PTR nightmares

[Colonel Sanders]

There is a lot of really bad flight instruction
out there. Causes include:

1) low-time flight instructors lacking
experience and thus poor knowledge
and low skill level;

2) pilots instructing solely to build
flight time;

3) students don't know any better
when they receive poor instruction

This is probably too little, too late
for you, but maybe it will help a
lurker here:

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[dave_091]

I refuse to put meaningless comments in
the PTR like:

"Lesson went entirely as expected. Good Job!"

despite how fashionable it is to do so.

Only if the student did something truly dreadful
would I bother to put write something in a PTR:

"Hard landing. Blew all three tires. Main gear
bent. Nose gear wiped off. Prop strike, both
blades bent. Spinner and cowling damaged.
Engine requires teardown as per Lycoming AD.
Good job!"

You can tell more about the student - and his
instructor - by simply looking at the flight
entries in the PTR. If you can't do that, you
shouldn't hold a flight instructor rating.

PS Don't laugh about my "hard landing" PTR
entry above. I know a highly experienced
instructor who's student that did exactly that
on a solo flight.

I am in the midst of reading, "How to win friends and influence people" so I have to chime in here (Its fair to assume that you have read the book). What if the students capabilities are exceptional? What if he is a fast learner and can grasp all tasks that are taught to him instantly? I think those are notes that should be included in a PTR as well. It will inform future instructors about the students positive outcomes of each flight rather than continually focusing on the negative.

[Colonel Sanders]

What if the students capabilities are exceptional?

Then he sure as hell doesn't need me to
stuff butter up his @ss with fluffy PTR
entries.

What if he is a fast learner and can grasp all tasks that are taught to him instantly?

That will be obvious from the entries in
his PTR, which will show him going solo
in 4 hours.

Listen: the PTR is a purely Canadian
make-work bureaucratic invention. We
legally have to make entries in them, so
we do.

However, we are not legally required
to transcribe "War and Peace" into them.

Try taking the paper a little less seriously,
and the real world a bit more seriously.

[Pop n Fresh]

I never seen my PTR during CPL training except the time I entered my 300 nautical mile trip. Then years later when I asked for it because I was not training any more.

It was only recently I became aware that I had never been trying to demonstrate a recovery with minimum altitude loss because I was too concerned with getting a real good stall instead.

[Colonel Sanders]

Did your instructor make your solo flight training
entries for your CPL in your PTR?

[Pop n Fresh]

Not knowing what I did not know... due to flying places, I had plenty of solo time therefore most of my "training" there was dual, things like not doing stall recovery correctly.

I believe there was a block entry when I started then I think I may have done some entries for my night solo to get that rating done. It was a long time ago. Plus marriage has defeated much of my memory.

[Shiny Side Up]

Listen: the PTR is a purely Canadian
make-work bureaucratic invention. We
legally have to make entries in them, so
we do.

That said though, its a tool that both the instructor and student can use to mutual advantage. I think we can agree these days that having more records of your training is better than having less, at least from the stand point of wrangling with TC. Belts and Suspenders type of stuff. IF an instructor and a student work together, when the end comes to get that piece of paper in your hands you can make it easy or hard. CPL applications really fall under the realm of nightmares - though I'm glad that they eliminated the old application's part where you had to specify airplane types, thus had to sit with your abacus and do that exersise.

All too often though, students just dump a mess of stuff in my lap and say "sign me off, I'm done" and most of the time, they're not. You're short on X time. And then you go through that whining and bitching process. Lots of time lately I have to refuse people and say if you want this, take it to TC, upon which TC always demands to keep their log book - something you really want to avoid if you can since they have a penchant for losing them. Really bad if that was the only record you had of your training.

Whether you agree with paperwork or not, for you kids whjo want to work as pilots, you're going to have to show someone a piece of paper to get a job.

Did your instructor make your solo flight training
entries for your CPL in your PTR?

Likely for students of a lot of programs. Either way, the best advice I could give them would be to still keep an eye on this thing. Find out where its at, how its kept and check to make sure it is being kept up to date. Wouldn't be the first time I got one of these from a school that when the student brought it to me it was full of blank pages.

Try taking the paper a little less seriously,
and the real world a bit more seriously.

I dunno Colonel. For instructors especially, what goes down in the PTR can bite them in the ass, the paper world can intrude into their real world in an ugly way. Usually in the form of a phone call from an inspector. This has occured on a few instances where you have what could only be termed "problem students" where having a record of stuff covers your ass.

The reverse is true as well. For a student who thinks they've been screwed over, a PTR can be some pretty damning evidence against an instructor or school.

Its unfortunate that the world ends up working that way.

[Colonel Sanders]

Hey, I never said that people shouldn't make
entries in the PTR.

I just don't write novels (or anything, ever) on the
comment pages - Tolstoy doesn't need to worry
about any competition from me!

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer and philosopher who primarily wrote novels and short stories.

Tolstoy was a master of realistic fiction and is widely considered one of the world's greatest novelists. He is best known for two long novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877)

what goes down in the PTR can bite them in the ass, the paper world can intrude into their real world in an ugly way. Usually in the form of a phone call from an inspector

Hey, it won't be the first registered letter
from Enforcement. I'll fax off the Request
for Stay and Request for Review and Request
for Discovery to Mary at the Tribunal with 5
minutes of receiving the letter, then we can
all take a multi-hundred thousand dollar trip
to the Tribunal, Tribunal Review, Federal Court
and Federal Court of Appeals to waste a huge
pile of everyone's time and the taxpayer's
money to make some really bad precedents.

Done it before, I'm sure I'll do it again.

[Shiny Side Up]

Sure, if that's what's required, but all of the cases I've had to deal with over the years with such problems were open and closed because the PTR was in order. For example, one student alleged that we were holding him back from going solo. He was under the impression from someone that everyone went in 4-6 hours. If you weren't, that was a big bad flight school and they were screwing you out of your right to go. Sure, ok but what he had described as thousands of dollars spent on flight training and lesson upon arduous lesson to the inspector, was a whopping 5.2 hours of dual for a grand total (at the time) of, if I recall rightly, about $800. This concurred with the student's records when push came to shove. I can't remember if that student came back or if it was one of the few over the years I've said "here's your PTR, don't come back." Maybe not as nicely as that.

Now I don't write novels either, and have been accused in the past of only writing bad stuff. "Joe showed up for lesson hung over, briefed on intended lesson, didn't go flying."

[CpnCrunch]

What's the purpose of a PTR? I get the impression (from the above discussion) that it's so that you can write in reasons why the student is incompetent. Is there any other purpose? Clearly it can't be just to record which lessons you've done, as that can easily be written in the student's logbook.

[photofly]

It's to record a student's training; flight schools and instructors don't have access to a student's personal log book.

I actually think it's a great idea. Write what you'd want someone else to tell you about that student.

[Big Pistons Forever]

What's the purpose of a PTR? I get the impression (from the above discussion) that it's so that you can write in reasons why the student is incompetent. Is there any other purpose? Clearly it can't be just to record which lessons you've done, as that can easily be written in the student's logbook.

Like most thing in aviation there is no one size fits all "right" way to fill out a PTR. The last PTR I filled out was for an instructor rating. He was my only instructor student and we were doing 3 to 4 lessons a week. I put nothing in the remarks pages and filled enough D's in the boxes so it looked right. Those "D's" may or may not have been what we exactly did although they were usually close. For the Ground school record I printed a copy of the CAR, pasted it into the book and gave a total number of hours for each sub para. Value added to me, the student, and TC ........ pretty much zero.

My second to last PTR was for a helicopter pilot who wanted a aeroplane PPL so he could get a group 3 IFR rating, which he would then convert to a Group 4. 10 hrs into the training he got a helicopter job and moved. At some time in the future he will finish the PPL, almost certainly not with me. So here some detailed comments about what and how we did his training will be of definite use to his future instructor so I made sure it was there along with making sure everything else was in order with his PTR. Value added to his next instructor and him in having a filled out PTR, potentially significant......

[Colonel Sanders]

one student alleged that we were holding him back from going solo

I do that with every student ... until
they are ready to go solo.

I am dying to know what CAR would
be contravened, in the registered letter
from Enforcement.

Did the TC Inspector insist that no student
should receive any dual, and you should
just send every new student that walks
through the door out to fly for the first
time by himself?

See, when you're not bucking for PE status,
you can say stuff like this. You want to be
a PE, you kiss the @ss of every TC employee
you can find.

Sorry, I'd rather have my self-respect than
be an unctuous @ss-kisser.

[CpnCrunch]

flight schools and instructors don't have access to a student's personal log book.

There's a simple solution to that: get rid of the PTR

I actually think it's a great idea. Write what you'd want someone else to tell you about that student.

I still don't get what advantage it has over just writing "Ex 1" or whatever in the student's logbook. That is what I did (I had no PTR that I know of), and I can manage to point the plane in the right direction most of the time. I also didn't do any ground school or PGIs. My PPL flight test involved an EFATO, which IMO is a lot more useful at saving your bacon than the "precision 180" that is tested in the Canada CPL.

I just get the impression that Canadian flight training is full of unnecessary bureaucracy that puts a lot of people off and isn't really critical to the task of training someone to fly an aeroplane.

And of course there are those drift lines...

[Colonel Sanders]

CAR 421.26(8)

[Shiny Side Up]

I am dying to know what CAR would
be contravened, in the registered letter
from Enforcement.

The most obvious one would be 405.14. If the student feels he is being wronged, its easy enough for him to assert that we (the flight school, individual instructors) are not following any reasonable method of training. In this case, since the student was not at a solo level, it must have been our fault for not doing important stuff.

I should be clear though that I hold no ill grudge against the inspector, though it puts me in the position of having to defend myself. In their shoes, wouldn't we want them to follow up if a student had a valid complaint about their training? In all cases TC has been more than reasonable about such issues, I can't begrudge their due diligence, and having paper ready when necessary makes it go away faster.

I could pull out a whole list of student complaints and the alleged CARs infractions they've perceived that I or the school have committed. And not only students, the school is somewhat a target of the local NIMBYs, and its fashionable for the local pilot crowd to blame anything stupid that another pilot might do as if the school had a direct hand in it.

[Colonel Sanders]

405.14 Flight training that is conducted using an aeroplane or helicopter shall be conducted in accordance with the applicable flight instructor guide and flight training manual or equivalent document and the applicable training manual on human factors.

Not sure how TC could claim with a straight
face that the FIG and/or FTM require that a
student be solo in 5.2 hours.

Students routinely take 40 hours to go solo and
take 120 hours to PPL in Canada, and TC couldn't
care less.

That one would get shot down at the Tribunal.

[Shiny Side Up]

The key is that your accuser won't often be that forward. In that particular case that the student had only done that amount of time only came up after we had got the call. Its often interesting how they will backtrack when they realise you do have your ducks in a row and its not going to be that easy to cause you trouble. Remember we live in the age where at most places the "customer is always right" and if someone throws enough of a fuss, then they're going to get their way. In lots of the rest of the world it works. I recall when I was younger and worked as a stock boy at a Zellers, the manager took back a set of tires that one customer complained were defective. Gave the guy a refund and everything, despite the fact that Zellers doesn't sell tires in the first place.

So I can only imagine the kind of fuss this fellow put up when he went into the regional office to complain about us. As I recall, we had done "tons" of lessons, and "nothing that was important" in his words. He had also spent "thousands" of dollars to get this poor treatment as well. When we brought out the PTR though, he still maintained that he had done more than that, and still asserted that slow flight and stalls, among other things were BS to have to learn before soloing. Of course when the story got that far, then the inspector said case closed, no wrong doing.

It is of course easy to believe that a poor student has been wronged by an evil flight school. But its not always the case. I see lots of PTRs that come across my desk, and some people have their ducks in arrow, some don't. Its easy to tell who some students have a valid complaint about, and who doesn't in most cases.

[Colonel Sanders]

a poor student has been wronged by an evil flight school

Flight schools aren't evil. It's the flight instructors.

And most of the time, the flight instructors aren't
evil. Remember:

"Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to incompetence"

which is probably the case at least 90% of the time
in flight instruction.

When someone has a crappy flight instructor, I
doubt it's because the flight instructor woke up
that morning and said, "Time to do some evil today!"

No, the crappy flight instructor is probably just
inexperienced or uninterested because he's just
building hours for a "real job". There are some
intentional milkers out there, but they are thankfully
in the minority.

You could solve a lot of problems by requiring
that flight instructors have 1000TT. Or an ATPL.
(cue howling and bitching and moaning from
everyone that thinks they profits from cheap
instruction - you know, everyone).

But as long as the flight instructor job is an
entry-level, low-paying time-building job
(which it still will be, long after both of us
are long dead) this will be the case.

[Shiny Side Up]

a poor student has been wronged by an evil flight school

Flight schools aren't evil. It's the flight instructors.

Sure they can be, its just a different type of evil, but "evil" often depends on your perspective. Regardless, this is how they're often portrayed, whether you or I know better.

In pilot circles you must admit, that the sympathy always leans towards the student. They're the individual, the FTU is an institution.

Forgetting about the qualifications of instructors, Imagine if the student that I had to deal with above was the one who was truthful, and it was indeed the school or instructor doing them wrong. I've had PTRs that come across my desk that there could be a strong argument for that. You know, stuff where you see in the first five hours of training. "Bobby* did terrible on flying the ILS glideslope today" was a comment I found on a PPL PTR once. Could we say that would be a violation of 405.14? Or what about "stall will need review, student is still pushing nose down before adding power, briefed on correct stall recovery. Another gem. Certainly not in accordance with the appropriate FTM.

*Name changed to protect the innocent.

[Colonel Sanders]

SSU: I think you're saying that flight
instructors should put as little as possible
in the comments of PTR's to avoid incriminating
themselves?

Reminds me of the only comment I have
put in a PTR in least 10 years. I gave my
kid some dual in an L39 before his PPL issuance,
and he logged it. And I figured what the heck,
put it in his PTR.

http://i.imgur.com/CScEj.jpg

Giggling away, I put a comment in his PTR
for the L39 flight, "Needs to work on speed
control on final" which pretty well describes
anyone checking out in a jet.

Heck, that describes the stellar four-bar 777
crew of Asiana 214 that tried the incredibly
difficult task of hand-flying a visual approach
in perfect wx to SFO. And the pilot flying had
10,000TT. And a really nice uniform. And
all sorts of pretty pieces of paper, which
unfortunately the 777 could not read.

It even describes the T-33 that was planted
1,000 feet short of the generous runway at
Hamilton a couple years back.

But what would I know about flying an airplane?
I only have two ATP's, two class 1 instructor
ratings and an SAC.

[Shiny Side Up]

No, they should merely be truthful. If they're doing stuff wrong, then it needs to be changed. Keep in mind its not individual instructors that TC is going to come for, but most likely the CFI. He's the one ultimately responsible. If they're truthful and are doing good work, then the commentary comes to their defense. If they aren't doing good work, then it points to where they need to change. That goes same for the Ps and Ds.

We all want flight training to be better, and its an avenue for improving it. After all, you're right, many instructors aren't actively evil, they are merely ill trained and inexperienced.

[Colonel Sanders]

many instructors aren't actively evil, they are merely ill trained and inexperienced

Yes, but the problem is that as soon as they
get enough experience to be any good, they
are gone.

[Shiny Side Up]

True, but there's no reason they can't give at least adequate instruction, especially if they're supervised appropriately. At the end of it of course a lot of bad flight training falls in the lap of the CFIs that are out there which in a lot of cases are the big problem. FTU flight training really hinges on these people being qualified and somewhat experienced, and not just as pilots.

Its 11 o'clock. Do you know where your instructors are?

Ideally, PTRs are also a good tool to use to supervise, if you bother.