Good Hands n’ Feet vs. Operational Experience

[gwagen]

I’m not a flight instructor or a sky god.

I’ve no opinion if the ho driver or instructor is better. But here is a snap shot of my local experience.

I am well placed on the sidelines of a local FTU to observe the quality of instructors today.

Within the last year I’ve seen 6 or 7 class IV come and go. Most left due to job opportunities with Georgian, Jazz, Wasaya and similar.

All had somehwhere between 600-800 hours of experience.

Two so far have been skilled and needed very little remedial training before being able to work with new students.

The rest however ranged from basic PPL abilities to completely unable to safely operate an aircraft in the most basic parameters and should be barred from ever flying again.

And these people have instructor ratings!!!!!

I had the misfortune to be in the back seat of a 172 with two of these instructors up front. During the initial climb out both instructors became engaged in trying to operate the GPS equipment , trying to set a course to the home field. A route that could be flown visually by most post solo students. But they were unable to fly, despite having just flown from there.....

Not once but twice was the stall horn thoroughly sounded, I was completely shocked. There is no excuse for two supposedly competent instructors to loose awareness to the point that the stall warning is sounding on a climbout at low altitude over completely inhospitable terrain. Twice!

[confusedalot]

Holy shit, thanks for the heads up on the above post. Hard for a simpleton such as myself who actually had zero issues for a total of 39 years to comprehend this sort of thing. Flying is easy, as long as you use common sense.

Totally confused.

[youhavecontrol]

Two so far have been skilled and needed very little remedial training before being able to work with new students.

Thoughts:
A) Where on earth are they hiring instructors from? Have they learned their lesson yet and hired from somewhere else?
B) Who's the Transport Canada examiner that's dropped the ball on filtering-out these instructor candidates?

[rookiepilot]

Dependence and fixation on electronics is out of hand.
Degrades situational awareness.

I've seen VFR flights with THREE screen devices that had to be programmed first. Or in the air.

Turn it off! Look out the window.

If I was instructing I would not allow GPS devices to be used for most of the PPL.

[valleyboy]

It's simple -- it's too easy to get an instructor's rating, it brings to mind the phrase "babies having babies" - instructing should be a career and paid well not a conduit to build time, which until recently was dismissed as next to useless. In the past looking for a job with instructor time would close more doors than open.

[rookiepilot]

Here's a thought, though unenforceable:

Make it mandatory the 300 NM CC for the CPL, is to be flown at 2000 AGL max, and without the aid of any GPS device. Obviously on the honour system.

Would learn more this way, yes?

Instructors should be obviously fluent in programming a Garmin. But should also have zero issues with DR over a long CC.