Flight school sued for $50,000,000

[mayday1]

Whats IMHO stand for? Its been driving me nutz.

in my humble opinion

 

[RichardRambone]

Ahhhhh........Thanks.

 

[cale42]

Milkdud.. at no point during flight instructing are you acting as a commercial pilot. The reg clearly says that if you are flight instructing and acting as PIC or a required crewmember(primary students, IFR students in actual) you need a third class medical. If you are instructing and not acting as PIC or a required crewmember no medical is necessary.


The new FAA concept is an interesting one, and I think will turn out to be productive in the long wrong. Anyone familiar with the military training program knows this is the approach they have used for a long time. They start all students in a turboprop(T-6 or T-34 usually), and teach them primary maneuvers, BAI, advanced maneuvers, and instrument navigation all as 1 program. The way I beleieve the military works(don't quote me, I was never in it, just a few close friends who were) is that they never learn any single license. They just complete the program when they are able to do anything, basically primary flight training is a private/instrument/commercial program, all done in a very fast capable airplane, which allows for the quick progression of military pilots(0 time to an F-16 ro C-5 in under 3 years... yeehaw). While there will always be a niche for people that just want enough education and skill to go dink around the local airport on a nice day, I think the concept of combining everything for a student doing it as a career or even a serious hobby is an interesting one. When you think about it most good primary students masters S-turns and turns around a point and stalls pretty easily. Why not move them right into eights on, chandelles, lazy eights, commercialy stalls and 50 degree bank turns right away. Will drastically improve their airplane control. While doing all this teach them to be comfortable using the visual cues and the instrument indications(the FAA's oft overlooked "integrated" instruction). From there it is a small step to BAI, tracking a needle, and turning that into an approach. All the while they are getting a few takeoffs and landings in every flight and mastery of the airplane is growing dramatically. Anywho.. enough rambling by me, but I think there would be a lot of value to this approach.

cale

 

[BoilerUP]

The new FAA training initiative, as has been proven at MTSU, will be a big step into reducing the cost and increasing the quality of commercially-rated pilots. However, you must ask yourself this - although the training product is much better, are we creating better professional pilots with this approach? You can get somebody to a rating faster, and I don't think anybody is against that, but IMO you would be cheapening the value of a Commercial certificate. Also, are we going to be selling short Mr. Joe Everyman who just wants to go bang around VFR in the interest of career-focused training?

FITS and scenario-based training in the GA world will eventually work to produce high-quality pilots. LOFT training works extremely well for instrument students, and cross-country, in-the-system experience is MUCH better than multiple approaches at the same airport(s). Private training is a little more difficult, but once the foundation is laid, you can get your students thinking outside the box and make them understand "how" as opposed to just the "why". The question we must ask ourselves is this: is cookie-cutter mold going to work for everybody, and are we as instructors going to allow ourselves to be made inflexible by it? After all, if you aren't giving your clients scenarios in briefings or training flights, are you really serving their needs?

 

[Milkdud99]

Milkdud.. at no point during flight instructing are you acting as a commercial pilot. The reg clearly says that if you are flight instructing and acting as PIC or a required crewmember(primary students, IFR students in actual) you need a third class medical. If you are instructing and not acting as PIC or a required crewmember no medical is necessary.


The new FAA concept is an interesting one, and I think will turn out to be productive in the long wrong. Anyone familiar with the military training program knows this is the approach they have used for a long time. They start all students in a turboprop(T-6 or T-34 usually), and teach them primary maneuvers, BAI, advanced maneuvers, and instrument navigation all as 1 program. The way I beleieve the military works(don't quote me, I was never in it, just a few close friends who were) is that they never learn any single license. They just complete the program when they are able to do anything, basically primary flight training is a private/instrument/commercial program, all done in a very fast capable airplane, which allows for the quick progression of military pilots(0 time to an F-16 ro C-5 in under 3 years... yeehaw). While there will always be a niche for people that just want enough education and skill to go dink around the local airport on a nice day, I think the concept of combining everything for a student doing it as a career or even a serious hobby is an interesting one. When you think about it most good primary students masters S-turns and turns around a point and stalls pretty easily. Why not move them right into eights on, chandelles, lazy eights, commercialy stalls and 50 degree bank turns right away. Will drastically improve their airplane control. While doing all this teach them to be comfortable using the visual cues and the instrument indications(the FAA's oft overlooked "integrated" instruction). From there it is a small step to BAI, tracking a needle, and turning that into an approach. All the while they are getting a few takeoffs and landings in every flight and mastery of the airplane is growing dramatically. Anywho.. enough rambling by me, but I think there would be a lot of value to this approach.

cale

True if u are not getting paid.

If what u are saying is correct, then why would someone have to get their commercial before their CFI?

 

[siucavflight]

True if u are not getting paid.

If what u are saying is correct, then why would someone have to get their commercial before their CFI?

Having a commercial liscense is a prereq for getting your CFI Milkdud.

It has nothing to do with operating the privilages of your Commercial certificate. When you flight instruct you are operating on the privilages of your CFI certificat which only requires you to hold a third class medical. Instead of questioning someone who is a CFI who knows what they are talking about why dont you make it easy on youself and call your local FSDO for an answer.

The FAA defines For hire, and Flight Instruction as two different things, you can fly on a commercial pilots liscense with only a third class medical as long as the flight is for hire.

In order to fly as a CFI you must have in your possession a commercial pilots liscense, but you are not exercising your commercial priviliges while flight instructing seening as how that flight is not for hire. Therefore you only need a third class medical.

 

[igneousy2]

The new instrument requirements for private pilot is supposed to be to prevent VFR in IMC accidents. The student should be able to keep the plane S&L and do a 180 degree turn and get out of the cloud he just blundered into. The concentration should be on B.A.I! period! It is NOT so that a student can shoot an approach down to 200 & 1/2 or give them a "preview" of their instrument rating.

If you are doing instrument approaches with a private pilot student you are wasting their money. If your instructor is making you do instrument approaches as a private pilot...change instructors. The only exception would be to get in and out of the field on foggy days. This shouldn't be counted as your "instrument training" though. You should still get some solid BAI time.

Later

 

[siucavflight]

The new instrument requirements for private pilot is supposed to be to prevent VFR in IMC accidents. The student should be able to keep the plane S&L and do a 180 degree turn and get out of the cloud he just blundered into. The concentration should be on B.A.I! period! It is NOT so that a student can shoot an approach down to 200 & 1/2 or give them a "preview" of their instrument rating.

If you are doing instrument approaches with a private pilot student you are wasting their money. If your instructor is making you do instrument approaches as a private pilot...change instructors. The only exception would be to get in and out of the field on foggy days. This shouldn't be counted as your "instrument training" though. You should still get some solid BAI time.

Later

I am not sure what you are saying here. You want them to get some solid BAI time, does that mean taking them into the clouds or not? If so then it would stand to reason that at the end of the lesson you would have to fly an approach down in order to get out of the IMC, and if you dont think that they should be taken into the clouds what would the reason for that be?

 

[MVSW]

Sure, every private pilot needs 3 hours of instrument training. Most of the time that is done with a hood on, but I always tried to get that time done in actual IMC.

Of course, there are limits to the weather I'd do this in, and 200 and 1/2 are below them. 400 and 1 are probably the lowest I'd take a student pilot up in.

SO why can't you do that training in clouds at 5000ft. I'am sure that there are days when the tops are 18000 and bottoms at 5000. This sounds so much better to train in than 400 and 1!! Just my .2

 

[Spinn555]

Gulfstream 200...

I second the notion for taking a private student into actual IMC (as you stated)

It teaches the student a lot.

I even try (wx permitting) shwoing them what 3 miles of vis (or less) is like. I do it to show them that even though the FARs permit 3 miles of vis in most airspace for VFR, 3 miles is not very comfortable at all.

EVERY SINGLE TIME I have been able to show a student "less than ideal" visibility situations, during debrief the students have commented on how uncomfortable "legal VFR WX" can be.

It's all about teaching 'Personal Minimums.' After seeing 3.5 miles flight vis, (and the student not being comfortable with that) they choose a personal min of 6 miles vis and greater...for example.

 

[cale42]

Igneousy2.. you've got to be kidding me. 3 hours of pure BAI training would drive most people completey insane. I could be wrong but it seems to me that flying an approach is pretty solid BAI training. Teach above and beyond the standards. If you can fly good BAI while tracking a localizer and a glideslope you are certainly well prepared to make a 180 degree turn out of the clouds. I'm not saying I teach my private students all about an approach setup and make them do the whole thing. But many good private students can take BAI to the level of being able to track a needle while descending(otherwise known as an instrument approach). If a student can do climbs, turns, and descents under the hood after .5 of hood time, I feel it would be a waste of my students money to continue to make them do that for an additional 2.5 hours. In fact an instructor that makes a student continue to do the same exercise just to fill a requirement when they are competent at it after 1/2 an hour is my textbook definition of a poor instructor not serving their student. So please don't be advising students that they need to switch instructors b/c their instructor chose to challenge them.

cale

 

[100LL... Again!]

I think that a lot of CFIs criticize the idea of taking students up in IMC to mask ther own lack of comfort with instrumnt flight.

I took many of my students up in IMC, and talked them through a basic VOR approach back to the airport. My personal minimums for this type of training is a ceiling at least 400-500 feet above the MDA, two miles vis, no icing and no more that light turbulence and wind.

If you, as a CFI, are not comfortable with this, then fine. Just don't get your panties in a wad and criticize those of us who are fine with it.

Back when I flew cargo, I used to get a chuckle out of 500 hour CFIs telling me how dangerous single-pilot cargo flying was.

That is the biggest problem with low-timers - they only know one way, and every other way is wrong (at least a lot of them seem to think this way).

 

[100LL... Again!]

Igneousy2.. you've got to be kidding me. 3 hours of pure BAI training would drive most people completey insane. I could be wrong but it seems to me that flying an approach is pretty solid BAI training. Teach above and beyond the standards. If you can fly good BAI while tracking a localizer and a glideslope you are certainly well prepared to make a 180 degree turn out of the clouds. I'm not saying I teach my private students all about an approach setup and make them do the whole thing. But many good private students can take BAI to the level of being able to track a needle while descending(otherwise known as an instrument approach). If a student can do climbs, turns, and descents under the hood after .5 of hood time, I feel it would be a waste of my students money to continue to make them do that for an additional 2.5 hours. In fact an instructor that makes a student continue to do the same exercise just to fill a requirement when they are competent at it after 1/2 an hour is my textbook definition of a poor instructor not serving their student. So please don't be advising students that they need to switch instructors b/c their instructor chose to challenge them.

cale

BAI must be combined with high-workload simulations to properly assess whether the sudent is safe.

Any knucklehead can fly BAI halfway decent after an hour. Yet they often die in the clouds when they go VFR-into-IMC. Why?

Panic.

The problem is not that they can't ly instruments. The problem is they they DON'T get on the gauges immediately.

Igneously doesn't address this. Over-emphasis on low-workload BAI can give the student the false impression that a VFR-into-IMC incident will be no big deal.

I make students tune nav and comm radios, answer oral questions, write down information, talk to flight service, whatever while they fly.
I try to simulate the stress they will feel by putting a lot of pressure on them about their performance on instruments (not on the first lesson,of course).

If they can handle me screwing with their mind whilethey fly BAI, then I know that they are ready.

The majority of VFR-into-IMC happen after the pilot has already descended quite low to avoid clouds. Therefore, there is very little time to realize that you are IMC, get a grip on yourself, settle down and start flying instruments.

It is very important to get the student to understand that they must IMMEDIATELY get on the gauges before an unusual attitude happens.

The overpowering desire to regain visual contact with the ground will cause many pilots to divert their attention away from the panel and desperatelytry to see the ground. This is what kills them. By the time they give up on visual flight and get back to the panel, everything looks really bad, and they often assume that their gauges are wrong.

On several ATC transcriptions I have read, one of the last things a pilot says before they lose control is that their instruments are "all screwed up".

In short, teach your students to get on the gauges early, pay special attention to bank control, and STAY on the gauges until they break out FULLY.

Most pilots can fly BAI fairly well. The question is WILL they do it when they need to?

 

[Snakum]

I took many of my students up in IMC

But did you bring any back, or did gravity take care of that for you?

But seriously folks ...

I think every PPL candidate should get a good dose of actual, if for no other reason than to increase the likelihood that they will remain calm and do what they gotta do if they get in over their head (IMC).

In addition, they ought to have more night-time flying for the PPL, including night solo requirements. I realize that the PPL is a license to learn, but I think the FAA should mandate just a bit broader experience for that first ticket.

When I am elected King of America, I'll see what I can do.

Minhberg Phlipper

 

[Prof. ATP]

Sure, every private pilot needs 3 hours of instrument training. Most of the time that is done with a hood on, but I always tried to get that time done in actual IMC.

Of course, there are limits to the weather I'd do this in, and 200 and 1/2 are below them. 400 and 1 are probably the lowest I'd take a student pilot up in.

When I was working on my private in 1983 I did an ILS to a 300 ft ceiling. My primary instructor was a proficient instrument instructor and did this routinely; it was almost necessary, since in southern California those conditions were common.