photofly wrote:Shiny Side Up wrote:
Unfortunately, the possibility of combining sim and in flight training isn't even happening at a lot of schools. Its almost strictly sim training with no in flight ...
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Of the most worrisome things I see a lot is how sims are used to teach english...
Are we to understand that you've made a study of how sims are used across Canada through sampling a sufficiently high number to make a representative sample? So that you're justified in saying what happens at "a lot" of flight schools? Would you care to share your methodology? Sample size? Dates of enquiry?
Specifically, please list this "a lot" of flight schools which are "almost strictly sim training with no in flight"?
Or are you just making up facts to suit your imagination, so that you have something to complain about?
Either way is fine, just be straight with us.
You know I can't name names without shutting the thread down, and possibly getting a ban from the site, but I'd be happy to tell you in a PM.
But I'll give you some numbers. These are from students PTRs and Log books I've had a chance to peruse, and my propensity to actually visit flight schools. Last few months I was actually in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and most of my numbers come from western Canada, though I have reason to believe that it is rife through out Canada from the testimony of students (and again PTRs and log books) from Ontario, Quebec and a smattering of FTUs in the maritimes.
So a few numbers for you. From the following provinces I've seen the trend of unusually high sim times being used.
Alberta - 6 schools
Ontario - 4 schools
Quebec - 2 Schools
Manitoba - 2 schools
New Brunswick - 1 school
British Columbia - 2 schools
Naturally I have the most information on schools in Alberta since that's where I primarily operate. I should say that looking into the operations of all the schools mentioned, we're talking operations in the usual size range of a fleet of five to ten aircraft. Given that for Alberta that's about half the schools in the Province. If the rest of Canada is like wise, then that accounts for a substantial amount of the students being trained. For students doing PPL license, you will see often 10-15 hours of Sim time, for CPL students 30-40 hours is typical. The most I have seen that a PPL student had in the Sim was 23 hours, the most a CPL student (not finished I should also say) had 51 hours.
To specify here though as to the trend on this point though:
"almost strictly sim training with no in flight"
What I'm referring to is that students start in the sim, rather than the airplane, and only in some cases progress to the airplane if they "pass" the sim. Occasionally all the initial lessons are done in the sim, and most of the upper air exercises. Spins are frequently only done in the sim - this seemed to be the practice of four schools on the list. No spins listed in air exercises in the PTRs of these students. Something about primacy comes to mind here. Flight training ain't rocket science, I'm not sure why for flight lessons we need such an extensive gatekeeping mechanism before students fly airplanes.
I'll also say that all of these instances have cropped up in the last few years, which of course coincides with the proliferation of a lot of sim hardware. Some schools I had previously seen better product of students, have somewhat diminished their quality.
If you want, just say and I'll give you that list.
Personally I think its a really worrisome trend, I just wish more people would get upset about it.