The hundred hour student

[Squaretail]

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....

That wasn't the point of what I was saying. The point was rather why is it that in everything else, people look for the best that they can get, except for flight training? Every other profession starts at zero level, but they look for the best they can get. The best university, the best trade school, hell people even look for the best golf instructor. So the marketing of education to an unknowing customer base isn't a problem, every other profession does the research to not be mediocre. Why when you want to be a pilot is it so much more important for it to be fast and convenient?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

If you could teach flying without the need for getting a FTU certificate from Transport Canada I would come out of retirement and get two airplanes and operate from a private grass strip.

The two airplanes would be a J3 Cub and a Cessna 150.

There is no reason for it to take 70 hours to learn to fly to the PPL level.

When I learned to fly the minimum time for a PPL was thirty hours and that was what I had when I got mine.

[Colonel]

Sounds like heaven to me, Chuck!

people even look for the best golf instructor

Have you seen what a good golf instructor charges?!

Hank Haney - $15,000 per day
Dave Pelz - $20,000 per day

Why when you want to be a pilot is it so much more important for it to be fast and convenient?

The contempt that people have for aviation has always puzzled me. See, if you
play golf shitty, you're probably not going to die.

That's the difference between golf and flying. You fuck up flying, everyone on
board (and bonus, possibly people on the ground) dies.

Hey, why don't we fly a C340 to Sandy Eggo, and try to fly an approach through
the marine layer?

The contempt that people have for their own life is indeed puzzling. Bordering
on psychotic.

[Slick Goodlin]

two airplanes and operate from a private grass strip.

The two airplanes would be a J3 Cub and a Cessna 150.

My own fantasy flight school would have a 2500 foot paved strip with landable grass beside it. The fleet would all be variations on a theme.

The basic trainer:


The advanced trainer:


If someone insisted on having the little wheel at the front:


I don’t think I’d do multi training, but...

[Slick Goodlin]

When I learned to fly the minimum time for a PPL was thirty hours and that was what I had when I got mine.

So realistically what would you target to bring your present-day training time down to that? And would that be the goal for all students or just one that you hold up to show it can be done?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

So realistically what would you target to bring your present-day training time down to that?

First I would ensure that the student be motivated to want to learn in the shortest timeframe, then I would proceed to teach them by concentrating on teaching the necessary manual skills and how to separate need to know things from nice to know things.

And would that be the goal for all students or just one that you hold up to show it can be done?

It would be the goal for every student.

And in the minimum time required by T.C..... 45 hours.

[Colonel]

Slick: good news! Your "advanced trainer" - a brand new one, in fact - is
now available at a Toronto flight school. You know of the CFI. A certain
class 1 - extremely unpopular with TC - helped that CFI with his class 4.

With the right flight training environment (eg not Pearson), the right
instructor, and the right student, PPL in 45 hours is certainly do-able.

Look at the Air Cadets! Probably their weakest link is the instructors,
but the military stops them from wandering off into the weeds like a
typical civilian flight school.

At the risk of offending the egalitarians, a young, motivated student
with buckets of aptitude, is always going to learn faster than the
opposite.

Even a perfect student (above) who didn't get flight training, and 30
years later tries to learn to fly - or ride a motorcycle, or play the guitar -
is not going to perform as well, as his younger self.

Meta-lesson from Jordan Peterson (probably the most hated Canadian
alive today) - don't compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself
to how you were last month. Saying reasonable things like that, I can
see why Canadians hate him so much. He showed up at my Alma Mater,
one Good Canadian™ showed up with a garrote.

[Slick Goodlin]

First I would ensure that the student be motivated to want to learn in the shortest timeframe, then I would proceed to teach them by concentrating on teaching the necessary manual skills and how to separate need to know things from nice to know things.

Fair enough. Would you just not take on people who couldn’t commit? Penalize long spans between bookings? Just kick them out if the progress isn’t there?

I absolutely get the bit about motivating and focusing on solid fundamentals. Of the however-many students I recommended for flight tests when I taught at a college that took some weird pride in their 50% wash-out rate, I claim a 100% success rate for doing just that: building a solid foundation and keeping motivation up. When you get someone else’s student dropped on you who just bombed a ride and you’ve only got two Hobbs hours to fix it before their re-test that’s about the only way.

[Colonel]

I taught at a college that took some weird pride in their 50% wash-out rate

That's a college with a really shitty entrance evaluation - ethically, they should not allow
students to start their program, that they know can't complete it.

Or they are completely corrupt and gaming the socialist government with student subsidies.

Either way, that's a fucked up school. Which I think a guy I know, is Chair of (ahem). He used
to own a really nice red Stinson, back when he worked at General Dynamics as an engineer.

[Squaretail]

Have you seen what a good golf instructor charges?!

Yeah, that's what makes it even more galling when the same guy who brags about paying that haggles over $60/hour for an instructor.