ATP schools flying

[CX880]

I noticed on the flight trackers, many cross country flights are done at or above 10K feet. Is there a reason for this? Do they use oxygen and if so is that covered in the costs?

 

[nosehair]

Descent planning.
That's totally a guess, but that is a major deficiency in most school environment training.

 

[minitour]

I agree with nosehair.

Descent planning is no where near the top of the list for most places.

It really hits home for the student when they get a PD descent, start down right away and go from 6.7/hr to 8.5/hr and lose 10kts across the ground. All I think is "hmm...that 10kts probably just bought them another .2 on the hobbs".

...and really it onliy takes about 10 minutes to teach it to a student, then they've got it forever. After one flight to teach descent planning, I find most of our students fly at 6-10k.

-mini

 

[CX880]

That's interesting, can anybody from ATP comment?