsense. If someone can fly a 172 competently, I can check them out in a little nosewheel piston twin (eg duchess, seminole, etc) in one day.

I know a guy who just bought half a mooney. He's being told what a rocket ship it is. Fooey. An X-15 it surely isn't. Again, I can check out a competent 172 pilot in one day on a mooney.

[Shiny Side Up]

What happen over time that a student in the past could take a high torque tail dragger solo after 6 hours and a C150 student today needs X hrs?

Anyone remember not too long ago we were having a discussion about the "good old days" and how someone - I believe hedley - mentioned that maybe we are only remembering the good stuff? No? Anyone?

Sure in the old days we used to turn pilots loose with less time. Did that mean they were trained better? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly when we were soloing people in six hours we were picking them from the best and brightest the country had to offer, we were also content to wash a fair ammount of them out in one fashion or another. During the war for instance the BCATP trained over 167,000 aircrew in Canada, about 50,000 of them pilots. 800 people died of that group during that period. IF one applies standard casualty rates, there are usually 3 non-fatal casualties (or as WCB calls them "lost time accidents") for every death. This means that means we had a casualty rate (fatal and non-fatal) of about 1.9% for the BCATP. Almost one in every 50 aircrew candidates. This of course doesn't include how many lesser accidents and injuries there were.

Notably as well it doesn't include how many aircraft were expended during this time either, some of which of course were returned to service, others scrapped. If we say on average that there were two aircrew involved in each of the casualties above, that puts us at expending about 1600 training aircraft in the program - though this has a larger margin of error since there is the possibilty of losing aircraft without losing people, a few people lost without losing aircraft as well. (its worth noting that the Western Allied air forces lost roughly eight times the ammount of aircraft to operational accidents than they did to enemy action)

IF we examine the "crosswind question" we have some very damning evidence still left over from that time. Ever wonder why all the BCATP runways were all made in those triangles? Clearly in its efforts to train a large number of pilots the effort to make sure they were all crosswind experts (and the acceptable loss rate it would incur) was considered greater than the cost and effort to triple up all the runways accross the country - 231 facilities in total across Canada - no small expenditure in manpower or resources.

Anyone have any stats on the current loss rate / casualty rate of students and flight training personel in this country? More importantly, would people accept if we increased it so we can all have less time to solo in our logbooks?

Are we making progress?

Really depends on what you consider progress. If one looks strictly at hours to solo and hours to completion then no, we're going backwards. The equation of flight training isn't that simple though. If we compare the old days to now, both clearly have produced good pilots, and some not so good pilots.

edit: clearly I'm too long winded/ slow of a typer. I see hedley has posted basically what I said. Three times in the time it took me to do this. Just ignore what I've had to say then.

[hew44]

I think that the FTU and flight instructor have alot less to do with how good a pilot is after he or she is liscensed. It has everything to do with the student. Some students simply put are stupid, not much you can do about that. Some are cheap and pay attention to their minimum training times required and do everything they can to do it in that time.

On the better side of things some students are smart, dont care about how much time and money they put into it, just want to be safe. What people seem to forget is not only do you need to have a certain amount of expeirence to get liscensed, you also need to pass a flight test. To pass that flight test you need a recomendation letter. To get that recomendation letter you need to be good enough. And instructors dont just hand those out, remember transport keeps records on your recomends, you can go under investigation and even lose your job with a ton of failures.

I have recomended someone for flight test at the minimum times, and he got the highest mark out of any of my recomends. I have also recomended a guy for PPL flight test at 130 hours (he went solo at 60 hours) simply because that is how long it took. So i really dont think student success or competance has anything to do with me or my school.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I have recomended someone for flight test at the minimum times, and he got the highest mark out of any of my recomends. I have also recomended a guy for PPL flight test at 130 hours (he went solo at 60 hours) simply because that is how long it took. So i really dont think student success or competance has anything to do with me or my school.

Sigh..........

[RenegadeAV8R]

... So i really dont think student success or competance has anything to do with me or my school.

Who is teaching the student?

[Hedley]

Who is teaching the student?

I think he is claiming that no one is teaching his. Rather, they are teaching themselves to fly, and how fast they progress is a function of their intuitive abilities.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I think the kid has a point. We all have been in situations where we were forced to learn, despite some pretty horrible instruction. Or, none at all.

However, one has to wonder if this is an optimal teaching strategy.

[Hedley]

Certainly when we were soloing people in six hours we were picking them from the best and brightest the country had to offer, we were also content to wash a fair amount of them out in one fashion or another

Yup. In the civilian world, anyone who walks through the door and has the $$$ can get his licence. Doesn't matter how old he is, how poor his aptitude it, or how little effort he puts into the course. Someone like that, it's a miracle if he gets his PPL in 70 hrs.

That's a wee bit different than the BCATP. Here's an interesting experiment.

Some instructor here that doesn't think age or aptitude or distractions matters, randomly choose 10 students, all over the age of 50, and train them to PPL, inbetween their ongoing family and work life during evenings and weekends. That's the first group. Average out their time to PPL. Betcha it's not less than 70 hours.

Next, randomly select 100 people under the age of 18 from the population, who have an interest in flying. I do a famil flight with each of them, and I personally select 10 candidates based on aptitude and attitude. I train those 10 students to PPL, and it's their full time job. Room and board and clothing transportation is provided for them, and is the ground and flight training.

I will personally guarantee that all 10 of my hand-picked students will do their flight tests at 45 hours, and they will ace the written and flight tests. They will all be able to land in a crosswind on the centerline only on the upwind main, drive down the runway with the other two tires in the air, then add power and overshoot with only one tire having ever touched the ground.

Now, does anyone here see any difference between the two training methodologies?

[Shiny Side Up]

Actually Hedley if I separate things strictly age wise I've had the opposite turn around. Here's the stats for the last thirty students who've finished their PPL at the school. The average time until completion is 56.6 hours. The mean number though is 52.0 hours. The mode of course is 45.0 (six out of the thirty students). What does this all mean? it means that more students are completing under the average than students completing over the average. The average is significantly higher though due to a few large outliers. The five highest completions were 79.8, 84.0, 88.1, 93.7 and 97.7. Each one of these I should note were people who completed their licenses over an extremely lengthy period of time. Oddly enough the person who took the longest time (27 years) was the lowest of these five (79.8 ) the least time taken of this group was 6 years (and again oddly enough the 97.7) The rest taking somewhere between 27 years and 6 years to complete. Each of these I should note were in the 45+ category.

(as an aside one might also ask does the person who completed after 27 years count against another instructor's teaching methods of the seveties or mine in the two thousands?)

IF we remove those outliers though we get some interesting data: The times until completion out of the remaining 25 now peak at 74.5 hours. If I plot out ages verses these results suprisingly enough the times below the mean are all students in the 35 or more years range, while the higher completion times fall into the 25 or less range. People of in between age fall into the middle.

I should note that most of the students train on the same schedule, usually three to five lessons a week, most students finishing their PPL in anywhere between six months to a year, it being very common to of course have breaks in there in their training schedules. Notably the most recent completion I signed off was at 58.3 hours, despite his hinderance of being only able to fly on Saturdays, also having gotten married and spawned a child in the inbetween from start to finish, taking a total of three years. Very suprising he did as well one might think considering I have no problem renting him the airplane every Saturday these days even with a reasonable crosswind.Incidentally he was 30 years old.

So why are older people doing better? Very simple, its desire and commitment. Even if they can't be training all the time I find the more mature crowd make more of the time they do spend training. They're here because they want to be here.