wesleyj said:
you start by shutting down the CFI mills until they can come up with training programs that turn out CFIs, not right seat warmers on a fast trac to the Kerosene Queens,
I hope everyone understands what I am saying and doesnt take it personally, but I look at the number of hours that students take to solo and then really dont know anything, it tells me that the CFIs are simply riding along, letting the student learn on their own until the CFI is ready to let them try it on their own. There can simply be no other reason why an intelligent 52 year old woman, would have 37 hours in a cessna 140, still hadnt soloed and when I first flew with her wasnt even close.
We have serious problems with safety in GA, almost all of them can be traced back to deficencies in initial training.
I do take it personally although not in the manner you may think. Each individual must take personal responsibility to ensure that they are ready, willing, and able to gain the most from their education. Put another way, they should not simply be passively vacuuming any knowledge that may come their way.
I am constantly amazed that an increasing number of people don't even know the business end of a screwdriver let alone be able to explain the workings of a piston engine or aircraft systems. While that can be contributed to poor instruction it is only a part. The problem began when the individual had no desire and no opportunity to learn those things which transcend into the knowledge base neccesary to become a pilot. Remember, being a pilot is more than wiggling the controls and following the line on the GPS.
As for your example of this intelligent woman, perhaps we should consider her motivations and the knowledge base she brings to the table. What is so natural about the act of flying that intelligence in another area of expertise transfers readily into flying? She may also be carrying some incorrect perceptions about things (negative transfer). While it is the CFI who can correct that, the student also bears the responsibility to do so. The individual bears the responsibility to agree that their perceptions may be incorrect and then, having done that, begin to make the correction.
I think the FAA mins for instruction required are predicated on a student having certain knowledge which they have gained prior to commencing pilot instruction. Increasingly, you find that knowledge base is absent because the opportunity to develop that knowledge is scarce or there simply is no desire to exploit the opportunity to learn.
We should also consider the CFI's motivations. Yes, I have had those starry-eyed CFIs who can't wait to 'get jets' and in those instances if it weren't for me verifying what they were, um, 'teaching' I would have simply been a clone of them, regurgitating incorrect knowledge because I, like them, had little desire to learn better.
The flight schools are culpable because it is they who make the promise of '0 time to jets in 24 months' and because they create the 'pull 'em in, push 'em out' environment. But who in their right mind would believe such a tale? It is up to each student to authenticate each and every morsel of 'truth' handed down from the CFI.
The FAA or DE is in the position of catching any inadequacy in the student's training.
If I were to run out of fuel I wouldn't be able to point to my CFI and say he never beat it into me about the importance of time in the tanks even if he never taught that to me. It wouldn't pass the smell test because it is I who is PIC and it would be I who made the choices leading up to the incident/accident.
I'm not defending the woeful state of current pilot training, I'm simply saying the student also shares the burden.
Whooohoooo!
