Unless I miss my mark, you're extremely unhappy with your lot in flight training chiefly because you feel there's not a living to be made in it. Do you feel the situation would improve if you could make a decent living at it? Remember, I didn't say get rich. Do you feel that flight training at your school would improve if the personell made a good living at it? What about flight training in your area? Nationally?
I am not unhappy with my lot in flight training, I'm just very tired.
A decent living can be defined in many ways.
Personnel here make a better living than most on this airfield, we pay better and treat them better. But we can only do so much with the declining customer base.
All schools are hurting right now as there are a lot fewer students coming through the doors.
Perhaps the endemic unhappiness you can read in these pages is a factor. Nobody wants to go to a party of misery.
Flight training here suffers as much from the weather forecasts as anything else.
Students cancel on the forecast and students from elsewhere will not come here because the weather is always bad.
The problem is it isn't!
We've had a lot of good flying days recently when nobody showed up because of the weather forecast!
Nationally?
I can't speak for the rest of this country.
I believe Moncton is doing a very good job, I understand they got some Chinese students from here through their licences and back to China before their compatriots who are still here (not at my school)... The weather in the Maritimes is worse than here but they still succeed and good for them.
Our foreign students always compare us with how their friends are doing in London and in Winterpeg.
Winnipeg has better weather, there's Sun in the forecast every day, I wouldn't like the cold though!
Everywhere has its change of personnel, as instructors move on to the airlines.
As mentioned, my generation was lucky for the experienced personnel who taught us, they were retired or just doing it weekends for the pleasure of doing a good job.
Today for most the instructor rating is a passing phase on to the next thing. People hurry a lot more these days, they must catch up with something.
What I see sometimes is pilots who want to change, why not do it this way? Then one day they come unstuck and learn why things were done a certain way for the past 80 years...
I am tired, I am growing old, I am here 12 hours a day even in the winter... I do not expect anyone else to shoulder the load, they are not paid enough.
Come close mind you...they never did...nor did they take control because they were in fear of a negative outcome.
