okotoks flight school

[trey kule]

No the definition has not changed as per the CARs.
What has changed is FTUs using Hobbs time as flight time. Based on oil pressure,that means from engine start to engine stop.
And, what is really at issue,is TC approving the practice.

Instructors dont want students listening to AWOS or ATIS before startup. Let the engine warm up a bit while you do that, set your radios, and run your post start-pretaxi, 107 item checklist for your 172. All flight time approved by TC. No movement of the aircraft, but, you know, its flight time. Same with stopping. Brakes on, engine cooling down and run the checklist.....all is flight time. Whats a .1 in the grand scheme of things? Lets see, 25 flight lessons at .1 is about 2.5 hours at $200 an hour....do the math.instructors seldom will; they get paid by the flight hour.

With the current tracking systems and GPS it is quite simple to track actual flight time down to seconds. But that would cost money for an FTU to install , and cut into revenues. As long as TC allows this it is not going to change

[Aviatard]

Until I came here I never knew how evil FTUs were. For sure the fuel you burn after starting is free. Same for time the airplanes and instructor sitting on the ramp. Imagine charging for that.

Look at Hertz. They only charge you the part of the $69.85 daily rate that you were actually driving the car right?



*some parts of this post may have been sarcasm.

[Schooner69A]

Trey K: when renting an aircraft in Fredericton some thirty years ago that "flight time" was from chalk to chalk. That was from an FTU. Was there another way of doing it? Did FTUs only charge for air time at some point?

[trey kule]

No. It should be chalk to chalk.
Not engine start to engine stop.

As to charging. That is not the issue here. It is about logging time that is not flight time at all. Charging before the plane moves and after ithas stopped.

Be honest avitard. That should be included in the rate charged. You are not charging the student by the day (as a car rental place does). You are charging by the flight hour, and padding flight hours is not honest....though TC seems to think its ok.

Add a few more FTU weasalpractices in and it is not hard to see why the average flight hours for a ppl goes up.
I am very much in favor of flight instructors being paid better. But this is not the way to do it,

[Squaretail]

Technically speaking, chock to chock also wouldn't describe flight time either, since that would include time some one is out of the aircraft possibly placing chocks. Or waiting for them to be placed. But then also technically speaking, I can only imagine that Trey is busy recording all the short "flights" when the airplane starts and stops moving en-route to and from a runway. I'm glad that a regulatory purist has found the single most important thing that is plaguing flight training and is taking a stand.

Or are you guys referring to writing times down with chalk? Do you have a little slate on your knee board? I'm confused.

I mean some flight time discrepancies of those minutes from when the key turns, until the pilot is maybe doing something useful and the time to when the wheels stop moving and the mixture gets pulled is clearly where flight training is going wrong. Lets petition transport about getting this right. Forget about poor supervision of instructors, the use of simulators for ab-initio, inexperienced CFIs, inexperienced class ones, pilot examiners conflicts of interests, the controlled nature of the pool of pilot examiners, don't leave anything out 2 hour PGIs, lack of or misplaced regulatory oversight, scenario based ab-initio, shrinking domestic training resources, lessening home grown aviation interests, decreasing regulator industry experience, outdated licensing requirements, an irrelevant written testing regime, lacking and out of touch practical testing requirements, onerous regulatory start up hurdles, excruciatingly poor regulatory service levels, high instructor turnover, and last, but not least or exhaustively, low instructor experience.

No. Lets focus on how flight time is recorded. THAT's what matters most!

[trey kule]

Well your attempt at humorous sarcasm did not get missed.

Here is something to give some thought to.
Chalk to chalk is an old military term because the chalks were removed and placed for you.
No need to know aviation history if you are an entitled millennium.
And , I suppose, no need to actually look up the definition of flight time. If you did you would not be making comments like stop and starts. But hey, ignorance allows you to beak off.
Yes, there are many areas flight training could be improved. But for those who don’t suffer from under 25 ADD, my post was in response to the discussion.
If you think it is OK to have a regulator approved deviance from the CARs that costs students
more money or dishonest billing, so be it. Btw. The solution to this problem is very simple. Rather than trot out problems, how about offering practical solutions to them.
I never could understand how some instructors could look a student straight in the face and casually explain 70 hour ppls as normal. The flight syllabus has not changed in some 30 years, But after seeing some of the posts here, I get it now...

[Beefitarian]

But waiting for twenty minutes because you are number 6 for take off and there are planes landing at a busy airport, is after the chocks have been pulled and you taxied to position.

I'm not saying a school should let me sit there for free but I feel like that is potentially adding hours to anyone that might be writing time in a ptr. Wether they use chalk or not.

[Schooner69A]

TK: I understand the point you were trying to make. Engine "ON" to "Engine Off" DOES take advantage of the student.

During my short civilian instructing period, we used "Up, Down, plus point two". Worked well...

J

[photofly]

Alas, “airtime plus .2” is expressly forbidden by Transport.

[rookiepilot]

I know ground time added some to my PPL. Just waiting. As did changing an instructor, then having to fly with the class 2 to verify what the class 4 taught me, before the flight test. LOL.

The real ripoff is the one flight I did where after engine started, dude decided to do an unannounced 15 minute "ground briefing " right there in the airplane.

Nice. Never again. Real loser.

Don't be a scumbag and do that to your students.

[Beefitarian]

Nice.

Also, a few years ago I returned to YBW for some dual. Even after doing it a few times I was still a bit uncomfortable switching from tower to outer tower to Calgary VFR to practice area frequency then the same in reverse order just to go do a bit of upper air practice. Four hours in I was a bit better.

When the radio work overwhelms a licensed guy, I'm betting it will add time to training for a person who is a bit nervous just talking to the scary controllers.

Maybe you fellows have a different opinion but I would never force a student to go solo until they are completely at ease with the airspace and radio work. Even if it added time to their ptr.

[Aviatard]

TK: I understand the point you were trying to make. Engine "ON" to "Engine Off" DOES take advantage of the student.

During my short civilian instructing period, we used "Up, Down, plus point two". Worked well...

J

How is charging for that time taking advantage? My time is yours. I am not available to do anything else. The plane isn’t available for any other purpose. You’re burning fuel. You should pay. But let’s be real. It amounts to maybe a minute of extra billed time at either end of a flight unless you’re super mentally challenged.

As for logging that time instead of using the CARS definition of flight time, I do not disagree that isn’t correct.

[Aviatard]

The real ripoff is the one flight I did where after engine started, dude decided to do an unannounced 15 minute "ground briefing " right there in the airplane.

Nice. Never again. Real loser.

Don't be a scumbag and do that to your students.

Can’t argue with that. It shouldn’t happen. You’re absolutely right. Now I understand your constant rants about Evil FTUs.

[rookiepilot]

The real ripoff is the one flight I did where after engine started, dude decided to do an unannounced 15 minute "ground briefing " right there in the airplane.

Nice. Never again. Real loser.

Don't be a scumbag and do that to your students.

Can’t argue with that. It shouldn’t happen. You’re absolutely right. Now I understand your constant rants about Evil FTUs.

Don't get me started about instructors who've never left the circuit other than their 300 NM cc in 5 knots, SKC and a million, calling themselves "experienced", LOL. My favourites are when they wear cool shades -- inside the FTU building -- and those cool uniform shirts with the bars on them. Iceman, returns.

I've had to stop myself from saluting.

The best of the best should be instructors. Too bad it isn't that way.

[Schooner69A]

"Alas, “airtime plus .2” is expressly forbidden by Transport."

I hope they never ask to see my logbooks: they will notice a certain pattern in all my recording of hours...

[photofly]

Here's a TC document on how flight time applies to helicopters, but it's relevant to airplanes ("aeroplanes") too:
https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviati ... ION_01.pdf

[trey kule]

It would be nice if TC would publish something like that for fixed wing. Particularly with a table as shown there..
The whole engine start to stop would end.

But...where exactly does it prohibit air time +.2?

[iflyforpie]

It doesn't.

In fact, our TC POI specifically told us to use that method. Never was called on it once.

[Schooner69A]

"How is charging for that time taking advantage?"

I was going to mount a vigorous discussion, but rookiepilot beat me to it.

At my local airport, I have seen one of the local trainers fire up as we boarded our aircraft (formation flight); we fired up, taxied to the ramp, performed our run-ups etc, taxied out to the runway and took off. Trainer was just heading for the ramp...

[Squaretail]

Here is something to give some thought to.
Chalk to chalk is an old military term because the chalks were removed and placed for you.
No need to know aviation history if you are an entitled millennium.
And , I suppose, no need to actually look up the definition of flight time. If you did you would not be making comments like stop and starts. But hey, ignorance allows you to beak off.

Then why are you making comments about chock to chock? I don't see any reference to chocks in CAR 101.01 (1) yet you persist on referring to it as your standard for flight time. But technically speaking first moves under its own power doesn't specify the specific movement of the aircraft. Certainly upon start of the engine the airplane is moving, part of it indeed quite rapidly. Since your whole argument if based upon how you would like to specifically define flight time, the introduction of the placement of chocks doesn't seem relevant, much less so since we're not talking about a military flight school. You brought up the little details of this action.

Yes, there are many areas flight training could be improved. But for those who don’t suffer from under 25 ADD, my post was in response to the discussion.
If you think it is OK to have a regulator approved deviance from the CARs that costs students
more money or dishonest billing, so be it. Btw. The solution to this problem is very simple.

Did I say it was ok with schools dishonest billing? After all, which do you think costs more, a PPL syllabus that for some reason requires a student to spend money on a simulator which is charged at 90% of the airplane rate for part of their PPL or the possible extra minutes at the bookends of flights. The point I'm getting across, is that if you really care about flight training costs, this is peanuts. And if you don't know that, then you don't know much else about how its conducted. There is at least a hundred things that one can lay at the feet of the regulator and FTUs that would contribute more to making flight training more efficient (and I helpfully listed some for you) than worrying about whether a student got their money's worth in the time it took between wheels stopping and engine stopping. While I will say that in many places I've seen its not efficient, I've never seen where it was so outrageous that it would eclipse anything else that particular FTU was doing wrong, and if this was ALL a FTU was doing wrong and one was to petition TC about it, they would rightfully ignore you.

And for the record, any place that I have seen that charges by hobbs time, is pretty up front about that method of billing. It may be the only thing that they're up front about. So even on that small point you can't really say that you didn't know that was the case when you got in the plane.

Rather than trot out problems, how about offering practical solutions to them.

There is no solution to this problem, and partly because in the big scheme of things it isn't one. I have been involved in flight training a long time. I will let you in on a secret. Students themselves are usually the ones trying to stretch their flight time in their books. OR under read it, depending on their motivations. The point is frequently you have a variety of parties that have differing interests in how time is recorded on flights. Instructors definitely usually want flights to be longer, if that's tied to how they are paid. Renters grossly underestimate their time. I should note that in my experience pilots are also horrible at reading watches or clocks and writing down time. At the end of a day, the hobbs meter makes so you collect money for when fuel is being turned into noise. And probably more importantly, so you don't have to argue with people about whether you charged them too much or too little or if they did with your airplane what they said they were going to do with it. Again, this quibble over whether a flight was .1 of an hour shorter or longer pales to say if this happens on a flight with an instructor:

The real ripoff is the one flight I did where after engine started, dude decided to do an unannounced 15 minute "ground briefing " right there in the airplane.

Lots of things to be said about that, and systematic problem to be fixed with some of the problems I listed before as contributing factors. So which do you think is worse? Briefing while engines running or how they wrote the time down at the end? I mean that added a .3 to every flight if that happened. Maybe more in some cases. I can't imagine that instructor was super efficient with the rest of the lesson.

On the issue of -.2 for airtime, I have had different interpretations from TC people in the same office. Some specified it had to be that way, some remarked on how suspicious the time recording was so perfect. I will say that most of them are united in their opinion that the difference between flight and air time can't be less than .2 Even as efficient as I usually am even with students. At the end of the day, its an argument not worth having with your POI, there's bigger things to fight them on. Even if it is severely irritating when one POI gives you shit for doing what another POI gave you shit for not doing before. One won't even get into the whole silliness about making minutes written down fitting tenths of hours to make them happy.

At the end of the day, airplanes don't turn into pumpkins and the pilots into mice at a minute past the fraction of whatever hour they were flying.

I never could understand how some instructors could look a student straight in the face and casually explain 70 hour ppls as normal. The flight syllabus has not changed in some 30 years, But after seeing some of the posts here, I get it now...

The prime reasons its that way is there's no market for quality of training or efficiency of training. If everyone was interested in doing it at best cost, FTUs would be over run with customers demanding cadet like courses, which there isn't. Flight schools succeed or fail on location, location, location. Convenience is the number one quality by far that any non-career students shop by, and so do many domestic career oriented students. For better or worse, the product one gets at FTUs is probably what their market has dictated.

You'll forgive me when I get irritated when people who don't instruct, don't work at schools, know everything about how it can be done better. IF this is your chosen hill to die on to improve flight training, and more people think like that, well then there's no friggin' hope for the whole business of it. But feel free to start your campaign with transport about it, I look forward to seeing how that turns out in future posts.

BTW, its also rich the guy who doesn't know the difference between chock and chalk lecturing us on military terminology and history.

At my local airport, I have seen one of the local trainers fire up as we boarded our aircraft (formation flight); we fired up, taxied to the ramp, performed our run-ups etc, taxied out to the runway and took off. Trainer was just heading for the ramp...

Well I should hope that the experienced guys would always beat the students in the race to the runway. Sometimes people forget what its like to be new at something. Assuming that you were doing something cool in flying in formation, I'm sure its not lost on you that the instructor/student combo may have been spending a bit of time watching what you were doing.

[Zaibatsu]

Old Mr Trey talking out of his ass as usual. Chalk is what you used on your slate in that one room schoolhouse.

Look. You’re paying for flight hours at a school. If the Hobbs says 1.0. You get charged for 1.0. 1.0 get put into your log book and your PTR, and it gets signed off by TC and you get your licence.

How much of that time is effective may depend on the school and how much they are milking you by getting you to do a million things while the engine is running but before the aircraft is moving and vice versa, but it also depends on you as a student.

Have you studied the FTM and FTGU and your copy of the training syllabus before your lesson? Have you hangar flown the aircraft or armchair flown after a lesson or studied a cockpit poster? Have you prepared your maps and your nav log and your flight plan? Can you answer all of the questions on the threshold knowledge test before the lesson?

Because if you can’t, and I have to spend my time briefing you on stuff you should already know, and explaining things to you in the cockpit that you should already know, you’re going to get charged for it.

And you should be grateful because it’s a small fee to salvage a lesson, vs blowing briefing or PGI and flight time learning absolutely nothing.

Nobody runs a flight school to get rich. Nobody becomes a flight instructor to get rich. If flight training aircraft swapped to GPS trackers that activated every time they moved, the hourly rate would go up in order to meet costs for air time and calendar time, and your training would take longer because you can’t accrue time as fast.

[Squaretail]

I'm also sure its not lost on some the irony of demanding a more accurate accounting of time in a flight that inherently uses an inaccurate system. As of yet we don't record flights to the second, not even the minute but rather the tenth of an hour. Which one might note that when it comes to rounding an actual minute count gives a relatively wide variation. For example, a .8 flight time, can be anywhere between 46 minutes to 51 minutes. A swath of 5 minutes which is a relatively large margin of inaccuracy that the time between engine start and aircraft movement should fall easily in, with all but the most dazed pilots perhaps taking a greater length. In fact it will easily account for the time that is being "overcharged" for at the beginning AND end of a flight, in all but the most extreme circumstances. If someone is blaming their 70 hour PPL on this accounting of time, they had no clue what really resulted in that overage of PPL costs, or don't want to acknowledge their own complicity in it.

One should also note that un-intuitively, the rounding chart as presented in the AIM, doesn't adhere to normal rounding rules we all should have learned in about grade 4. For example 51 minutes out of sixty gives .85 of an hour, which one would normally round up to .9, but rounds down to .8 for time keeping purposes. I have yet to come up with a good reason why that is when student pilots have asked, besides that TC says so.

[rookiepilot]

Nobody runs a flight school to get rich.

No, Of course not.

Flight schools promote those cross- border "experience" trips out of a sense of charity.

The odd plane lost or pre - PPL students killed, just part of the price of being so charitable.

[photofly]

I'm also sure its not lost on some the irony of demanding a more accurate accounting of time in a flight that inherently uses an inaccurate system.

You're confusing accuracy and precision. Recording flights to the nearest 0.1 isn't very precise, but it is accurate, because (if it's done properly) the errors are evenly biased to either side, you will round up as often as you round down, and on average, the errors cancel out over a run of flights.

The mean error is in fact zero, and the standard deviation goes down as 1 / sqrt(n), n being the number of flights.

[Beefitarian]

Um? Why are people fighting? Name calling because of a miss spell?

Your a bunch ov krabz.