Scudrunners

How do you say, "Give us the job and we'll finish the tools!" in Russian?

Shiny,


Of course all instruction isn't bad. I personally had good, competent instruction, overall.  I'm sure there has been a touch of milking, I'm not going to make a federal case over it.


This isn't about my views on flight instruction, or flight instructors.


This is about a business putting profit over safety, but upheld as the opposite. No different in my mind than the 703 operations flying to lake butt-hole  so critiqued for doing the same thing.


These pretend 4 bars at the GTA schools here hold themselves up as the standard of safety and professionalism.


I'm saying this particular practice throws a huge question mark on that image. 


Why shouldn't I expect someone to stand up, in public, from the industry, WITH THEIR REAL NAME, and say "I have a problem with this too -- I'll take a stand -- because safey -- and my own honor -- are more important than my own career".


Bizarre concepts in our world, I know.


What I reference upsets me because I can think of several -- not one -- fatal accidents tied to this particular practice. And instructors themselves may be simply just as much victims as the students, being pressured to complete flights and return aircraft in situations they shouldn't.  And while it's not universal, it's not uncommon.


Just my $0.02.  Sorry for the rant.  Young people dying really upsets me. Must be aging a little.

[quote]fatal accidents ... young people dying really upsets me[/quote]

Try to get over that.  They don't care, so why
should you?  I used to get worked up over
people dying, too, until I realized that [i]they
didn't care[/i] - so why should you and I?

People have far more important concerns
than safety.  Political correctness, their
feelings, fashion, style, paperwork, uniforms,
facebook, etc. 

I doubt that "not crashing" makes their top ten.

You might think that the above is bizarre,
and I would tend to agree with you, but
right now on AvCan, Rockie is arguing that
fundamental aircraft handling skills are
really not important. 

Insanity is the new normal, so try to keep up.

Rockie is arguing that fundamental aircraft handling skills are really not important. 


He is correct as long as the computers are flying it.


But things can get exciting and expensive if you accept a visual on a perfect day like that crew in SFO and forget to have the auto throttles still selected.


I have given up on trying to figure out how most of pilots are quite happy with accepting ignorance as the way to go.

[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lpm2P1dIht4/hqdefault.jpg[/img]





[b][size=2em]OH Chuck you are having [font=verdana] s[/font]ize issues again - size counts -- [/size][/b]

[quote]Here's a milking tale. When I was training at for my PPL years ago, the flight school I was at started receiving the C172R models. In order to be checked out the school insisted that you fly with plane with all four seats occupied. I had to go through the ritual of having three instructors pile on board for a quick trip around the patch on my dime so I would get the "feel" of a heavily loaded airplane. Keep in mind I was already current on the old 172M. I've never had to do a similar exercise for a check out and I've been to a lot of different FTUs as a renter in my time. Had I known better I would have told them to get stuffed but you figure it's an SOP and that's just the way it is....oh well. Probably cost double the usual check out time - think about 4.0 hours vs the usual 2 hours.[/quote]


Isn't that a great idea though? The "three" were maybe for more than the max payload weight experience  ... its also three real opinions on proficiency at that heaviest POH weight (later they all can discuss among the flightschool brass if it's a pass or not).


Not so bad a "milking" idea if a great idea for your safety experience and their insurance due-dilligence. The full gross / full length proficiency test with some extra judging-power is accomplished all in one long local flight.  :-\ 


Are they still around ?

The poor performance of heavy weight / high density
altitude can be easily simulated with part throttle.  Or
by just flying a buck fifty anytime there's not snow on
the ground.

Far more interesting to me is the behaviour of the
aircraft with an aft C of G.  Students always learn to
fly with the C of G at the forward limit, where the
aircraft is docile, and think that the aircraft always
handles (a subject Rockie thinks is unimportant) in
that manner.

But look at what happens with an aft C of G:

[img width=500 height=288][/img]

Everyone's dead of course.

No one remembers, but one day Kathy Jaffe strapped
some weight (not that much, actually) in the back of
her Pitts to intentionally shift the C of G aft, and it
handled so differently, she was unable to recover,
and she spun into the ground:

[url=http://www.iac52.org/KathyJaffe.html]http://www.iac52.org/KathyJaffe.html[/url]

She's dead now too, but Rockie says that aircraft
handling skills are unimportant.

Art Scholl.  Died during the filming of a really cheesy
movie in 1985 featuring a vertically-challenged
Scientologist in dire need of rhinoplasty.  He was
in an inverted spin in his Pitts - the safest maneuver
in the world, I happily recover from them at less
than 1000 AGL and I'm a shitty pilot compared to the
AvCan experts - and Art couldn't recover because of
those large, heavy cameras they had back then, strapped
to his camera.

Was it C of G that killed Art Scholl?  Polar Moment of
Inertia, not that any AvCan expert knows what that is?
Were his controls fouled, either internally or externally?
No one will ever know.

But it's unimportant, because aircraft handling skills
don't matter, the experts tell us.

I have spoken with a pilot who flew in the part of the world where they sand bag light aircraft to gross weight for proficiency check rides --

Speaking of unimportant aircraft handling skills ....

I had a stick jam in a vertical downline in a Pitts.
I recovered and landed, which was interesting.  I
am sure an AvCan expert would be dead if that
happened to him.  Sean Tucker stepped over the
side, last time it happened to him. 

You may recall that a DHL A300 had a bad day
once over Iraq.  Some aircraft handling skills
came in handy.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Bagh ... n_incident]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Bagh ... n_incident[/url]

[quote]As in the case of the 1989 United Airlines Flight 232 disaster in the United States, Captain Genotte could only use thrust to modify pitch, speed and altitude and vary throttles asymmetrically to control yaw and turn the aircraft. Flight engineer Mario Rofail executed a gravity drop to extend the landing gear, a procedure normally accomplished with hydraulic power. Early deployment of the gear was critical to a safe outcome because increased drag helped reduce speed and stabilize the Airbus.[/quote]

Clearly we can see that aircraft handling skills
and systems knowledge are unimportant in this
modern day of blowhard four-bars.

[quote]Not so bad a "milking" idea if a great idea for your safety experience and their insurance due-dilligence. The full gross / full length proficiency test with some extra judging-power is accomplished all in one long local flight.[/quote]

You know... I would have been ok with it if had been billed as a "full gross" exercise separate from a routine checkout. I don't mind being upsold on training as long as the FTU's honest about it.

[quote]Are they still around ?[/quote]

No..The school went out of business in 2001 or 2002. IIRC they also took a lot of student cash with them.


[quote]Far more interesting to me is the behaviour of the
aircraft with an aft C of G.  Students always learn to
fly with the C of G at the forward limit, where the
aircraft is docile, and think that the aircraft always
handles (a subject Rockie thinks is unimportant) in
that manner.[/quote]

Interesting...at the time I did the full-gross checkout I was actually worried about aft C of G because there was fat bastard in the back seat  :o.