2 Week PPL

[MichaelP]

I've just been outside to defrost the economical plastic aeroplane and plug in the more expensive plastic aeroplane...
There's no doubt that teaching someone off a patch in an old tailwheel aeroplane is an ideal and I have probably spent more time than most doing this, but then there's the reality of flying these days.

So the busy businessman reads the advert, perhaps sees what the CFI wrote above, goes to Florida and does his PPL in two weeks.
He passes his checkride with a high mark, he's ace of the base, done it in record time, got a pat on the back from the examiner, it was an excellent ride.
He's a qualified private pilot, better than most.

He returns to Penticton where his brand new Cessna 172 waits for him, he's going to use it to shuttle between home and Vancouver where he has business meetings to attend.
He is better trained than any locally trained pilot, he was told that, he read that, and he passed his checkride....

Are we happy?

[FlaplessDork]

So the busy businessman reads the advert, perhaps sees what the CFI wrote above, goes to Florida and does his PPL in two weeks.
He passes his checkride with a high mark, he's ace of the base, done it in record time, got a pat on the back from the examiner, it was an excellent ride.
He's a qualified private pilot, better than most.

He returns to Penticton where his brand new Cessna 172 waits for him, he's going to use it to shuttle between home and Vancouver where he has business meetings to attend.
He is better trained than any locally trained pilot, he was told that, he read that, and he passed his checkride....

Are we happy?

Your point?

[MichaelP]

Your point?

Obviously I have no point.

I was once in a position where two instructors in their first job went against the school's rules and taught their students to descend downwind.
The complaints went to my boss who then included descending downwind in the SOPs and told me that since these new instructors (they would be Class IVs here) have the same licence I had they were just as qualified.

So you are perfectly happy sharing your airspace with someone with two weeks flying experience.
You do not feel any concern about someone with a two week PPL setting off between Penticton and Vancouver and completing that flight safely.

It's a parallel to the other posting about renting aircraft for long cross country flights and the concerns expressed there by many about people already trained in Canada.
But in this case the PPL has his own aircraft and is not under anyone's control.

[Shiny Side Up]

I'd say that Michael is confusing how accelerated training affects a pilot's ability afterwards with how people who desire accelerated training often treat the learning process.

Personally if someone has the ability to offer such training, all the power to them. I hope as well that they're charging through the nose for it, because its a lot of work that if a customer has such a demand the people offering the service deserve the compensation for it. A business offering such a program would have to maintain a large staff and a good sized fleet of training aircraft. They would have to have a substantial base of operations including several class rooms (assuming they take on more than one student at a time - if its a one-pilot operation I hope to hell the guy takes breaks between students...) Probably a maintenance shop - one willing to work night shifts, a simulator or two... I could go on, suffice to say we're talking money, money, money to operate, I digress. The point being though that such a training course should be considerably more expensive - this of course rules out many customers. Many customers will also be ruled out by the schedule - not many will submit to a boot-camp type schedule to learn. Location is a prime concern, I know that I could never offer such a promise, especially given the type of customer who often requests this type of training - and there in lies where the problem Michael percieves. A problem that I also agree with.

The type of person who usually desires this type of training is one of two. a) Potential commercial level pilots who we don't need to worry as much about as they will be continuing to stay in the training envioronment and b) Guys who are in a hurry because their schedule and lifestyle makes a standard training regimen difficult or undesirable to complete. The second group is of much concern, and are the same guys I have a big problem renting to. These pilots will tend to have a very sporadic flying schedule and are unlikely to keep their skills up to par. In all likelyhood the pilot Michael describes who takes such a course won't fly after the course's completion for several weeks or even months - often because of the time they had to take out of their "very busy schedule" to complete. Unfortunately these types of pilots are becoming more numerous with technological advances which make the "hobby" of aviation less work and skill intensive. These pilots also are very high risk for the symptoms of "Get-there-itis and Get-home-itis".

While I don't believe that condensed programs are inherently bad, I believe that the reasons for their demand are often at odds with aviation safety.

[Cat Driver]

Aerobat the reality of how flight instruction is viewed and done by many in the flying school arena is most everyone has the misguided idea that it has to be seen as a difficult endeavor therefore they make it difficult.

Keeping it simple and focusing on the airplane handling part of learning to fly builds the perfect foundation for learning all the other disciplines that follow learning the mechanical handling skills needed to be a safe pilot.

Of course you must not forget to take into consideration that I might not be to bright and may not really understand the subject very well.

[ETOPS]

2 weeks eh... just like cramming for an exam in collage/university. 2 weeks during the exam session versus a gradual regime during the whole semester.

If you're good at cramming (some people just can't do it) the two methods will produce comparable results on a final exam. However I don't know of anyone who crams and is able to retain the information for longer then a month or two. Studying throughout a semester will allow one to retain information for a much longer period of time. I'm sure almost all of you have experienced this difference first hand.

[MichaelP]

I agree with ETOPS on this, he/she's writing about the point I'm getting at.

Cat
It's not a complicated business teaching someone to fly I suppose.
If you can teach someone to ride a motorbike or drive a car equally they should be able to learn to fly an aeroplane in a few days in the same way.
All drivers here in the Lower Mainland are well trained and have no accidents so equally anyone should be able to learn to fly in two weeks and fly without accident in the same way.
(My neice has to have an "L" for a whole year and log driving time to get a BC "N" licence so perhaps learning to drive a car is in fact more difficult).

Learning to handle an aircraft takes 7 hours, you should then be solo to carry on with it on your own.
It used to be a person was solo in a Tiger Moth or Cub with just a few hours, and in 1912 you easily had a flight test and licence with that many hours.

Obviously Transport Canada is in error requiring a whole 45 hours before you can have a PPL.
And the flight schools are ripping everyone off here taking 70 hours of a student's time and money for a PPL.

Some of us might not find this flying business difficult, but does that mean it's easy for everybody?
Of course in Canada we all believe that learning to fly has little value; it often pays less than Mc Donalds.

All I'm getting at is that in my experience with crammed PPLs off fast courses they have not been safe to fly any aeroplane I have had anything to do with without much more training.
Like ETOPS implies, they forget an awful lot in agreement with TC's graphs.

[AEROBAT]

Michael,

I didn't meant to offend you with my remark about "plastic planes". I didn't realize you were using them. What I meant to imply is a basic airplane like a Cub or Champ would make a far cheaper aircraft to do flight training with. 100 hours in a Cub will be a lot cheaper in maintenance than 100 hours in a Diamond, never mind the initial cost of the aircraft. A lot of those planes can be set up with a venturi to drive a couple of gyros for the basic under the hood work as well.

Plus it might attract more students. When an old J3 is sitting at a strip and there is a shiny new plane parked beside it which plane gets the most people walking around it and looking at it? The J3 usually.

[FlaplessDork]

erobat the reality of how flight instruction is viewed and done by many in the flying school arena is most everyone has the misguided idea that it has to be seen as a difficult endeavor therefore they make it difficult.

Keeping it simple and focusing on the airplane handling part of learning to fly builds the perfect foundation for learning all the other disciplines that follow learning the mechanical handling skills needed to be a safe pilot.

Couldn't be said better.

[FlaplessDork]

So you are perfectly happy sharing your airspace with someone with two weeks flying experience.
You do not feel any concern about someone with a two week PPL setting off between Penticton and Vancouver and completing that flight safely.

It's a parallel to the other posting about renting aircraft for long cross country flights and the concerns expressed there by many about people already trained in Canada.
But in this case the PPL has his own aircraft and is not under anyone's control.

What concerns me is not how quickly or slowly someone does there training, but the quality. I think its possible to do it in 2 weeks and retain the quality.

I am happy sharing my airspace with someone with 2 weeks experience. In fact I do it all the time when I send students solo.

[MichaelP]

I am happy sharing my airspace with someone with 2 weeks experience. In fact I do it all the time when I send students solo.

True.
Why do we bother doing 30 or more hours with a student after solo???
If it can be learned in two weeks, why do so many students take months to do their licences?
Obviously the majority of Canadian schools are NBG, or are the majority of students too stupid?

I didn't meant to offend you with my remark about "plastic planes".

No offence taken, I call them plastic aeroplanes myself

It's a fact of life that the Cessna scourge put paid to the delightful little aeroplanes of yore such as the Aerknocker, Canuck, and Cub. The people have spoken and nosedragger is what they want.
The idea of a school with J3s is quaint. Where would you get the instructors?
We've managed to get one new tailwheel and aerobatic instructor trained here in the past year, the first for a very long time. Out of the thousands of Class IVs training in recent times, how many can fly a real aeroplane and teach in it???

You've got your own culture to blame.
I had a Cessna 120, but no one here wanted to check out in a tailwheel. They weren't interested in flying, just that airline job in the nosewheel equipped tin tube.
There it was, a simple tailwheel aeroplane on a grass field at a low operating cost, and few wanted to fly it.
There still is a Turbi to fly at Delta, about the cheapest aeroplane you can fly around here; few takers.

J3's on a grass field in this culture is an ideal that is not desired by 99% of the people learning to fly in Canada.
That's a fact of life.

[FlaplessDork]

Why do we bother doing 30 or more hours with a student after solo???
If it can be learned in two weeks, why do so many students take months to do their licences?
Obviously the majority of Canadian schools are NBG, or are the majority of students too stupid?

I fail to see the difference in doing 30 hours over the course of a week than over the course of a month except that they remember more the faster they do it. The fact is every private pilot out of train knows sqat about flying. Flying is a life long learning process, and the PPL is just the foundation and should be treated as such. Too many schools try to pump out Airline Pilots at the Private Level.

Money & Time.

I do believe most school stink at what they do mainly because of the lack of money, lack of resources, and a screwed up industry system. I also believe this generation is a lazier generation.

[Cat Driver]

First off Michael in a general sense I am in your camp on the two week training to the PPL level as you are.

It is just not enough time to properly train them, you may succeed with a few but to what purpose?

Now to this:

You said:



" The idea of a school with J3's is quaint. Where would you get the instructors?"

That about sums up the quality of instructors being churned out of todays training programs, pilots so inept they can not fly the most basic trainer ever used in flight training...... a stunning comment on flight traning but it seems to be the reality.

In my work shop sits a Cub project that I am planning on using to teach off airport flying to pilots wishing to go the bush flying route, it will be part of a bush pilot training program to teach hands and feet flying before starting the sea plane part of the course.

Nark was here a couple of days ago and he can confirm that it in fact not only is well on the way to being built but will be equipped with big wheels for rough surface off airport flying.

As far as getting pilots who are interested in this kind of flying that is not really any real worry to me because I know they are out there.

Of course there is also the fact that I want a play toy just for the fun of building it and having fun flying it.

And I can afford it.

[MichaelP]

How would you rate a PPL academically?

Is the amount of knowledge equivalent to Grade 8, 9, 10, or what?

Should a school year be condensed into a month with a crammed course available?

I tend to value the knowledge we gain from what we have done.
To teach a person to fly safely need only take a few hours, and the theory can be ignored totally. People do not learn the geometry of the steering system in a car, nor how an engine works and yet they learn to drive and they may drive safely for many years without ever knowing what oil should be put in an engine.
A pilot could be taught likewise.
We could cheapen aviation quite easily.

So it depends upon your view of the need for knowledge and how important it is to retain this knowledge.

At the end of a school year we cram to pass the exam. We've forgotten so much.
Then the exam is past and the learning fades into oblivion.
So after two weeks of learning we can know enough to be safe pilots for many years.
The PPL therefore is only as much knowledge as perhaps one month at high school.

Perhaps I'm from too long ago when we were interested in learning, and active in that pursuit.
It's to my chagrin that someone, a busy businessman?, can do what took me a certain amount of time in a fraction of that time.
I apologise for being so stupid.

Mind you I am so stupid that I thought I could make a living in this industry, but that's besides the point!

[Cat Driver]

Michael, you need to get your head out of the vanilla flight school mindset and do specialty training, then you might make enough money to make it worth while.

When I wrote the exams for my license upgrades to ATPL there were no multiple choice answers, we had to hand write the answers...that type of exam makes it a bit easier to find out if the applicant really does know the subject.

[AEROBAT]

Michael,

Transport Canada would seem to accept that 45 hours is a bit excessive for a pilot's licence. Take the Recreational permit or the ultralight permit as an example. Some of those ultralights can do over 170 mph [Sonerai 1]. If I remember correctly it was the flight schools who argued for the recreational licence to try and stimulate flight training.

I have met many people who expressed interest in flying and I would steer them to one of the local flight schools and tell them to get the recreational licence, to save some cash, and see if they still like flying after a year or two. In every case the flight school would try and talk them out of it and in the end they did not do any training and gave up on the idea. That kind of attitude doesn't help the industry.

The fastest time I personaly ever saw was a guy who did his private in just over a month. He was pretty tired when he finished.

[MichaelP]

The RPP is useless to most people.
The PPL is only a little more effort and you can fly into the USA and in other countries as well.
For a very high percentage of students the RPP is insufficient and you can do just as much with a UPP with the passenger carrying rating. Many UPP holders here fly into the USA whereas I don't believe an RPP pilot can do so.

The problem we have here with both the RPP and the UPP is the airspace in which we operate.
25 hour hours has not proven to be enough for either the RPP or the UPP from here, while being perfectly adequate for small fields in the country.

I have found that it takes a certain time for most people to learn to fly and I have met very few who could do a two week course successfully.
That the school in question has done 500 two week PPLs is amazing to me! They must be very organised and have a lot of very experienced instructors.

In Canada there are few if any schools that have only 'experienced' staff, most every one has a smattering of Class IV and III instructors who can not be expected to train a student so intently.

The nearest we have here is Air Cadets who do a seven week course and are completed in the minimum hours.
We have several of these Cadets flying here and they're actually very good. But they are also young and able to soak up the information that a 40 year old businessman could not.
Even so, not one of them was allowed a check in only one flight. I worry about the CSU and prop strikes.
Many of them had previous gliding experience and I give this type of experience a lot of credit.

[FlaplessDork]

25 hour hours has not proven to be enough for either the RPP or the UPP from here, while being perfectly adequate for small fields in the country.

The only RPP we've done was in minimum time and out of a busy airport with complex airspace. We covered all the PPL exercises to PPL standards with him. The major difference was that he didn't have alot of solo time.

[MichaelP]

One of the first RPPs done at CZBB was a person who wanted to go places.
He got his RPP and went out and bought a Turbo'd Mooney 231 and flew across Canada, 12,000 feet plus over the Rockies on oxygen.
He did alright so I suppose it proves that the PPL is too much training

Then he came to Alistair and then me to do a PPL in the Mooney... He had realised he should really have an Instrument Rating to be doing what he was doing and for some reason TC don't allow an IR on an RPP.
So there we were doing steep turns in a Mooney, and then he had to choose a field for a PFL while not super cooling the turbo charger...

The RPP is all well and good, but we need to make sure that we qualify our customers first to ensure that it fits into that person's future plans and expectations.

[AEROBAT]

Well, by starting out with a RPP he ended up generating a lot of business for the training industry. I have met people who started out building RC planes and end up becoming pilots.

I would really like to see how that FTU in the US runs it's course. They must be well organized to say the least. Did they say what percentage of their students took over 2 weeks?

[MichaelP]

The FAA has determined that our program is excellent and they have awarded us the coveted 141 designation as
a result.
Since we have trained over 500 pilots using these techniques I do not agree with your assessment that we are doing false advertizing and are not honest.
Being honest with students is something we see very few flight schools doing.

We do have exceptional CFI’s. Most of them I train myself. Most of our students return for the IFR and while we don’t have a lot of IFR weather locally we take our students up to the Florida/ Georgia line where we always have weather.....

Yes so far we have an excellent record. I hope to keep it that way. What I meant by the Buffalo accident is that they should have had a pilot that had been a CFI rather than one that bought his ride as an airline pilot. We are stick and rudder people and teach the same way. We even require spin training for private pilots. The students have to have their medical and be ready to take the written when they arrive. There is no way to complete them if don’t have that done first. And we never guarantee two weeks., We always tell them that some people are unable to complete in two weeks. We had one guy took 4 weeks and 102 hours. Needless to say I didn’t make any money on him. He has now completed advanced training and turned out to be a pretty good pilot.

There are many poor schools in Florida. We just aren’t one of them.

The above from three separate e-mails.

I have met people who started out building RC planes and end up becoming pilots.

These people understand flying and they accept accelerated training easily.
But the average person off the street with an impression of gold in the bank with four gold bars on the shoulders???

[Big Pistons Forever]

First off Michael in a general sense I am in your camp on the two week training to the PPL level as you are.

It is just not enough time to properly train them, you may succeed with a few but to what purpose?

Now to this:

You said:



" The idea of a school with J3's is quaint. Where would you get the instructors?"

That about sums up the quality of instructors being churned out of todays training programs, pilots so inept they can not fly the most basic trainer ever used in flight training...... a stunning comment on flight traning but it seems to be the reality.

Personally I don't think the new instructor I trained this year is "inept", in fact he was a pretty good pilot and instructor after a lot of hard work on both our parts..... But hey that's probably because I can't possibly know anything about instructing because I won't do tailwheel training in an aircraft that does not have right seat brakes.....

Not surprised to see your back at the old theme, as this must be your what post number 1001, with another blanket condemnation on the incompetance of the modern flight instructor. The only thing is it is really easy to throw rocks, but a whole lot harder to propose constructive meaningfull stratagies to improve ab intio flying instruction, especially ones that can be practically implemented in the reality of the flying training industry as it exists today.



If you think you have the answers.. lets hear them, because frankly I think alot of your posts are like an overloaded C185 on 2790 amphibs...a really loud high pitched whining buzz, much spray but in the end she just will not fly......

[MichaelP]

I won't do tailwheel training in an aircraft that does not have right seat brakes.

A J3 Cub doesn't have right seat brakes that's for sure...

I think that there are a lot of very good instructors out there who could make very good tailwheel instructors.
But tailwheel is a skill set that while it can easily be learned is not so easily taught.
There are not many instructors willing or able to fork out the money to acquire the necessary skills and the nerves in order to teach tailwheel.

Maybe a comparison would be the instructor who teaches a person to drive in the city with other traffic and rules of the road and one who's teaching rally driving where at any moment the student can roll you into a ditch or worse.
The nosewheel aeroplane will forgive a lot more while a tailwheel aeroplane can take you off the side of the runway and into the weeds double quick! How far do you let the student go before you save the day? That's the nerve.

It must be accepted that tailwheel training is quaint while it is fun. But who does anything for fun in Canada?
(Oops, that's a bit of a pot shot at many on here... it's meant in fun!).

Big Pistons is correct, we shouldn't be taking pot shots at each other and lesser mortals, this should be a site for discussion, a proper forum, with respect towards each other.

[Big Pistons Forever]

A J3 Cub doesn't have right seat brakes that's for sure...
.

Umm.... I think thats because a J3 doesn't have a right seat

I never had a problem with tandem aircraft as all the ones I ended up flying had a set of brakes for me. It was the side by side ones that were sometimes a problem as I am hard over on this. I will not teach in an airplane that does not have a full set of controls for me including brakes.

I flown most of the little bug smashers (Champ, T-Cart, C 120/140, Luscombe ) but somehow have never been in a J3 yet... I am looking forward to someday flying one.

[Cat Driver]

I see we are back on this tail wheel airplanes that do not have brakes on the right hand side thing are we Big Pistons? When you first stated you would not teach on one of these airplanes I made the mistake of pointing out you would not have been accepted as a flight instructor when I first became one at Central Airways because almost half of their training fleet were Fleet Canucks one of the best training aircraft one hope to train in.

The lack of brakes for the instructor on the Canuck was never an issue and in all the tens of thousands of hours Central Airways flew them as basic trainers I do not recall an instructor losing control of one due to no brakes.

My statement stands, you would not have been accepted as an instructor with that school.

Quite frankly I don't really care what you will or will not instruct on for the simple reason that is your own personal choice.

As to my comments on flight instructors I also should be entitled to my own opinion and it is that todays flight instructors generally speaking do not have the same hands and feet skills that they did when I first received my instructors rating, long before you were born incidentally.

I have no interest in renewing my flight instructors rating Big Pistons for the simple reason I am long past wanting a license that would only result in selling my services for peanuts.

Lets agree that we are different and let it go at that.