The hundred hour student

[Colonel]

To be fair, the barefoot bandit has never landed an airplane without wrecking it

Well, not everyone's student pilots are perfect

it is useful to have an example to observe

YouTube videos have pretty well taken over that.

I must ask - is it really that hard to fly an airplane, or ride a motorcycle?

[Squaretail]

I must ask - is it really that hard to fly an airplane, or ride a motorcycle?

It can't be, I manage to do it, and I ain't special. Though I have hurt myself a few times on motorcycles.

[Colonel]

If you haven't hurt yourself yet on a motorcycle, you haven't been riding long enough :^)



Great training for flying an airplane. It builds paranoia and situational awareness that
keeps you alive.

Back on topic ... teaching and learning ....

When I was teaching new instructors, they would show up with a 37 page PGI with 528
talking points for say steep turns. Lots of teaching is about to happen in the next 1.5 hours,
but precious little learning is going to occur.

If you ask the student a couple of weeks later, what he remembered from that Death By Briefing™
he would probably furrow his brow and repeat maybe ONE THING.

So, that's what you've got to teach. What he's going to retain. The very first skill a good
flight instructor needs to develop, is the ability to boil the crap off and focus only on the
essential fundamentals.

I would insist that new instructors put their entire PGI on one piece of paper. Ok, they
can use the back for really tough lessons like range and endurance, but ...

Back to steep turns. When you ask someone what they remember about steep turns,
hopefully they blurt out, "Pull back".

Well done.

TL;DR Most flight instruction is really shitty. It's overly complex and spends time on
all sorts of unimportant crap.

[Squaretail]

Most flight instruction is really shitty. It's overly complex and spends time on
all sorts of unimportant crap.

I can't argue with that. Its the reason that it takes an average of 70 hours to get a PPL these days. Its of poor quality, inefficient or both. Let alone if its even fraudulent. But past the 70 hours the student really has to look at the share of the burden they have in that enterprise. That's the part they can control. After all its students who ask what they can do to get better training... wait scratch that, what they can do to get their paper quicker, not the instructors. At least only a few instructors have asked over the years how they can get better. I could rail all day about the issues I see there, but that's not going to do any good.

Its all well and good to rail at instructors, but by and large they don't have an interest in the subject, I mean if you ask any sample, they're all doing an A+ job, but that's clearly not the case. But if you're 100+ hours and not done your PPL, or worse, not soloed you really got to look in the mirror. I put this topic up after all because of the frequency this happens, and hopefully its those people who will listen. Maybe Rob Machado will read this and give it better readership in a column.

[Slick Goodlin]

Its of poor quality, inefficient or both.

Sometimes I wonder if marketing to people who don’t know any better doesn’t play a huge part too. Learn to fly here because our airplanes are fancier, our airport is bigger, etc. Even a student/instructor combo who could bang out all required parts of a PPL in, say, thirty hours is going to get crippled by circumstances.

I think 30 hours of actual exercises is reasonable for anyone who works hard at it, but to that you need to add whatever else the Hobbs counts up going to and from those exercises. Take a look at two airports I have experience with when it comes to flight training: one is a fairly large controlled airport in the middle of things, the other a little uncontrolled airpark on the edge of the city. The schools at both typically book one hour lessons. So you show up at the big city airport; start, taxi and run up are going to take probably 0.2 (assuming you’re not also doing a lengthy GPS initialization or similar pointless BS on a local flight which only adds to the time), then you’re looking at 0.2 once airborne to get to the practice area and the same time to get back before a 0.1 taxi in. We’ve now filled 70% of the booking with extra stuff that contributes somewhat to training but not very efficiently.

The uncontrolled field has the threshold nearly next to the apron so closer to 0.1 for start, taxi, and run up and the practice area is three miles from the airport. Figure an average of zero time to get to the practice area (because the times you need time to climb up for upper air work balance out the times you stay in the circuit) and 0.1 to return, land, and taxi in. The procedural stuff only takes up 20% of each booking.

At the ‘big’ airport the instructor has to be a lot more cognizant of time management, otherwise that 0.3 spent in the practice area will require one hundred one-hour bookings to reach thirty hours of instruction while the small field guy needs just 38 bookings to achieve the same. Yes, my example probably has some ghoulish overkill but the point remains that it’s pretty easy to fluff out that PTR.

[Squaretail]

Sometimes I wonder if marketing to people who don’t know any better

Most things are marketed towards customers who know very little about the product or service.

[Colonel]

the ‘big’ airport ... will require one hundred one-hour bookings to reach thirty hours of instruction
while the small field guy needs just 38 bookings to achieve the same.

100 to 38

That's quite a ratio! When you add in the little detail that flight hours are
often more expensive at the big airport (at least they used to be) the financial
gap widens even more, in favor of the quiet airport.

The closest airport may not always be the best airport for you.

Various internet experts will tell you that you need to learn intense radio work
from the very first lesson (ideally, flight training out of Pearson) but that's just
so much ignorant newbie bullshit, trying to justify their poor choices.

From the simple, to the complex. Master the basics first, like flying the fucking
airplane.

[Colonel]

customers who know very little about the product or service

Remember, this isn't exactly unique to aviation. I'm sure everyone reading this
at some point in their life, has hired a lawyer/doctor/mechanic/plumber/whatever-trade
that might have been qualified, but was a completely incompetent idiot, if not an outright criminal.

Mike Holmes - you may have heard of him - has famously stated that 90% of
contractors are incompetent or criminals. He's made a career of cleaning up
after these idiots and thieves.

Note to Canadians: stop worshipping doctors. They kill more people than
Jack The Ripper, every day.

[Squaretail]

Remember, this isn't exactly unique to aviation.

But also, everyone was a beginner at some time. There was a time when each doctor, lawyer, plumber, barber, etc. wasn't one and had to find a way of learning to be one. So everyone knew less about what they were getting into before their diploma, degree, weekend course certificate when they were in the process of getting into it. But people put way more effort into everything else than being a pilot. Most people will be abroad if they sign up to go to any post secondary. Unlike pilots who go to the nearest most convenient. People research their next phone purchase more than they do their flight school. If there is any choice in the matter, they choose to go to the biggest shiniest place. If that's where the big airplanes are at, well that's how you get to learn about big airplanes... right? Right.

[Colonel]

There was a time when each doctor, lawyer, plumber, barber, etc. wasn't one and had to find a way of learning to be one

I don't want that trades guy. I want a crusty old pro that knows what the fuck he is doing.

No, seriously. If you want a cutter to open up your brain or your chest, do you want a newbie
that's going to make mistakes?

Or a lawyer to represent you in court. You're ok with losing the case because he made some
FNG mistakes, because it was a "learning experience" for him?!

Or your beginner contractor could fuck up your house. Or take off with the deposit.

I could do this, all day.