Well, being as the new Wings program is a train to proficiency type course, it could actually be better for some people, but worse for others.
First of all, the course is much more bureaucratic. You have to sign up on the Faasafety.com web site. You have to either get your CFI to sign up or find a cfi/school who will sign up and verify your records. Just the fact of having to sign up with the FAA will prevent a good amount of people from deciding to go for this program.
The FAA even had to make a 20 minute slide show to show people how to use the new site and how the new Wings program runs!
Rather than just attending one safety seminar, you may have to attend more than one to meet the knowledge requirements. With enough free online courses, it might just cost a pilot more time.
Now that the flight portion of the Wings program is to proficiency, it can help or hurt. You are required to review certain topics the FAA sees as "hot issues." These issues may not be the ones that a pilot wants to work on.
(I would not call this a evaluation flight you can fail, my understanding is that if a maneuver or procedure is not up to PTS standards, training is preformed to get the person up to PTS standards. It is more of a retrain to where the pilot can preform to PTS, then move on. If a person cannot be retrained to PTS during the flight, no pink slip or other indication is recorded, just the standard dual instruction given logbook entry. One of the reasons the FAA stated for changing the program was that someone could go do three flight hours scaring their instructor to death, and still qualify for the program.)
Now if you can go up and quickly meet all of the requirements of the lessons to PTS your first attempt at them, then the new Wings will take you less than the three hours the old Wings program took. If you need lots of instruction, it may take you well over what the old program required.
The new program has three levels of training, which might help the insurance companies in choosing how much of a discount they want to give. They could have different rates for the Basic, Advanced, and Master levels of completion. Depending how the insurance companies treat each level, this could benefit some pilots who do "advanced training", and hurt others who only do the minimum.
Note that the Advanced & Master levels do not count for a the BFR, the are strictly "bragging rights" right now. At some point in the future the Advanced & Master levels might affect insurance rates, but the ycurrently do not.
Also, almost all of the of the Basic, Advanced and Master training is done by commercial & airline pilots as part of routine training, IFR Prof checks, etc., so that group of pilots may find is easier to get a "wings" signoff using this new program, just simply show their training record to authorized FAA or a CFI, and apply for credit at the web site.
Anyway, as has been said before, "It is what it is." This program will benefit some, but cost other more (the less proficient pilots who would benefit the greatest from more training may choose not to bother due to the increased hours they need with this new program, and start doing BFR's instead.)
It will be interesting to see how this new program proceeds.
First of all, the course is much more bureaucratic. You have to sign up on the Faasafety.com web site. You have to either get your CFI to sign up or find a cfi/school who will sign up and verify your records. Just the fact of having to sign up with the FAA will prevent a good amount of people from deciding to go for this program.
The FAA even had to make a 20 minute slide show to show people how to use the new site and how the new Wings program runs!
Rather than just attending one safety seminar, you may have to attend more than one to meet the knowledge requirements. With enough free online courses, it might just cost a pilot more time.
Now that the flight portion of the Wings program is to proficiency, it can help or hurt. You are required to review certain topics the FAA sees as "hot issues." These issues may not be the ones that a pilot wants to work on.
(I would not call this a evaluation flight you can fail, my understanding is that if a maneuver or procedure is not up to PTS standards, training is preformed to get the person up to PTS standards. It is more of a retrain to where the pilot can preform to PTS, then move on. If a person cannot be retrained to PTS during the flight, no pink slip or other indication is recorded, just the standard dual instruction given logbook entry. One of the reasons the FAA stated for changing the program was that someone could go do three flight hours scaring their instructor to death, and still qualify for the program.)
Now if you can go up and quickly meet all of the requirements of the lessons to PTS your first attempt at them, then the new Wings will take you less than the three hours the old Wings program took. If you need lots of instruction, it may take you well over what the old program required.
The new program has three levels of training, which might help the insurance companies in choosing how much of a discount they want to give. They could have different rates for the Basic, Advanced, and Master levels of completion. Depending how the insurance companies treat each level, this could benefit some pilots who do "advanced training", and hurt others who only do the minimum.
Note that the Advanced & Master levels do not count for a the BFR, the are strictly "bragging rights" right now. At some point in the future the Advanced & Master levels might affect insurance rates, but the ycurrently do not.
Also, almost all of the of the Basic, Advanced and Master training is done by commercial & airline pilots as part of routine training, IFR Prof checks, etc., so that group of pilots may find is easier to get a "wings" signoff using this new program, just simply show their training record to authorized FAA or a CFI, and apply for credit at the web site.
Anyway, as has been said before, "It is what it is." This program will benefit some, but cost other more (the less proficient pilots who would benefit the greatest from more training may choose not to bother due to the increased hours they need with this new program, and start doing BFR's instead.)
It will be interesting to see how this new program proceeds.
