Brainwashing at UND!!!

[FlyingToIST]

Before you try to sell me "procedure is the king" I am a flight school operator. I have my own SOPs such as not sending any student pilots up with a crosswind component more than 5 kts in solo flight. This is something out of safety..

On the other hand, we never ask for an engine start from tower, we never call V1, Vr, V2 speeds in a freaking Warrior..

UND, looks like is just producing sheep that are there to be hearded. Another example of their stupidity is what I was told by another CFI "We are not supposed to practice engine outs outside of an airport" .. So all the engine outs are done with a landing to an airport.. Give me a break..

One thing that I don't get is how , even a 20 year old one, could be brainwashed this way.. Take my advice , when you have 40 years before you to enjoy the airline career , this thing gets dry.. Go up in a tail dragger, get your float rating.. Aviation is way much more than following flows that flowing off your ass.

To each its own, but a training that I am getting from a good local FBO, will be worth much more than a UND training I will be getting where a Warrior checklist is 30 pages..

Lastly let me tell you that this is not a UND bashing subject. Any flight training place that act like this will be the same in my eyes.. I just happen to meet a lot of UND graduates..

 

[Cutlass1287]

Before you try to sell me "procedure is the king" I am a flight school operator. I have my own SOPs such as not sending any student pilots up with a crosswind component more than 5 kts in solo flight. This is something out of safety..

On the other hand, we never ask for an engine start from tower, we never call V1, Vr, V2 speeds in a freaking Warrior..

UND, looks like is just producing sheep that are there to be hearded. Another example of their stupidity is what I was told by another CFI "We are not supposed to practice engine outs outside of an airport" .. So all the engine outs are done with a landing to an airport.. Give me a break..

One thing that I don't get is how , even a 20 year old one, could be brainwashed this way.. Take my advice , when you have 40 years before you to enjoy the airline career , this thing gets dry.. Go up in a tail dragger, get your float rating.. Aviation is way much more than following flows that flowing off your ass.

To each its own, but a training that I am getting from a good local FBO, will be worth much more than a UND training I will be getting where a Warrior checklist is 30 pages..

Lastly let me tell you that this is not a UND bashing subject. Any flight training place that act like this will be the same in my eyes.. I just happen to meet a lot of UND graduates..

I can assure you, we do not have to get clearance from anyone to start our engines, and on the roll in the warrior, yes, they do make us call out "40 knots, engine instruments green, 48 knots (or whatever our calculated rotation speed is), and rotate. I agree with you on the takeoffs- its laughable, there just isn't enough time to do all of this safely on a takeoff roll in a warrior. Students should have their eyes outside IMO, and be able to feel when the aircraft is ready to lift off. This is one area where I do happen to disagree with UND procedure. I can also assure you that we do in fact practice engine outs in the practice area, just like at any normal flight school. Maybe you are just seeing the weirdos?

 

[propilot]

Food for thought...maybe your small mom and pop school doesn't need SOP's and all the procedural stuff that UND has...Odds are you also don't operate a fleet of over 120 aircraft with some 2000 students, 150(give or take) instructors, and something like 100,000 flight hours a year, virtually accident free...The program couldn't be as successful as it is without those rules. As far as clouds keeping aircraft on the ground, I don't recall that ever being an issue when I was there, as a student or an instructor....Ice in the clouds, well that's another story. Hopefully you have enough common sense to stay on the ground at that point. As far as some of the things that a "UND instructor" told you (engine starts with tower, no engine failures away from airport, etc.)...I tend to thing you may be overstating just a bit...

 

[I.P. Freley]

FYI: "porcedural" things that are not important to you equates to washing out at any Part 121 airline if you try. They are not showing off, they are prepared for the airline enviroment, where 90% are trying to get to.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "no procedural training prior to your first 121 job equates to washing out", it is true that programs geared towards making future airline pilots do well by their students to teach this way.

Having said that, some of the alleged problems that the thread-starter had with these new CFI's is probably just a product of the relative inexperience of the pilots in question. I graduated from a 141 school with the multi-commercial and CFII at around 230TT (having gotten my PPL at an outside flight school), at which juncture NOONE has a REAL idea of what they're doing, IMHO. I know it's a hackneyed phrase, but a CFI will learn more in their first 100hrs of teaching than they did up to the time they teach their first lesson... And that's when it really all falls together. Yes, pilots at the large university flight programs are perhaps taught in a more airline-oriented way than they would elsewhere, but it doesn't make for a lower-quality instructor, just one that needs to be weaned off the college flight line. A month out in the "real world" and these CFI's will usually end up teaching a desirable combination of the strictness they were subjected to in their own training and the relative "looseness" of the usual FBO school.

At the flight school where I taught, all students did three "prog checks" while getting their PPL (like most 141 schools), and for the last year I was teaching, I was the primary administrator of those prog checks. Sometimes I didn't even need to know who their primary instructor was to figure out what kind of background their CFI had... Let's just say that the ones who did NOT come from a structured background produced students who were in more obvious need of additional training by the time they got to ME. One instructor, in particular, was the relentlessly "flying is fun" guy who never seemed to actually FIX anything his students did wrong, just made sure everyone was all happiness and light, and I came to loathe getting his students as they had a greater-than-even chance of getting sent back for more training.

I dunno, if you'd prefer to hire CFI's who don't think post-flights are necessary and therefore don't teach their STUDENTS that a post-flight is necessary, then have at it... Seems like that is a problem waiting to happen. Just because you get a couple of sheltered instructors interviewing with you doesn't mean that UND makes bad pilots or CFI's, just naiive ones who need a little real-world experience. It's your insurance policy that will pay for the results if your students aren't taught well, right?

 

[RSixer]

Procedure, procedure.

I agree with some of these schools that teach strict procedure, even in a C-150. People that attend schools like ER, UND, etc, typically have thier sights set on the Airlines, and let me tell you strict adherance to procedure is priority #1 at any airline, period. Learning this at hour 1 in your trianing will make it that much easier for that person to adapt. On the other hand learning to fly should be fun, some of the schools have really dropped the ball on this.

 

[DC8 Flyer]

UGHHH! I gotta stop feeding the trolls.

 

[Almerick07]

Man, I feel sorry for people that will fly their entire lives in such a stringent strict procedure filled envirnoment. I go to a large 4 year university with a recognized aviation program and I love the fact that at a seconds notice I can take off and go anywhere I please without worrying about rules fit for monkeys. Dont get me wrong we have our rules and procedures but most of those are in place to keep student pilots alive, once youve established yourself as a pilot they trust you to make the decisions. Just makes me happy where I am....

 

[414Flyer]

Oh god, speaking of mindlessly following a checklist, I could easily go off into another rant about low time Indian pilots.

I had a couple that had never been outside of a highly structured environment and were completely checklist slaves. I am not criticizing checklist usage, so dont flame me. I am however criticizing using a checklist and absolutely turning ones brain off when using it, which I had one that was exactly that way.

Sometimes he would just go slow, and I already had engines turning, and here he starts with the engine start portion of the checklist. Hello, dont you hear them turning.

and then he always mention such things as "passenger briefing" and "no smoking light" for the cabin, when its a cloud seeding aircraft, we dont have any passengers to brief, or to operate the no smoking light for.

I would ask him why he would say such things that absolutely did not apply to us, and his response is "Well its on the checklist" My reply was to the effect of well think about it. If it does not apply to us at all, then dont waste time on it. Think about things you are doing, do not just turn your brain off and mindlessly read something.

Some of them just had a hard time thinking in the cockpit, because their environment was so structured, they never had to.

 

[check6]

I must say, everyone posting here has some good arguments.

I attended and graduated UND and currently am teaching at a part 61 school with very little supervision. Again, this is my first instructing job and the thought of having no one to turn to when I had a question scared me at first(unlike UND). The policies and procedures at UND, as well as the standards at UND, have prepared me to "make up" some of my own and survive.

I don't force my students to think about legal versus illegal. I teach them between good judgment versus bad judgment, right versus wrong, etc. You know, the real world stuff.

Reading some of the things we had to do brings back memories though. Here in the real world of flying, my students and I make the go/no go decision. We do have Garmin 430's, which we are lucky to have, but our planes are not new by any means. Things break and there are no MELs, not everyone has money or as much motivation. Students in the real world are not all 18-23 year-olds with minds like sponges.

In conclusion, I've learned a hell of a lot more in the real world, but UND prepared me to deal with the change. As for the UND instructors who started to fly at UND, instruct at UND, and go to an airline job from UND, I feel sorry for you. The funny thing is I fly in a much more challenging environment and I fly more than a UND instructor does.

 

[check6]

One other thing. . .

Given a chance to grow and make more operational decisions on their own, a qualified applicant would quickly turn into an asset at a flight school.

An addendum to my last post. . . .


In a nutshell, this statement describes me.