I soloed at 10 hours. On a Piper..On a very busy class D airport. I had the written passed.... was an athlete, those 2 factors helps a lot.. first 6 hours was with a Crooked CFI that used to take me to 10,000 feet to practice 4 fundaments.. I got to hate that Cuban Refusenik baster.. At 7 hours i got another CFI that taught me how to do all maneuvers the right way in next 4 hours...No problem with the landings..I could have soloed in 7-8 hours.. I was very poor kid at 17.. Never drove a vehicle before the PPL... That can help too..Specially Motorcycles..
I was a flight instructor. I had "students" handed to me, one of whichvalready had 20+ hours. Never soloed. After flying with this guy for another 40 hours i gave up on him. He eventually did aquire his license. But only after over 200 hours. Yes, there are certainly crooks. But your instructor isnt a crook if he doesn't solo you before he feels safe about it. He is looking out for you.
I am glad someone brought up a point like this. This video is very informational, especially for someone like me who wants to get their private pilot's license one day. However, just because your instructor says no doesn't mean he's a crook.
@@gmccord1970 im sorry to hear that. I was always very diligent. I did my best to compart my knowledge to those who lpaid good money for it. And also to many who couldnt pay for it. I simply love aviation. There ar a lot of folks who waste time. Often without knowing it. I myself had around 75 hours before aquiring my own PPL. Partly my own fault, partly due to lackadaisical instructors. But every time anybody wins their certificate, a new story is born. Every student is different, and also every instructor. Each combination reacts differently. As an instructor, i had to learn the charachteristics of each student, then I had to figure out how to reach that particular person. If you show up and you have 20 hours in your book, i still have to figure out where you are. What you actually know, and the difference in what you THINK you know, vs what you ACTUALLY know. I had 15 hours before i soloed, yet in hindsight, that fellow taught me very well. The next two guys took advantage of me. Each experience is very unique.
MrPanchoak Thank you for your input and I am in the process of working and putting pressure on the FAA through my contacts To hold flight instructors accountable to the point of even may be pulling their instructor tickets if they can’t teach properly or engage in any unethical business conduct. A flight instructor has no business teaching students how to fly if they have ulterior motive’s and is just using that student for a cash cow.
I'm here in Las Vegas as well. @MCHFacts may I ask what school and what you're experience is/was? There are something like 10-15 different options. Going for private from the ground up. What have you found?
Your #2 is what I fell victim to.. My instructor was a GREAT pilot, but a HORRIBLE teacher, and/or our personalities didn't mesh. I always had the feeling he was in a bad mood, and he didn't explain things well. One time (pre-solo) on short final, he asks "So.. what do you think.. are we high or low? Fast or slow?" to which I thought to myself "Wow - he's actually going to try to explain something to me" and I answered "I feel we're a little low and slow.. am I right?", and then he SCREAMED at me "Then F*ing do something about it before you KILL US BOTH"... So much for teachable moment... 2 weeks before my checkride, I asked him to take me to a class B airport just for experience with controllers (I trained at a non-towered airport between DC and Baltimore, so it's NOT a long flight, and it was pre-9/11, so no hassles of flight plans).. He answered "There's plenty of time for you to figure that out yourself after you get your license" and REFUSED to fly there with me. As I said, he was a GREAT pilot - even in hindsight, I think he had an amazing natural knack for flying the plane, but what I tell ANYONE thinking of taking flying lessons is to fly with AT LEAST two instructors before you really get started, and NEVER forget that you are the CUSTOMER and that you are paying YOUR money, and you can't be scared to move to another instructor or school..
On my third instructor, all of whom have just been in holding patterns waiting to get on with airlines. It's brutal how much time I've been billed, getting 'up to speed' with my new instructor.
I don't know what you mean by class B airport. If under the Class B airspace, okay, but otherwise ATC doesn't want you in class B airspace on a training flight. As well, if they are busy they just might not even respond to VFR traffic asking to enter the class B.
@@scottw5315 I'm not talking about a zero time pilot. I'm talking about days before a checkride after which it will be assumed I know what I'm doing. I was fully prepared to pay for the "extra" instruction, and it was BWI, which at the time had their own thriving flight school, so it's not like they were not going to let a VFR cessna in for a landing. Matter of fact, a few years later, I ended up doing a BFR at KMTN with an instructor I had never met before, and he said "Have you ever been to BWI? No.. good.. that's where we're going.." which I was THRILLED about. Got one full stop at BWI and gave me exactly the confidence and experience my primary instructor refused to give me. I've never landed there again, but I have transitioned the airspace plenty, which I probably wouldn't have wanted to do before going with an instructor.
@@SteveJones172pilot Okay, they have a flight school there. Most of them don't. I've been ignored by center a number of times around Class B airspace. If you can get in under the airspace they expect you to do that. Old news...I flew military. Some instructors are better than others and some should be doing something else for a living. Having said that, you might learn from the guys anyway. I see that your post is six years old. You still in the air.
I was lucky; I learned how to fly at a small airport where my instructor was very interested in my progress. I soloed after 7 hours. He was always looking ahead to teach me new things. After soloing, he started teaching me how to do downwind landings because he said sometimes you just find yourself having to do things out of the ordinary. When I was close to 40 hours, my instructor also gave me some training on other types of aircraft that was based at our field, such as: tail draggers and planes that had a stick. It was nice to have someone looking out for me.
An instructor should be interested in you! Set guide lines,paramiters etc...and if he/she not getting it,maybe your not getting through...switch instructors...maybe personality issues I've always interviewed my students ,then assess weather there teachable.if not pass him/her by
a good and informative video, but as an instructor myself... 3:15 "a good instructor will solo you as early as possible like 10 or 15 hours" i disagree with. Actually, a "good instructor" will solo you when you have demonstrated the proper proficiency to safely and competently operate the aircraft all by your lonesome, for a lot of folks this could be 10 or 15 hours, sure, but for others it might be more. I would say that any instructor / student duo should have a goal in mind. 10 or 15 hours is not unreasonable, but while achieving solo flight is an important milestone / goal, it is never one that should be rushed. I would say a better way to approach this scenario would be - if you and your instructor have not been at the very least seriously discussing solo flight operations at 10 hours flight time, bring it up to the instructor. iron out any areas that need to be improved upon for the instructor to feel comfortable soloing you. If the instructor walls the discussion off, get a second opinion with another CFI.
Completely agreed. The 10-15 hour mark is when most students will begin to show proficiency in flying the aircraft. I teach out of a class D airport underlying class B. I will not endorse them to solo unless they instill confidence in me that if something were to change on their solo, that they can adapt, make good decisions, and keep it legal. I get students that have 30+ hours without solo that haven't planned ahead enough to have a taxi diagram with them at a towered airport... That means they are not ready to solo. Sure, they could go to an outskirt airport that is non-towered and do their three landings, but there is a whole lot more going on in busier airspace. Keep in mind, the easier route is not always the best one.
Strongly agree with this. I solo'd at 27 hours because of my flight school's policies regarding their 141 training (you could go 141 or 61). My instructors (had two that I worked with a lot) wanted to get me up on my own because they felt I was proficient but they weren't allowed to send me off. I think that having more than the minimum time required just to fly the plane around the pattern is very important because some days things don't quite go as planned... Especially flying out of a busy class c airport.
Not having an aircraft diagram/facility directory, etc, is often an instructor/flight school problem, not a student problem. Primary flight training should be one that immerses the student and requires studying and high levels of proficiency straight out of the gate. Will your student ask for a PAR approach instead of freaking out if inadvertently finding themselves in multiple thin layers of low visible moisture after taking off too late on the last leg of their long x-country? Now it's near dark. The student used to doing a variety of approaches and who has been taught how to descend at a stabilized X00 fpm, at a target airspeed, etc., is a better prepared student. Dragging training out to make money is one thing. Quality training and giving a student real-world tools to work with early in their studies is another. Having students fly to a busier airport where they use clearance delivery, etc., have to talk to approach, contact departure, etc., increases quality training. One student flying up and the other flying back is also an option. The military does this in a lot of flight training. I agree with you. Proficiency is about being proficient. Not proficient in flight planning, handling the aircraft, weather analysis? Then no solo.
I agree with you... But by the same token, there are Instructors that have a degree as milk men if you get my drift. Notice my comment above. aft 45+ hours of no solo and then flew a B58P with no problems and even landing it... You have to watch the instructors... Not all are good, a lot of them are out for the money and nothing more.
I found it helped when I took over control of my own training. Remember, with flight training; the student is in control, not the instructor(We hire and fire instructors at will, and ALL instruction is transferable to a new instructor). That doesn't mean students decide whether they are ready for solo or for check-rides; but that if a student believes they should or should not be flying, it is the student's call. I fired an instructor for trying to pull the 'bad weather, so we'll do ground instruction' game, and cancelled a training flight when I decided I didn't like the way an engine was running during a run-up, even though the instructor and manual said it was within tolerance (was a good call, turned out the engine had a cracked cylinder). Fly with at least two instructors of YOUR choosing, ideally having an hour with that second instructor for every 5 hours with your primary. Oh, by the way; all ground school can be done cheap on-line, I used King Schools ground school course.
Yep, had to fire a CFI for not wanting to fly because of one cloud in the sky or the wind was like 7 knots. Give me a break. We did ground instead. Then went to another instructor and he would add extra ground time for no reason. In addition, the aircraft seemed to have the min. maintenance completed. Oil only changed every 100 hours, the engine ran close to hot - In the green but right next to the red mark. Down for unexpected repairs to often instead of regular maintenance in addition to the 100 hour. The plane also gone thru a couple of radios and only has one radio. The radio has lots of static and the VOR is not working. Oh and one of my flights, the radio stopped working but I verified that the CFI had a handheld radio. Whew. We used the handheld as It is a Delta Airport in a busy city area. While the plane is deemed flight worthy and passed pre flight inspection, I just did not feel comfortable with the aircraft and changed schools.
@@kimberlywentworth9160 Great call. Some shady crap goes on in some schools trying to cut corners. I did a check-out at a flight school after getting my private ticket, so I could rent one of their airplanes. Had to make a bit of a stink about needing a stick to check the fuel and the jackass instructor actually told me, "all the planes are fueled in the morning, so we can look at the log and see how many hours it flew and know how much fuel is still in the plane." I shit you not, and he wasn't even "testing" or checking. That was SOP at that school. Of course I never ended up renting there because that BS didn't fly with me (pun intended). Fun fact, that school had one of their training aircraft crash/off-airport land and the FAA investigation found it had run out of fuel; not long after...
@@mrwonk Mine told me to just look in the tank and see if there is fuel. I did not want to argue and purchased my own fuel stick gage if I can not see the fuel. Yes, everytime I flew the plane the fuel is up to the tabs but if it is not, I am using my stick to measure.
My Instructor : "Get ready for solo" Me : "Are you sure? I don't think I'm ready sir" Him : "Yes, you'll be alright" Me : done my solo after 8 hours flight time, finish my PPL after 41 hours total time. I think I got lucky to have him as my instructor.
Same thing for me back in the day. He just ask me to pull over on the taxi way and got out of the airplane. “ do three takeoff and landings.... you’ll do fine”. Done in 40 hours. I passed the 40 mark during my cross country flight to meet up with my DPE. Seems like those times are gone.
Lakiri Holman Those times are gone because CFIs now a days are just interested in filling up their bank accounts OR building up their hours so they can go to regionals!!! Sad but true.
As a former DPE, I have seen it all. I have actually had a student who brought me and aircraft that would not pass the mag check. I told him if this plane taxied out to the runway, I will pink slip you. I have seen this so many times. I have had students that could not recover from a stall, Three times I was put into a spin, There a lot of bad instructors out there. But remember some students don't even show up for their lesson and the instructor sat there and wasted their time waiting on them. I instructed for over 30 years and I made it very clear if you don't give me 24 hours notice of cancelation you'll be charged for 1 hour of my time.I could tell you hundreds of horror stories from my past. Former CFI CFII MEI DPE.
One somehow wealthy guy, but dam pretentious idiot "Pigpilot" almost killed me on a C150 with a sudden show off pull up on take off. From the Vy on a normal take off..the airplane stalled at about 100 feet, He frozed in fear with nose up...left wing dropped too..I had to push it down hit the right rudder hard and recover it...flew off the stall at about 15 feet out of the airport at Vx...by using Bush Pilots Flap Tricks i know... They told me the Guys came running when they saw us stalling..and got puzzled when airplane came up from behind some trees.. After landing a manager asked me why i was practicing take off emergencies to such a low altitude... Were you?? I said, hell no.. That ahole stalled it..Didnt you see that pull up from over the runway?? I Never talked to him again.. That is the way to do it..Dont befriend aholes.. The kill others.. Not me.. i felt like strangling him, but it is illegal..I wish was legal to shoot those guys..He almost killed me...attempted murder charges should apply to those mofo's...Glad I took Ballroom Dancing as my hobby later on..Now for over 12 years no more put up with mofos with money...Too many in USA GA..
I wish that I had a fee for every time I showed up, and no instructor, or the aircraft wasn't flyable (30% downtime on the plane). And I had to drive 2 hours each way to find out no instructor.
I am sorry that happened to you Mark, that would have never happened at my school. Our policy was to call the students the night before and inform them of their appointment. If one of my instructors did not show up I would take over and fly with the student. If this became a habit with the instructor he was terminated. Unfortunately, airplane seems to get sick, safety rather than risk. I did have enough planes online to move over to another plane. The 100-hour inspection and annual should have been kept on a board so the instructor and I knew when a plane was due for inspections.
You are so right buddy. There should be a rule of payback when the school makes you pay money and waste your time. I was at a school at Long beach that charged up front. Lied about the airworthiness of the airplanes, robbed you on ground school and put in higher numbers on the Hobbs time. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND NEVER FLY AN AIRPLANE WITH A FAULTY HOBBS METER. you will be robbed of all your money. I sat in a Hotel for 6 days with no flying and I spent $1,000 on this, the schools do not care about how much you pay. The AOPA or the FAA should hammer down on schools for this. Many students are from other countries and we do not know the laws in the USA. Now I am working on my ATL in the A320 Airbus and I am treading carefully.
Unfortunately, that has been going on for years and years. I ran a flight school the right way, but the bad guys put me out of business. they used the old bait and switch routine. One school I did check rides for had the worse plane I have ever saw. I don't know how they made it. I charge tach time, not hobbs. The big flight school I worked at had new aircraft, kept the old Cessna RG in pretty good shape, parts were hard to find. As a corporate pilot, I flew factory fresh new aircraft. Good Luck on the A320- I had a little time in the B-737-400
I learned to fly in the 1950's. Either I was very lucky or things have changed. I just visited a local airport and went up on a familiarization flight and immediately enrolled. I had three excellent instructors when I wanted to fly, depending upon who was available; Boyd Phelps, my lead instructor, Frank Wallace and Caesar Vai (I think our instructors are people pilots remember all their lives). Caesar was an ex-Italian WWII fighter pilot, who loved to shout from the back seat (which helped at times over the engine noise) in an Aeronca 7AC. One time on final approach as we passed "over the fence' in the tandem 7AC, Caesar started shouting in Italian and slapping the back of my head with a chart. After we touched down and I was taxing toward the parking area, he said, "Excellent! You kept your focus on what is important with chaos all around you. Crazy stuff usually happens at the worst time" Some people would be offended by that, but I considered it a great confidence builder and here, 60 years later, I still fondly remember Caesar and his handful of charts. The lead instructor, Boyd, insisted that I learn to fly in a "tail dragger", hence the 7AC. He pointed out that being able to land a tail dragger properly would be a valuable skill if I wanted to be a good pilot. After I got my license, he checked me out in tricycle gear in just a few minutes. I've always appreciated that because, as it turned out, my favorite aircraft to fly were 1930's era machines.
Yeah, the industry has changed a lot, and not for the better, at all... It sounds like you had a chance to fly some of the greatest aircraft of our century of aviation. I'm more than a little jealous. I would give anything to visit the days of Hughes Aviation and fly some of the masterpieces of the time.
You should emotionally dis-engage with other people and concentrate on you landings... after you're on the ground, you can have an extensive conversation about why the other person is having some issues.
Like you Ron, I was fortunate. I soloed a Citabria (a mild-mannered, tandem stunt plane), and then got my check ride in a Cessna 120 (a side by side tail dragger built in 1947). At the time of my check ride there were only two places in the state of Georgia where you could check ride a 120. Today you probably can't find an FFA check pilot that has ever been in a 120. My instructor, Frank Hancock, was an old retired Eastern Airlines pilot. I really feel sorry for the kids today who never have the opportunity to fly a tail dragger. Like Boyd told you and Frank told me, tail dragger pilots are real pilots - tricycle pilots are just wheel turners. Having said that, today's GA world is so much more complex than when we started.
Pls am still a new guy trying to apply, but don't want to be milked 😥, so please can anyone recommend a good flight school I can go as an international student in Canada, am thinking of Waterloo, what do u guys have to say about it?
I'm 15 and turning 16 in February. After having several different instructors, I am now flying with an older gentleman who really pushes forward with my flying. I'm now set to go solo on my birthday and can't wait!
I was doing my flight training with a young instructor who was hours building. When he left the school, I suddenly felt uncertain about whether I wanted to continue with the school, as I was being shunted around different trainers. So I went to another school to have a try-out and went up with an older, career instructor. I immediately noticed the difference in his style, which was totally hands off! Whereas my first instructor kept making corrections without telling me (and I would counter correct because of his inputs), my test-ride instructor waited until the absolute last minute to correct me (and take control), which gave me a much better appreciation of flight control. Unfortunately, I couldn''t continue training after that due to financial constraints.
Many of my students ask, how can you just sit there and do nothing when i feel i am about to crash the plane. I say don't worry, i will soon take control if it gets to far out of hand. Being a passenger with other instructors is a bigger problem though. Never trust any pilot no matter what their experience.
Flight Schools are notorious for bleeding students dry. I have a few recommendations one being fly MS flight simulator (old versions are cheap and work great) and practice, practice, practice your flight before you fly. That means everything from pattern work, watching airspeed, altitude, flaps settings, and so on and getting a feel for turns, descents, climbs, and landings. #2 is practice an instrument landing EVERY TIME you come back to land!!! This way when you start instrument training, hand flying an ILS approach is something you can do with your eyes closed even if you turn way inside of the outer marker and have little time to get established. It will all be so natural to you. For the Commercial, practice the run-of-the-mill maneuvers and know them cold. Do them enough in the simulator and it will be a lot easier when you do it in the aircraft. Know the ground school stuff cold. One thing I highly recommend is buying the Private, Commercial and or Instrument ground school course and passing the ground school portion on your own, independent of the flight school. Do that, and it's that much less B.S. you have to deal with in the aircraft. Study, Study, Study The trick is to need the instructor very little and only needing to get a feel for the aircraft, but knowing in your mind exactly what you're doing and what you need to do in the aircraft to get it done. Give me a student for a week and I can reduce their flight school costs by thousands of dollars. Ignorance and passivity is what costs you money in flight training. Be knowledgeable and take charge of your training.
Simulators are great for IFR procedures after you actually start your IFR (or just for fun), but you are only going to introduce bad habits using them to train for your PPL or trying to self-teach yourself IFR before you've even got your PPL. There's very little useful about a simulator with your PPL training except just to have fun or practice when to turn on a pattern or something else simple like that. Trying to self-teach yourself can lead to a lot of wasted money as an instructor then has to break your bad habits and there's a reason no instructor (that I've heard of) recommends that approach. And I'm an avid P3D/XP simmer so I've got no biases against them like a lot of pilots do.
Even better if you can get a sim aircraft the same as you are training on and VFR scenery of the area you fly in to get used to finding waypoints, VRPs etc
That's a good use of the sim if the VFR landmarks are there. For IFR, if I'm gonna have to fly a new approach in real life, I may fly it in the sim first just to get a feel for it.
Congrats on going solo! Yes Flight sims are great for practicing maneuvers and if you have VFR scenery useful for practicing land-aways and qualifying cross countries. You do have to be strict with yourself and not cut corners in the sim "I'm only 100ft into the controlled airspace" in a sim is ok, real world and you'll get a phone number to call and a fine!
I am glad to have had the experience to have 3 instructors during my training - and all those 3 were wholly invested in training me effectively and having me complete my training. Thanks to them, I earned a top private pilot award at my club.
i took a flying lesson a couple of years ago and loved it, but it was too expensive to learn how to fly, then i took skydiving lessons and fell in love. im sticking to skydiving, so much fun. but learning how to fly will always be on my list
"Too expensive" so you decided to learn to skydive, lol. Get ready to spend about the same amount of money on gear, jump tickets, and coaching jumps :) But you are right in that it's so much fun!!! Qualifications: Tandem Instructor, AFF Instructor, Coach, FAA Senior Rigger
Newly passed PPL from the Uk! And I must say, the flight school I trained at (Bodmin Flying club) was completely fantastic! They sent me on my first solo circuit the second I was ready for it, Whilst this was at 20 hours of flying, this was just due to living in Cornwall, where over the winter, we can go for months without going above the weather minima. I had 2 instructors during my time there, both of them were very enthusiastic and cared deeply about how well I was doing, by the end of my PPL training, he became a good friend. I paid what they called a PPL package upfront for the 45 hours required by the CAA, it included all of the books, a flight bag, map and all the other equipment needed. Saved us a lot of money and they made sure to tell us about how refunds could be done, and what is actually included. And they didn't charge me for ground training either. Their planes were always in top condition, and all checks (50 hours and annual) were never even neared before being done again. Passed with 69.4 hours, 2 weeks ago today! Time for the adventures to begin!
I’m a canadian flight instructor and I can tell you all of that is REAL! And you will be able to see those bad flight school behaviours today. One of my students made a deposit and lost it in an other flight school! $1500 vanished... I have a passion to fly / teach / learn. My goal is to “create” the best pilots in the minimum number of flight time at the highest knowledge possible. Talk with a minimum of 5 students in the school before paying anything. Enjoy your flights!!
I am learning to fly through Wisconsin Aviation and it is amazing. I love my instructor and the airplanes are very well kept, I have never had any of the problems that are on this list. Sorry to all those people who have had issues with flight schools.
My old flight school didn’t take care of their aircraft, and one day an instructor went up with a student and the propeller flew right off. It happened to be the same day I went flying as well. We then moved to a different flight school, and this one actually takes care of their aircraft. Thanks for making this video👍
One thing to remember regarding maintenance is that a fresh paint job and interior refurbishment is worth about the same amount of money as an engine overhaul. I'll take the ugly plane with the good engine any day over a pretty plane with an on-condition engine and cylinders in the low 60s going through a quart of oil every ten hours.
As long as all record, AD's and maintenance are uptodate and the plane has been fliwn at least 1-3x a month, your good. If a plane doesn't fly for more than a few months, it gets VERY expensive to maintain, keep registered and airworthy.
In 30 years of aviation, the places you need to be wary of are the flight schools with gold plated front offices and shiny pretty airplanes... more often than not, they put the priorities on show, rather than go. A quick look at the last few 100 hour inspections is pretty telling.
I took my flight training from a CFII who owned an aerial applicator business (crop duster) and he was awesome! I was enthusiastic and he was happy to teach me flying in his off days. He solo'd me at 6 hours and I got way more solo time than needed for my certificate (100 hrs TT with only 25 dual) - but I was ok with that. I took my time and when I would drop in for some solo hours, I'd usually go up for 2-3 hours and do multiple TO&L's. The BEST part was I was hired to be a mixer/loader/driver for him and his sons when they went spraying. That was great money and helped pay for my license. (Was paid $15/hr cash and this was early 80's - so very good money then). I was also taught the art of "Low 'n Slow" and "FAST 'n Low" flight! I've landed on frozen lakes, freshly harvested soybean fields (just to take a leak, lol) and everything in between! I also got very proficient on ATC and radio usage. Better than any flight school, imo.
@@FriendlySkiesFilm i know of an academy that asks for 15k upfront then down payment of the same amount at the end and 1.5k instalments for 4 years is that cool by your standers? its in total 100k
Nick, as much as I respect your opinion, I think number two shouldn't really be a blanket statement. I'm trying to get to the airlines and I have about 350 hours, but I take pride in teaching my students to be safe pilots. Just because an instructor is trying to build time, they shouldn't be labeled as bad. Frankly, the best way to judge a flight instructor's character is on the ground. If you go in for lesson one and they're very nonchalant and carefree about the lesson, it's a negative sign. But, if the CFI is excited and seems willing to really teach you what they know, he or she is a keeper. Also, as an independent contractor, I do take my students up in the clouds for their 3 hours of instrument time. It gives them a healthy dose of respect for the clouds and instills in them that pushing their minimums is a bad idea.
Flightx52 I dont think Nick was attacking you per say. But often times than not if an instructor is trying to get to his final destination [airlines] then he/she may not "take pride" in their student. Thank god my instructor wasnt that way with me, although he told me i will be his last student when i chose him.
I'm sure he wasn't attacking me, I just think instructors should get a fair shot. Make a determination of how good your instructor is early on, and don't think that because he or she is airline bound that they don't care about you. That's all. :)
Hence my line about university professors. Same thing. See, this video was about the bad instructors... I expect you to chime back in when it's about the good ones ;)
Flightx52 I am not sure that he was making it as a blanket statement I know of an emery riddle grad he was 20 working as an assistant chief instructor he was a great CFI an extra great pilot who now works as first officer for I believe Jet blue
Daniel Rodriguez WeLl, AcTuAlLy, what you fly in advanced warfare isn't an airplane. And Call of Duty World War 2 wasn't released when I made that comment.
For people around Chicago, I went to Illinois Aviation at KDPA. Great school, got my private in under 60 hours, and the owner was really nice. They did none of the things this video highlighted. They do 50 hour, and oil changes all the time. I saw the records myself when I did my checkride. Started in late November, and got my temp certificate in early June. One guy there, an older gentleman named Elmer, did my pre-checkride flight with me. He was awesome! he pulled the power on me at 500 feet and said "Show me that 500 foot thing you were talking about during your brief" Well, that was the day I learned that I need more than 500 AGL to make it back to the runway. Your videos are fantastic, as are everyone else who flies. Really proves that the aviation community is respectable.
I worked at a flight school that hired instructors based only on their Instructor Certificate, no check ride. When I became Chief Flight Instructor that changed, every applicant for employment was given a check ride with me. I wasn't a hard ass but I wanted to be sure that the folks I hired could at least fly and instruct at the same time.
I'm an ATP and CFI with over 15000 hours. I recommend doing your private pilot part 61 with a non time building instructor. Avoid 141 lump sum payment pilot factories when you're starting out. Find an instructor and school that is geared towards having you fly solo. You will become a much better pilot when you don't use an instructor as a perminate security blanket.
Half Crab hi half crab, you sound like you're a seasoned vet. Im a low hour pilot (250 hours), graduated this year in fact and am looking for my first flying job. I'm from New Zealand and the industry is pretty slow here so am thinking of moving abroad to find flying work, any advice would be so helpful please!
At 250 hours, it's gonna be tough. Your best bet is probably to get your CFI, convert your ratings to FAA, and come instruct in the US. There's plenty of work doing that over here. You can either instruct to get your ATP or get to Part 135 minimums and fly cargo or whatever. Europe and probably NZ airlines won't require the 1500 hours the US does as well. But to get started, instructing is your best bet to get time and get valuable experience.
Hey bonchie1 I'm honestly considering same sort of thing- getting the instructor rating but then you think "You hire an instructor who has experience so they can teach you well, what good will I be with such little experience- the essentials sure" but not vet style aha
Sounds like my experience - got ripped off at the international aero academy (www.internationalaeroacademy.com). Money upfront, minimal training after the check cleared. Oops, too bad! Full of low quality, time building zero to hero CFIs. Never would go there again!
That last one is a huge pet peeve of mine too! Years ago, i had an instructor who would NEVER cancel over the phone. If i was on the schedule, he was not taking me off or postponing, no matter what. The school was an hour away, so this meant driving all the way there, only to have him tell me that the weather was above SFAR73 limits, or that it was too rainy. I wasted a lot of gas driving up to the school, then just going back home. Luckily he got fired because he ACTUALLY WAS ripping off students (he was putting students on the schedule without them knowing, then cancelling their flights and charging the cancellation fee to their account without them ever knowing.)
I've had a fantastic experience with 2 glider clubs for instruction. I've had several instructors and I've enjoyed flying with all of them. It's comforting when your instructor is a volunteer and is flying with you to share their passion and premenstrual the sport.
Hopefully Spartan School of Aeronautics has cleaned up their act - my experience with them is from 1973 when I moved to Tulsa with my PPL and wanting to earn more ratings. The airplanes (Cessna 150's) were in terrible condition - I'd be told to go out on the flight line and pick one ... sometimes that took several tries to find one that looked air worthy and not something I'd be carried out later in a body bag. I had two instructors that I most remember - the reasons I quit - one told me he was an instructor only so he could build up hours to become a corporate pilot - the other had me flying close to the airport so he could listen on the radio to his other students flying the pattern ... all on MY DIME .... I'm sure there are great schools out there - but at that time, this wasn't one of them.
Shop for flight schools just like you date. Keep at it until you find the right one... Then "date" all of the CFI - they are as different as people you meet walking down the street. Generally the more rule-crazy & buried in a checklist they are, the more airline & own-career focused they are, and the worse you will learn. Its your money - tolerate NO BS. I've met a few CFI who are more afraid of flying, or afriad of letting students fly, than most of my students are.
3 was me all along. I was told that I was not good enough and went through so many instructors until a new one came along and sent me solo. Thank goodness Flight Training Australia went bankrupt. I then moved to a better school and got my Commercial Pilot License and Multi Engine Command Instrument Rating.
Great video! The production value was very high. And your points are well taken. Thank you for all the time and thought you put into this one. I really appreciate the spirit with which you published this.
My instructor is a 26 year old "time builder" with a college degree in aviation. I thank my lucky stars every time I get into a plane with this guy because he is an AMAZING instructor. My previous instructor was 40 year old that told me that college educated time building instructors were inexperienced, bad instructors that didn't care about teaching you to fly safely. Turns out that was the perfect description of himself. 80 hrs flying with him and not a single ground lesson and 1 solo flight. I have completed my private, instrument, and am currently working on both my commercial and CFI with my current instructor. He can fly rings around my previous "experienced" instructor. He genuinely cares about teaching all his students, making sure they are having fun flying, and saving them as much money as possible. He is also incredibly fun to be around and puts 110% into each lesson. All the best instructors I know are "time building" instructors. They are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and understand students don't want to waste a lot of money. All the time building instructors I know are very up front with people about their time frame for moving on and make sure they have a new instructor their student is comfortable with before they move on. I know my instructor will move on one day in the future, but until that point we fly as much as possible so that I can learn as much from him as I can. I use him as my role model of the great instructor I want to be and consider myself so lucky to have the privilege of learning from him. I hate to think I almost passed up the opportunity to fly with this amazing pilot and naturally gifted teacher because I wasn't going to give the "time builders" a shot. This is just my experience but I'd hate to see someone pass up an amazing opportunity like I almost did. Please just meet with CFIs until you find the right fit. Don't rule out anyone you haven't met. There is a perfect instructor out there for everyone and I am so grateful to have found mine!!
My first flight lesson was so awesome. I got 15 minutes of ground school and then after takeoff I took the controls and proved to my instructor that I could land our Cessna 172 and I did it. It was a bit hard but it was my first landing on my first time up in a single engine plane! Will never forget that.
Hello I am a realtor who is looking to start to a flight school. I love this video!! I have to imagine the the 322 people who did not like this video are awful pilots. I enjoyed this! Very informational. Thank you sir!!
My flight school: I can choose to pay as I fly, theory is done at home and on my own time, once I feel like I've covered enough, I book a flight - is this good or bad?
I did my ground school via books in a home study course. It prepared me well for most of my flying and my exams, but I had difficulty with the weather portion of the course and really needed help. If I had to do it again I would definitely appreciate a classroom environment where thoughts and ideas could be shared between students and instructors. I think I learn better from hands on and in person scenarios than just from books.
If you can do self study, that is the cheapest way of accomplishing the theory part. The written test is the same no matter how you learned the material. If you have passed your written before you start the flight portion, you can spend less time on the knowledge part and more time on the flying bit.
Thanks for the video. I took lessons from a local community college. Great ground instruction, terrible flight instructors. One instructor would do everything inside the cockpit before we started the plane. I was to young and dumb to realize I should have stopped him or found a new instructor. When it came time to solo I didn't know what buttons to push to get pass the GPS menu because he always did it. If that wasn't bad enough he brought us in behind an airliner and just about flipped is on our top. It was a busy day at the airport and he took control from me. I saw it coming and was praying I wasn't going to die. Unfortunately that was the last time I flew. Kinda ruined it for me. 15 years later I'm going to try it again. This was a good video and some great advice. Make sure the instructors are competent and providing instruction. They should be creating a safe environment and teaching, not collecting hours.
When you initially meet with your instructor, find out how long they intend to be there. I had just got to solo and was building time when my instructor left to go fly airlines. Now, I had to reprove everything I had already done to the next instructor to get to again build solo time. This added a ton of flight time before getting my license. None of that extra dual instruction was helpful either as it just added cost and delay.
To get to where I'm at today I had 29 instructors I learned that when you're using the VA benefits your flight school will try to get every dime they can!
Thats what my flight school did. I got my private cert and got the hell out of there. Actually heard of one of the instructors ask a veteran, "why do you care about the flight time it takes to get your certs? The government is paying for it." The student was working on his private cert. (Not covered by the VA)
Well, I soloed in 8 hrs. 17 year old kid who did flight school as a formality: my father taught me to fly, shot my first landing at 12. My truck has sticker that says "I'd Rather Be Flying".
Good Lord, Everything here applied on ME during my PPL training ( except 60 hours first Solo), Got my First Solo done 35 Hours,( Changed School ), because I pointed out the issues, flown with over different 10 instructors, 5000€ deposit for 10% 2 months later school closed, Stalling after Stalling, your account balance is low , you need 500 before each flight, next day ( Aircraft in Maintenance ), no instructors today come back in 2days , knowing the WX would be bad and i asked can i have my money back ( not refundable ) the list goes on.....The new school did not recognized or found any records of my hours flown,.... But i never gave up .....Now I'm a qualified Pilot ..
Being ready to solo is so subjective to each student. I instruct at a very busy training airport and my students that are very on the ball are usually soloing around 20-25 hours. Those that struggle will solo closer to 30 hours, simply because we operate in very complex and busy airspace. There are also students out there who reach 50+ hours and do not solo simply because they cannot develop the skills and the trust of their instructor to prove they are safe to be out there on their own. I am an instructor to build my hours, and I don't plan on doing it forever. That doesn't mean that I don't care about my students, and I think that generalisation is unfair to the vast majority of instructors I know that are building their hours but are also very dedicated to their current job. There may be some bad eggs out there, but I believe they are few and far between. Also, if ownership saw an instructor cancelling flights all the time for no apparent reason, that instructor would not be around very long as they are not making the company any money! My school has good business practices and we keep up our maintenance to the letter. Source: I am a flight instructor
Syrupsipper hahaha let me roll around in all my money... All $24k/year of it! If I was in aviation for the money I would have given up a loonnnggg time ago.
How often a student flies also has a HUGE impact on the hours before solo. A student who flies once a month may never solo: he doesn't retain anything from one lesson to the next. The school where I instructed, the students flew 2 one hour lessons every day; they immersed themselves in flying. Most students soloed by 15 hours; I cannot recall one that hadn't by 25 hours.
Far be it from me to question your teaching, but your best students still don't solo until 20-25 hours? That just seems excessive in my experience. Plenty of guys take until 20-25 hours, but I'd think you should have some over-achievers who do solo at 12-15 hours like so many others have. What's the lowest you've soloed someone?
bonchie1 we have a more expensive program due to the very busy airport we operate at. At times there are 5 in the circuit in addition to arrivals and departures, so we need to make sure our students are solid on complex communications and instructions from ATC. In addition, it takes a bit more time to get to solo because we operate in Terminal Class C airspace and it is about 20nm to our practice areas each way.
Just giving my experience, I originally learned in the FRZ under the 1500ft layer of DCA's Class B shelf and our airport didn't even allow pattern work (KVKX). We were on an SFRA flight plan and in constant contact with ATC everywhere we went. Practice area was due south about 15 minutes. It's about as tough a place to learn as their is from a technical standpoint. Yet, we soloed students well under 20 hours plenty of times. But you are the instructor and have to do what you are comfortable with and I respect that. Just giving a different POV on what's possible.
I have had the best and the worst and everything in between when it came to learning to fly. I have gone to the best and to the worst flight schools and clubs. I have good and bad experiences with male and female instructors, young and old. I have had good and bad experiences with flight school and club aircraft. I might have bought an airport or two for what I spent on flying lessons. My good and bad experiences culminated in a single engine land and glider ratings. I know the maintenance history and configuration of the planes I fly because I own them. I look back on my journey to a ppl and would not change a thing. I am a better pilot for it.
Friendly Skies Film I think so. But, it is an expensive ($$$$) and sometimes risky way to learn. Taught me more about aircraft, airmanship, regulations, and ways to think than I would otherwise have received. Some of this experience actually save my life a couple of times.
Thanks for all the tips. For my birthday a couple of years ago my wife bought my an introductory flight. I met the pilot(an FAA employee at the time) he showed me around the plane, talked to me about flying(the basics of what to do). Then, once we got in the air he let me fly for about an hour. It was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope one day to be able to take lessons.
My instructor was the instructor to the Tuskegee airmen in Alabama. Easy on the ground hard ass in the air. He taught you like you were in the military. You better have your i’s dotted and t’s crossed before you even thought about flying with him. Loved it!!
Well I don't know if this qualifies as a bad flight school experience or not, but a few years ago I got checked out at a local flight school for the purpose of the occasional aircraft rental. I was told that they were a little short on CFIs but that they were training more (had a couple "in the pipeline"). Apparently a few had moved on recently. So I mentioned that I was/am a CFI but that I have a full-time engineering job so I could only instruct on a part-time basis. However I would be glad to help out if they were short or in need of part-time help. I was flatly refused with little more than a wave of the hand and a scoff. I found that odd, since my offer was made in the spirit of helping; I neither needed or necessarily wanted the extra work, though I did miss instructing. But whichever I still wanted to rent from time to time so I proceeded with the checkout. That went fine, and I used the CFI renewal for the hour of ground WRT the flight review. Cool. I told the guy I flew with, who was older AND a part-timer, of my experience with the chief pilot (the roll-of-the-eyes refusal thing). He stated that he wasn't surprised and that he "got in" only because his plane was one of their leasebacks. Hah! Interesting. Well I'd had enough of this bizarre experience for one day, so ended the session by telling him that I'd like to fly with him again soon to do some instrument currency. He told me to just give the school a call to set it up but that I couldn't request him because it was against their "policy". Wha-???!?! He told me that the school wanted students to go with whomever and not be "loyal" to one instructor. I KID YOU NOT. So that was it, I'd had it. I did rent from them about a week later but only because I promised a buddy that I'd take him flying. I haven't been back since and have warned other off of that school.
Despite the crazy number of stories like this I've heard through this video, it's always good to hear more, because it emphasizes the sheer number of these weird stories and company policies exist all over the US. You are so far from alone. Thanks for sharing.
I must be one of the lucky ones. No ground school fees. My instructor drives a flash car and picks me up on the way to the flight school then lets me borrow his car if i wanna go get food on a break.
My flight school was (unknown to me) in bad financial trouble. One lesson, we set off from the airfield with low fuel ("the airport was out of fuel again"), flew to another airport to fill up (on my card as the CFI had 'forgotten' his). Of course, see realise now their home field had put their credit account on hold. After they went bust, it was found they had cancelled their insurance after a month (thus having the correct but invalid certificates on display). They employed a very dedicated instructor who was working for nothing on the promise of future type and rating training - he lost out massively! Instructors did change around often but I found this very beneficial, they each had their points to make and it acted as a second opinion and a well rounded education. The downside was as said in the clip that each new instructor had to back step to see where I was at. I'd recommend getting a credit risk check on your school, especially if you're thinking of paying upfront.
I was around 60 hours when I soloed. My instructor was one of the youngsters building hours on my dollar. LOTS of pattern work; he said he wanted 30 (!) perfect landings. He moved on and my next instructor was in it for the love of flying. He really worked with me, and had me soloing in only a few hours.
GIFTS Good information for the student. A coupe of these things happened to me but I was wise enough to see it and kept my money in my pocket. Case in point, too wind and it was, she said we;ll do some ground training, I laughed at her. I have already passed my ground school, and went home for the day. When not flying I enjoy using X Plane, keeps my skills sharp with instruments and many other aspects of flying.
I feel the sim-yoke is not all that important, as despite the design, yokes in aircraft are pretty much one-handed tools, your other hand constantly adjusting power, trimming, leaning, tuning radios and instruments, etc. I had the saitek yoke, which was OK, but it was too bulky, space demanding, and unrealsitic for me to get any joy from it. My logitech stick isn't any more realistic in terms of control feel, but it is robust, small and light and of good quality. It can be stowed away in a second. For sims, if you plan to put time in them, I definately recommend rudder pedals though! Bit pricy, but the twisty joystick stuff is just crap (imo, of course).
Had an amazing flight instructor. I flew sims since I was a little kid and have a natural knack for stick and rudder skills. Allowed me to solo at 6 hours, was the 21st student of his in a row to pass their private checkride and did it at 47 hours. Also got flight instructor of the year award in my state.
My flight instructor, Bob Halprin was a sergeant at Walker Air base in New Mexico in 1966. I soloed in 15 hours in a Cessna 172, but had little instruction on navigation, charts, or anything of that nature. I was informed some months after I soloed that he had been fired by the On-Base flight school because he soloed a young man at night when Bob was drunk. Soon after I was moved to Plattsburg NY on Lake Champlain. The traffic was far more than I wanted to deal with as well as the base not having its own flight school, so I did not pursue my training, because I could not afford the cost on a sergeant's pay.
I just started, went up Monday for a intro flight at a small air port near me. My instructor has been flying for 9 yrs and seems to be really knowledgeable, the winds were high and he said he hated to take me up bc he didn’t want to deter me from flying bc it’s be a rough take off and flight but I said let’s do it! He taught me alot and even let me fly the plane about 65 %off the time we were in the air. Can’t wait to learn more
I had the good fortune to be instructed by a woman who had been a member of the Women Air Force Service Pilot in WWII. She was a great instructor. Passed my check flight in a breeze.
The biggest thing I took from my sister learning to fly, was don't use L3 Aviation if you're an independant student, not already affiliated with an airline... She would get bumped from lessons in favour of the airline students (they didn't want to lose their contract with those airlines), had multiple instructors because they kept leaving to take jobs with airlines, had months of breaks between ground school and actually flying which she was expected to continue paying for, and eventually took about a year longer than advertised to get her frozen ATPL
I just started this whole flying thing after spending years flying in sims and when the instructor asked if I had any experience I told him about the sim and how now we are able to run the sims in VR and he got all excited. He said he highly recommends sims because those students are more times than not, light years ahead of everyone else.
I got my PPL after 40 hours. I was an avid flight simmer and still am today. Some things don't line up perfectly with real life however. My biggest surprise was flying into rain storms. In the sim there are just some droplets on the window, but in an Oregon downpour you cant see anything out of the front. Another challenge sims don't do a great job of preparing you for is finding airports. In sims they stick out like a sore thumb most of the time, in real life some airports I had never been too aren't visible unless I'm almost right on top of them. Even my home airport was hard to find sometimes and I knew what I was looking for. Searching for an airport while looking for traffic and trying to gauge your position for communication was also a surprising challenge. One of the advantages of learning where i did was coming to rely on my instruments early on. I know a few pilots that learned in Arizona that rarely had to deal with bad weather that flew outside the window more often than not. To this day, no matter the conditions I always prepare for IFR even if it looks like blue skies all the way. There are too many stories of pilots that just loose their sh*t the minute they see a cloud, sadly many have lost their lives to this. Another helpful hint, always check the altitude of mountains and obstacles within a 1-5 range of your chosen flight path and fly at least 1,000ft above them until you are ready to land. I remember a person from our school flew strait into a mountain in Washington state and that made me obsessive about preventing that.
I agree with this. I fly in DCS a lot and really like the prop airplanes it has. My instructor told me that he definitely thinks it’s helped me fly better. He was surprised to be letting me land when I had only 6 hours under my belt.
You always have to be proactive and find out if the weather is less than marginal. Especially if you have to drive at least a half an hour to your flight school.
I went to ATP Daytona with about 10 hours dual. They milked me for about 70 hours NO SOLO and then requested another 30k for me to continue. I switched to another small, less known school and got more for my buck for 1/3 of the price, and soloed immediately. Be careful of flight schools that ask for money up front! Wished I would've seen this video a year ago! Great information.
A couple you missed: computer training in lieu of ground school & part 141. My first instructor was terrible; just building time & could not teach. He held me back soloing until I was over 30 hours. However this is partially the issue with part 141, in the syllabus didn't allow it much sooner. The other thing he did was tell me I needed 30 hours of ground school; even though I had to buy a king school online course. Which the school said was to cover the ground school requirement. My instructor's 30 hours were extra on top of the normal training. I then got in a long argument with the school over the bill for that 30 hours. I had wanted to switch instructors most of the time I was there but the school had the terrible instructor who was always available & then a number of part time instructors who were all pretty good & thus had full rosters for their limited time. I also looked to other schools but again due to being part 141 & differences in syllabi, I couldn't directly transfer. The schools I talked to wanted me to start over on their syllabus. Fortunately the school finally hired a new fantastic instructor who I finished my private with. Unfortunately she left for a real job 5 lessons into my IFR training. And the terrible instructor is my option at this school. My current plan is to try one of these accelerated scrolls in the southwest.
My school is PArt 141 and I am at 15 and about to solo. That is kind of messed up if you have to wait till 30, 5 under the minimum, to solo. It defeats the purpose of Part 141.
Don't dismiss part 61 schools. They are much more flexible and if you can find a good one the instructors will be just as good or better. Commercial is the only time the hour difference should be a real factor. It takes about 40 hours of instrument time to become proficient anyway.
Joshua Landry the part 141 school I go to is very flexiable and honestly the instructors are top notch. I am not dissing the part 61 schools but I am happy with my school and my instructor.
I'm not saying 141 is bad. Practically the only difference from a 61 school is the use of an approved syllabus. Since Aviator Mike was looking specifically for a 141 it seemed appropriate to point out that operating under 61 is not an indication of lower quality and he shouldn't count it out. The required hour difference between 141 and 61 should not a factor except for the commercial rating. The private takes 60-70 hours for most students. Most instrument students take at least 50 hours of instrument time. Even the difference between 120 and 250 for commercial isn't that great since most students end up building the time anyway. What I meant when I said that part 61 schools are flexible is that they can accommodate alternative ground schools, such as home study like the King course, or previous training while 141 cannot. A 141 school is bound by their syllabus and cannot deviate from it.
Even for the commercial rating, it's meaningless. No one is hiring you with a wet 190 hour CPL. So going Part 61 and getting it at 250 hours is basically just as well and you'll probably save money in the long run with Part 61 schools. Those extra hours will actually help you down the road too to get that first job at a drop zone or where ever.
I had the same instruction being schooled in Texas, mid 80's. 32kt crosswind and the instructor showed me how to slip in on an offset drift. Anytime the weather was crap yet still VMC, we flew, he called me!! Fair weather days were ground school days. He always said there wasn't enough room for us and the butterflies. I believe the max xwind was 20kts for the pa-38. I do remember being afraid of the ole Pipe Traumahawk. Wings falling off and flat spins.
My instructor does the same thing! Puts me in 15kt cross winds and allows me to also "dig myself a hole" so I can learn from it. He says as long as it doesn't put us in danger of anything I will make you make mistakes so you can learn from them.
All the history I heard today coming from my experience. This is the best video about flight school in USA. Wherever Connecticut... New York.... !!¡!!!!
Another good thing is choosing a flight school who’s main focus is on flight training. I had an instructor was was a former airline pilot (retired) based in Iowa and working for a company who had flight training and chartered flights. He was a great instructor and taught me as if I was flying an airline jet on every lesson, but it really sucked when I wanted to schedule a lesson and he was scheduled for a charter flight. It was nice to tag along with him on some of his charter flights though.
Another favorite scam is an instructor sending you out to preflight while that chat with their girlfriend on the phone. After the lesson they try to charge you ground instruction time for that period of time. Happened to me. I told the guy not a chance, reported him to the school and refused to fly with him again. If they do it to you, chances are they have done it to other students.
How about the Instructor who gets the hobbs meter turning while you're still adjusting your seat and headset, getting weather, talking w/clearance delivery and picking up flight plan or programming route?
Just don't start the engine. Most have an oil pressure switch. I actually pissed off an instructor once in a Seneca getting some IFR training because I did all of my ATIS, VOT, autopilot, etc before starting the engines. He said I wasn't doing the checklist is the proper order and that I could forget items. I said 'sure I am' as I went through the list again saying 'completed' and 'done' ten times faster than I would have the other way. He lost .2 of MPIC and I kept $65 in my pocket.
From an instructor's perspective (CFI, CFII, MEI. ATP), if I student wants to get out to the plane, get the clearance, ATIS, etc. before I get there, GREAT! Shows initiative. Heck, most decent FBOs will have a radio in the planning room to get all of that before getting to the plane. This is how "real" pilots do it because aircraft owners do not want to be burning fuel sitting on the ramp. Or... if he wants me to be in the aircraft, engine off, monitoring while he does all that, fine. But I'll add whatever time spent as ground school. Don't expect to use an instructor's time without paying for it.
John H To infer from my comments that it's students who are cheating their instructors when instructors are stretching the hobbs meters for greater flight time pay, illustrates perfectly why less and less folks are training to fly. And, why less and less folks can afford to fly. Who wants to pay the extraordinary high a/c training fees of today if it's coupled with used-car salesman instructors whose lesson plans contains the following entry: Nickel and dime your student before he cheats you! You lecture how "real" pilots don't burn money on the ramp, while impugning the motives of the student just trying to fly more of his flight time. Of course, Instrument/commercial students fuel, pre-flight, get ATIS and clearance, etc. etc. all before the instructor arrives -- my comments, of course, were concerning primary flight students...
I never set out to milk my students. The school where I instructed had so many students that I averaged over 7 hours each day without milking them: there was no need to milk, there was always another waiting in the wings. Flying has never been cheap. If you think it should be, well, put wings on a Yugo and have at it. Your initial comments "while you're still adjusting your seat and headset, getting weather, talking w/clearance delivery and picking up flight plan or programming route?" The first flight I teach my primary students how to adjust the seat. That is on the house. If an instrument student needs to learn how to adjust the seat in a plane he has been flying, then there is an issue. Getting weather: I don't even expect them to do until at least the fifth flight. Picking up a flight plan or programming the route (I'm guessing the aircraft has an FMS) would not be done by a primary student ever; that would be someone seeking an instrument rating. And yes, real pilots who are earning a living flying get clearances and programs the FMS long before the boss shows up, because when the boss shows up, he wants to be moving and airborne ASAP. If that sounds snobbish, then wait until your first flight with an owner, sit on the ramp for 15 minutes getting ready, and see how grumpy that owner gets. I knew what I spent to learn to fly, and didn't want to add unnecessary costs to a student. Some students are go-getters and don't need proding. Some need to be spoon fed. Go getters spend less because they work harder. Spoon feeders pay more because they want or need more attention. Finally, nickle and diming.... A cursory look at my logs show my students soloing around 15 hours. All of them got their private before 45 hours.... all 160+ of them. Oh, as an added bonus, they all passed on their first attempt. And as a double added bonus, I had a 92% first time pass ratio for CFIs (if you doubt that, talk to the FAA, because they renewed my CFI based on my students' pass ratio). Flying ain't cheap. I have helped students save money as much as I could. When I had students working on their commercial and eventually the CFI, I suggested they train for the commercial and take the check ride from the right seat. Why? Because they would spend fewer hours on the CFI. It only amounted to about 3-4 hours less, but it WAS 3-4 hours less.
I had an instructor that was getting hired by an airline. He awful and only there to build time. (He was my third instructor in the same flight school in less than 3 months also) One day while I was doing the preflight checklist, he said, "I just flew it. It's fine. Let's go." After leaving the ramp and calling my takeoff, half way through the runway, we weren't getting any speed and there was no way to take off. We couldn't figure out what was going on. Finally, I looked down and noticed that during my preflight, I had lowered the flaps and because he made me quit, they were still down. I pulled out the throttle, stomped on the brakes and got us off the runway before it ran out of asphalt (barely). I was livid and refused to fly with him that day. I actually had such a bad time at that flight school, I walked away from flying for awhile. I'm slowly getting back into it and hoping to finish my PPL this year.
My own experience is in some ways similar to your indication of a bad school, but the fault was mine. When I was young, it seemed there was never a lot of money. So, I would buy an hour of flight time here and there as I could scrape together the money. My training was incoherent. I changed schools and instructors many times. Needless to say, I flew a lot of different airplanes, too (maybe a good thing in the long run, but for training, I was always re-doing the basics). On my final day of instruction before the check ride, I just lucked out and got a really old C-150, with manual flaps. Honestly, I felt like I finally had a plane I could relate to! During my touch-and-go's, I was nailing the numbers every time. My instructor's last comment on the last rollout was "You'll have to show me how to do that". I was so proud. Who knows; maybe coming up the hard way made me a better (or at least a more well-rounded) pilot.
I think students routinely forget that they are a "paying customer" and they have BOTH responsibilities, and, some rights too. For example; with such good flight simulators for home PC's, anyone looking to learn to fly really should have one and get damn good at flying it in your spare time. It is relevant and it will cut down on your training costs. If you are a student pilot and you do not fly a quality home simulator on the most realistic settings possible (maximum difficulty), then you are not serious about learning to fly. FWIW - I learned to fly near The Great Lakes starting around March at an ATC controlled airport. I routinely had to request special VFR to go flying (poor vis, snow, low ceilings). I went from ab-initio to solo in 6.3 hours. I passed my PPL check-ride at around 40 hours and I had to fly another 4 or 5 hours of circuits afterwards so that I had the legal minimum of 45 hours (at the time) to be a licensed private pilot. The flying school had no issues with any of this, and, they let me do all of those extra hours in one day...
That is actually a very bad thing. It comes out of someone's pocket and its going to be the instructor. There is no way to keep qualified instructors around if they are not paid for the time they work. Think about it, would you go to work a 40 hour week if you only got paid for 20 hours at close to minimum wage? That sort of thing is a very serous industry problem that is leading to a shortage of instructors. If you book 2 hours with someone you should expect to pay them for 2 hours. More expensive, however then people are more likely to make teaching a career rather than a throw away job waiting to find a flying job with a reasonable wage. For selfish reasons you also don't want the free instruction. If the instructor isn't payed for a pre-brief and a post-brief then they are very unlikely to give one of any quality which means you have to pay for more flight instruction and one hour in the air would cover three or four on the ground. A 45 hour pilot isn't that difficult but it does take about 40 hours of ground.
My flight school only charged for a briefing if it was a mandatory lesson on the syllabus.... All the rest were free.... But I guess that's the nice thing about learning at a flying club that wants to keep you as a member versus a traditional school.
Great video, I actually stopped my training because of a bad instructor. He would not communicate well at all and like mentioned in the video, he would cancel flights to do "ground school" often. The issue I had with this is that he was teaching me out of 7 year old books at the time. I asked him about it because we were having issues with changed information between his and my book and his answer would always be "My years of training and book are right, just because your book is newer does not mean they got the information correct." This happened probably 7 or 8 times before I finally went to the owner of the school and made a complaint and asked not to use that instructor any longer. He was wayyyy overconfident and I felt that he was the wrong instructor for me. He was for sure a smart person and seemed like a competent pilot but not a teacher. After I asked to change instructors, this guy would call my phone at like 6 am and leave pretty rude messages several times. I finally just quit training and I regret it now, I wish that I had just gone to another school. This happened in Sacramento, CA. back in 2015.
Wow!! This really hits a nerve. I wished I would have seen this years ago. All except one happened to me. I really wanted to get my private pilot’s license. I even scheduled a week end guaranteed to pass ground school and yes I was so excite I choose to pay all fees up front to entice them to get me preference. I was willing to fly as much as possible to get my license, I already had a Cessna 182 lined up for purchase. And I only 5 miles from to 2 local airports. I also bought all my flight tools and an electronic flight computer. There is a lot more to this story. I was there 1st student and the instructor’s 1st student. He was a great pilot but a very poor instructor. Then I found out the flight school at Lake Berryessa airport in California was already in bankruptcy when they took my money. I talked to the lieutenant governor, he said I was out of luck, vendors had already came in and removed all the valuable items. Who knows were I would be today if I got my pilots license today??? GREAT video! I hope this really helps someone like me.
Doug Harlow hey Doug i am just starting to change my career into aviation and i am also in California, is there any way that we could get in touch? It would be nice for your input. Thanks
Jeremy Ellwood - Private CFIs open Pandoras box for risk of separating you from your money if you ever get into tension or dispute, or just don't like them, since you're so confined. Doing research and strong recommendation is key for them.
Agreed with the chosen dude. You can get really lucky, though! Sounds like you did. There are plenty of great CFIs out there, just waiting to become your best fiend :)
That was the stabilator trim. I always liked the overhead position in the Cherokees. That guy was apparently low time and was fumbling for it and should have had the plane properly trimmed for approach way before he was. I never had to look down for a trim wheel, but I had a lot of time in the Cherokee so I knew exactly where to reach.
As a student I'm happy to report that I've experienced exactly none of these problems at my flying school. The school is actually owned by the maintenance company which performs all the servicing for the Aero Club at that airfield. When the weather isn't suitable for flying they've never charged me for ground school, favouring a brew, biscuit, and a chat rather than an hour's tuition in a classroom. Although I have about fifteen hours flying now I've not flown solo yet, but I know that that is because I'm actually not ready to land without supervision as yesterday's circuit session proved! We won't be doing any cross country until I've flown solo and have learned some air law and navigation. And payment isn't an issue, because I pay for the hour (or whatever we've actually flown) upon landing each lesson, so no up front fees. Good advice for new students though, thanks for publishing this. I've been watching a few of your videos and they're really very insightful.
for number 4 I'm at 55 hours and have never soloed, actually probably like 60 a this point, but this is because I'm still only 15 and have been in training since I was 11 and I won't be able to fly for like 4 months due to surgery tomorrow so even when I do turn 16 I will have not flown in like 4-5 months and will likely need even more time
Especially for young pilots, don't be in a rush. learning over your life is a bit different. this is in terms of you signed up for slight school and get plenty of recent hours and instruction to solo and they hold you back to milk you of money. Being that young, always keep learning. You have a huge natural safety concern of being an overly sure of himself teen possibly in your future. i've seen a lot of young guys die. Keep learning and stay humble. 60 hours and no solo as a young person is NORMAL.
dann nierhoff Yeah true, and I like to think of myself as a very safe student pilot, who always leans on the side of safety, but I do see the potential risks
In this case he can't solo because of the regs. Gotta be 16 to solo and 17 to take the checkride. But he's building time he'll need down the road anyway so it's not wasted.
Very good video. Unfortunately, I happened to be victim of all of your topics. I believe, (my opinion). that 80% of flight schools are cheating their students. This is so counter productive to the advancement to general aviation.
I attempted to change the flight school that I worked for when I became Chief CFI. I think I did a decent job. However, you have to negotiate with the FBO owner, he usually saw things my way, however. We had a good reputation with the FAA.
My dad's flight instructor was Marty Kasey the pilot who collided with PSA flight 182 in 1978. Marty taught my dad how to fly here in Ohio so when we heard his name mentioned on the news we didn't know he had moved to California from Ohio. My dad flew until he developed dementia. He started taking me for plane rides at 6 years old and I learned how to fly from my dad but never got a license since my dad owned 3 planes during his life and I would fly whenever I wanted since the planes were kept on our farm. My dad made a 2000ft grass air strip in 1970-71 and named it J&B Skyranch for Joe and Betty, my parents. Its still registered with the FAA but the new owners of the farm have let the grass grow and now its just tall weeds. Great memories growing up and having an airplane hangered right outside the house to go flying any day or any time. I remember one Saturday morning in the summer about 6am I heard the plane starting up and there would be my dad in his pajamas taking off for a morning pleasure flight. My dad at 16 said his goal in life was to have a home in the country and to have his own plane on the property to go flying whenever he wanted without having to drive to an airport. He accomplished that goal at age 33. Looking back I realize today that my father was a great pilot and flying was his passion.
Let's cut to the chase. The irrefutable fact is that most primary students who actually study their lessons and use the flight simulator extensively will be better prepared than those who do not. I also assert that MOST students who've done so will agree with me that it saved them time, and money.
Me too, but I still had my checkride with 40 flight hours. The plane's owner (who had the aircraft leased to the flight school) didnt't want student pilots to fly solo on his plane
TeckGeek I went down to my local airport and applied to their flight school. I wouldn't waste your money on some fancy flight school when you will get the same training at a local airport
In the 90's I had an instructor who, I learned, liked to nap on navex's. On approach to YGLB, operating as CTAF at the time, I saw and heard that there were both parachutists and ultralights within 10km of the aerodrome. A bit after making my "all stations" call, I noticed an ultralight ahead, climbing, and getting substantially bigger in my windscreen, and not moving laterally, so basically we were headed for one-another. I turned right by 30 degrees on the DG, passed by safely at about 1.5km after 30 seconds, then left by 60 for 30 seconds, and then resumed track to the aerodrome pattern on my original heading. At some point during all this, he became conscious again, probably hearing my announcement of "traffic, ultralight 12 o' clock our altitude, maneuvering to avoid" on the interphone. Later, checking my training record, I found he had written, for that particular flight, that my navigation skills were *so bad* that I needed to correct heading by large amounts to maintain track. This was both funny and sad, since I had basically flown a great portion of the nav (YSCN->YWOL->YGLB) with him apparently asleep, and had arrived where I was supposed to be safely and on time. We didn't have dash-cams in those days, so I couldn't prove to him what exactly had happened whilst he was unconscious, but looking back, I should probably have sacked him as my instructor. Mentioning the incident to him, he replied "I know what I saw, and I saw you turning the aircraft by 30 degrees to regain track". He wouldn't change the training record. Later, moving on to a new training facility, and asking for my training records, I found they had been "misplaced or destroyed" by the club. No apology or compensation. Why on earth would someone destroy written training records for private pilots?
As a former chief pilot for an FAR Part 141 flight school in White Plains, NY (KHPN) in the 1980s, I agree with the pointers in this video--especially #1 & #2. Nice to see all those ancient Cherokees are still flying--esp. the 1969-vintage one with the overhead trim crank--like the one I soloed in in 1977!
My grandfather only received 5 hour before his solo but he was a kamikaze pilot
best comment ive ever seen on youtube
lol. This comment made my day.
Darkpassenger I flew solo after 7hours flight time, never having even been in a small aircraft before.
I soloed at 10 hours. On a Piper..On a very busy class D airport. I had the written passed.... was an athlete, those 2 factors helps a lot.. first 6 hours was with a Crooked CFI that used to take me to 10,000 feet to practice 4 fundaments.. I got to hate that Cuban Refusenik baster..
At 7 hours i got another CFI that taught me how to do all maneuvers the right way in next 4 hours...No problem with the landings..I could have soloed in 7-8 hours.. I was very poor kid at 17.. Never drove a vehicle before the PPL... That can help too..Specially Motorcycles..
cool
3:54 I find it hilarious that when you said "they are just milking you for your money" the waypoint on the gps/nav showed KASH
Nashua, NH is the airport where I did some of my flight training.
I noticed that too. XD
:D
Thanks, that's a good one!
I was a flight instructor. I had "students" handed to me, one of whichvalready had 20+ hours. Never soloed. After flying with this guy for another 40 hours i gave up on him. He eventually did aquire his license. But only after over 200 hours.
Yes, there are certainly crooks. But your instructor isnt a crook if he doesn't solo you before he feels safe about it. He is looking out for you.
if you werent milking it than just maybe you're or were a bad instructor.
mrdre963 that seems like it could be right, but there are people who pilot when it’s 100% NOT for them, and this could be one of those cases
I am glad someone brought up a point like this. This video is very informational, especially for someone like me who wants to get their private pilot's license one day. However, just because your instructor says no doesn't mean he's a crook.
@@gmccord1970 im sorry to hear that.
I was always very diligent. I did my best to compart my knowledge to those who lpaid good money for it. And also to many who couldnt pay for it. I simply love aviation.
There ar a lot of folks who waste time. Often without knowing it.
I myself had around 75 hours before aquiring my own PPL. Partly my own fault, partly due to lackadaisical instructors.
But every time anybody wins their certificate, a new story is born. Every student is different, and also every instructor. Each combination reacts differently. As an instructor, i had to learn the charachteristics of each student, then I had to figure out how to reach that particular person.
If you show up and you have 20 hours in your book, i still have to figure out where you are. What you actually know, and the difference in what you THINK you know, vs what you ACTUALLY know.
I had 15 hours before i soloed, yet in hindsight, that fellow taught me very well. The next two guys took advantage of me.
Each experience is very unique.
MrPanchoak Thank you for your input and I am in the process of working and putting pressure on the FAA through my contacts To hold flight instructors accountable to the point of even may be pulling their instructor tickets if they can’t teach properly or engage in any unethical business conduct. A flight instructor has no business teaching students how to fly if they have ulterior motive’s and is just using that student for a cash cow.
1:16 "The school can decide to close at anytime and take your money for a road trip to Vegas" But my school is in Vegas 😂😂
Hahhahaha XD Must be some great scenery!
Atlantic City, then? :)
Friendly Skies Film Um I am planning to do my training in BAA aviation academy heres the website, idk anything about rating em, www.baatraining.com
Then they don't have to take a road trip! They just have to make a short drive to the strip.
I'm here in Las Vegas as well. @MCHFacts may I ask what school and what you're experience is/was? There are something like 10-15 different options. Going for private from the ground up. What have you found?
Your #2 is what I fell victim to.. My instructor was a GREAT pilot, but a HORRIBLE teacher, and/or our personalities didn't mesh. I always had the feeling he was in a bad mood, and he didn't explain things well. One time (pre-solo) on short final, he asks "So.. what do you think.. are we high or low? Fast or slow?" to which I thought to myself "Wow - he's actually going to try to explain something to me" and I answered "I feel we're a little low and slow.. am I right?", and then he SCREAMED at me "Then F*ing do something about it before you KILL US BOTH"... So much for teachable moment... 2 weeks before my checkride, I asked him to take me to a class B airport just for experience with controllers (I trained at a non-towered airport between DC and Baltimore, so it's NOT a long flight, and it was pre-9/11, so no hassles of flight plans).. He answered "There's plenty of time for you to figure that out yourself after you get your license" and REFUSED to fly there with me. As I said, he was a GREAT pilot - even in hindsight, I think he had an amazing natural knack for flying the plane, but what I tell ANYONE thinking of taking flying lessons is to fly with AT LEAST two instructors before you really get started, and NEVER forget that you are the CUSTOMER and that you are paying YOUR money, and you can't be scared to move to another instructor or school..
On my third instructor, all of whom have just been in holding patterns waiting to get on with airlines. It's brutal how much time I've been billed, getting 'up to speed' with my new instructor.
I don't know what you mean by class B airport. If under the Class B airspace, okay, but otherwise ATC doesn't want you in class B airspace on a training flight. As well, if they are busy they just might not even respond to VFR traffic asking to enter the class B.
@@scottw5315 I'm not talking about a zero time pilot. I'm talking about days before a checkride after which it will be assumed I know what I'm doing. I was fully prepared to pay for the "extra" instruction, and it was BWI, which at the time had their own thriving flight school, so it's not like they were not going to let a VFR cessna in for a landing. Matter of fact, a few years later, I ended up doing a BFR at KMTN with an instructor I had never met before, and he said "Have you ever been to BWI? No.. good.. that's where we're going.." which I was THRILLED about. Got one full stop at BWI and gave me exactly the confidence and experience my primary instructor refused to give me. I've never landed there again, but I have transitioned the airspace plenty, which I probably wouldn't have wanted to do before going with an instructor.
@@SteveJones172pilot Okay, they have a flight school there. Most of them don't. I've been ignored by center a number of times around Class B airspace. If you can get in under the airspace they expect you to do that. Old news...I flew military. Some instructors are better than others and some should be doing something else for a living. Having said that, you might learn from the guys anyway. I see that your post is six years old. You still in the air.
I am thankful to have a great flight school. Friendly staff, well maintained aircraft, and legit instructors.
grahamboaviation Lucky you.
grahamboaviation What flight school is that?
grahamboaviation me too!
tell the name or it didn't happen
Ali Ibrahim illinois aviation at DPA. Look it ups
I was lucky; I learned how to fly at a small airport where my instructor was very interested in my progress. I soloed after 7 hours. He was always looking ahead to teach me new things. After soloing, he started teaching me how to do downwind landings because he said sometimes you just find yourself having to do things out of the ordinary. When I was close to 40 hours, my instructor also gave me some training on other types of aircraft that was based at our field, such as: tail draggers and planes that had a stick. It was nice to have someone looking out for me.
Sounds like a great story. Thanks for sharing with us :)
Can you please say where this is? I am interested to earn my PPL. Don't have the luxury to pay hugh sums of money. What's the shortest possible time
Which school?
im jealous lol
An instructor should be interested in you! Set guide lines,paramiters etc...and if he/she not getting it,maybe your not getting through...switch instructors...maybe personality issues I've always interviewed my students ,then assess weather there teachable.if not pass him/her by
a good and informative video, but as an instructor myself... 3:15 "a good instructor will solo you as early as possible like 10 or 15 hours" i disagree with. Actually, a "good instructor" will solo you when you have demonstrated the proper proficiency to safely and competently operate the aircraft all by your lonesome, for a lot of folks this could be 10 or 15 hours, sure, but for others it might be more. I would say that any instructor / student duo should have a goal in mind. 10 or 15 hours is not unreasonable, but while achieving solo flight is an important milestone / goal, it is never one that should be rushed. I would say a better way to approach this scenario would be - if you and your instructor have not been at the very least seriously discussing solo flight operations at 10 hours flight time, bring it up to the instructor. iron out any areas that need to be improved upon for the instructor to feel comfortable soloing you. If the instructor walls the discussion off, get a second opinion with another CFI.
Completely agreed. The 10-15 hour mark is when most students will begin to show proficiency in flying the aircraft. I teach out of a class D airport underlying class B. I will not endorse them to solo unless they instill confidence in me that if something were to change on their solo, that they can adapt, make good decisions, and keep it legal. I get students that have 30+ hours without solo that haven't planned ahead enough to have a taxi diagram with them at a towered airport... That means they are not ready to solo. Sure, they could go to an outskirt airport that is non-towered and do their three landings, but there is a whole lot more going on in busier airspace. Keep in mind, the easier route is not always the best one.
Strongly agree with this. I solo'd at 27 hours because of my flight school's policies regarding their 141 training (you could go 141 or 61). My instructors (had two that I worked with a lot) wanted to get me up on my own because they felt I was proficient but they weren't allowed to send me off. I think that having more than the minimum time required just to fly the plane around the pattern is very important because some days things don't quite go as planned... Especially flying out of a busy class c airport.
Not having an aircraft diagram/facility directory, etc, is often an instructor/flight school problem, not a student problem. Primary flight training should be one that immerses the student and requires studying and high levels of proficiency straight out of the gate. Will your student ask for a PAR approach instead of freaking out if inadvertently finding themselves in multiple thin layers of low visible moisture after taking off too late on the last leg of their long x-country? Now it's near dark. The student used to doing a variety of approaches and who has been taught how to descend at a stabilized X00 fpm, at a target airspeed, etc., is a better prepared student. Dragging training out to make money is one thing. Quality training and giving a student real-world tools to work with early in their studies is another.
Having students fly to a busier airport where they use clearance delivery, etc., have to talk to approach, contact departure, etc., increases quality training. One student flying up and the other flying back is also an option. The military does this in a lot of flight training.
I agree with you. Proficiency is about being proficient. Not proficient in flight planning, handling the aircraft, weather analysis? Then no solo.
I agree with you... But by the same token, there are Instructors that have a degree as milk men if you get my drift. Notice my comment above. aft 45+ hours of no solo and then flew a B58P with no problems and even landing it... You have to watch the instructors... Not all are good, a lot of them are out for the money and nothing more.
Good point.
I found it helped when I took over control of my own training. Remember, with flight training; the student is in control, not the instructor(We hire and fire instructors at will, and ALL instruction is transferable to a new instructor). That doesn't mean students decide whether they are ready for solo or for check-rides; but that if a student believes they should or should not be flying, it is the student's call. I fired an instructor for trying to pull the 'bad weather, so we'll do ground instruction' game, and cancelled a training flight when I decided I didn't like the way an engine was running during a run-up, even though the instructor and manual said it was within tolerance (was a good call, turned out the engine had a cracked cylinder). Fly with at least two instructors of YOUR choosing, ideally having an hour with that second instructor for every 5 hours with your primary. Oh, by the way; all ground school can be done cheap on-line, I used King Schools ground school course.
Yep, had to fire a CFI for not wanting to fly because of one cloud in the sky or the wind was like 7 knots. Give me a break. We did ground instead. Then went to another instructor and he would add extra ground time for no reason. In addition, the aircraft seemed to have the min. maintenance completed. Oil only changed every 100 hours, the engine ran close to hot - In the green but right next to the red mark. Down for unexpected repairs to often instead of regular maintenance in addition to the 100 hour. The plane also gone thru a couple of radios and only has one radio. The radio has lots of static and the VOR is not working. Oh and one of my flights, the radio stopped working but I verified that the CFI had a handheld radio. Whew. We used the handheld as It is a Delta Airport in a busy city area. While the plane is deemed flight worthy and passed pre flight inspection, I just did not feel comfortable with the aircraft and changed schools.
@@kimberlywentworth9160 Great call. Some shady crap goes on in some schools trying to cut corners. I did a check-out at a flight school after getting my private ticket, so I could rent one of their airplanes. Had to make a bit of a stink about needing a stick to check the fuel and the jackass instructor actually told me, "all the planes are fueled in the morning, so we can look at the log and see how many hours it flew and know how much fuel is still in the plane." I shit you not, and he wasn't even "testing" or checking. That was SOP at that school. Of course I never ended up renting there because that BS didn't fly with me (pun intended). Fun fact, that school had one of their training aircraft crash/off-airport land and the FAA investigation found it had run out of fuel; not long after...
@@mrwonk Mine told me to just look in the tank and see if there is fuel. I did not want to argue and purchased my own fuel stick gage if I can not see the fuel. Yes, everytime I flew the plane the fuel is up to the tabs but if it is not, I am using my stick to measure.
My Instructor : "Get ready for solo"
Me : "Are you sure? I don't think I'm ready sir"
Him : "Yes, you'll be alright"
Me : done my solo after 8 hours flight time, finish my PPL after 41 hours total time.
I think I got lucky to have him as my instructor.
Nice! Good work for both of you!
Same thing for me back in the day. He just ask me to pull over on the taxi way and got out of the airplane. “ do three takeoff and landings.... you’ll do fine”. Done in 40 hours. I passed the 40 mark during my cross country flight to meet up with my DPE. Seems like those times are gone.
Where did you go for school? Who was your instructer?
Your instructor was lucky he got someone who was a natural pilot.
I've had a few that got PPL and a Night rating inside 45 hours.
Lakiri Holman Those times are gone because CFIs now a days are just interested in filling up their bank accounts OR building up their hours so they can go to regionals!!! Sad but true.
As a former DPE, I have seen it all. I have actually had a student who brought me and aircraft that would not pass the mag check. I told him if this plane taxied out to the runway, I will pink slip you. I have seen this so many times. I have had students that could not recover from a stall, Three times I was put into a spin, There a lot of bad instructors out there. But remember some students don't even show up for their lesson and the instructor sat there and wasted their time waiting on them. I instructed for over 30 years and I made it very clear if you don't give me 24 hours notice of cancelation you'll be charged for 1 hour of my time.I could tell you hundreds of horror stories from my past. Former CFI CFII MEI DPE.
One somehow wealthy guy, but dam pretentious idiot "Pigpilot" almost killed me on a C150 with a sudden show off pull up on take off. From the Vy on a normal take off..the airplane stalled at about 100 feet, He frozed in fear with nose up...left wing dropped too..I had to push it down hit the right rudder hard and recover it...flew off the stall at about 15 feet out of the airport at Vx...by using Bush Pilots Flap Tricks i know... They told me the Guys came running when they saw us stalling..and got puzzled when airplane came up from behind some trees..
After landing a manager asked me why i was practicing take off emergencies to such a low altitude... Were you?? I said, hell no.. That ahole stalled it..Didnt you see that pull up from over the runway?? I Never talked to him again.. That is the way to do it..Dont befriend aholes.. The kill others.. Not me..
i felt like strangling him, but it is illegal..I wish was legal to shoot those guys..He almost killed me...attempted murder charges should apply to those mofo's...Glad I took Ballroom Dancing as my hobby later on..Now for over 12 years no more put up with mofos with money...Too many in USA GA..
I wish that I had a fee for every time I showed up, and no instructor, or the aircraft wasn't flyable (30% downtime on the plane). And I had to drive 2 hours each way to find out no instructor.
I am sorry that happened to you Mark, that would have never happened at my school. Our policy was to call the students the night before and inform them of their appointment. If one of my instructors did not show up I would take over and fly with the student. If this became a habit with the instructor he was terminated. Unfortunately, airplane seems to get sick, safety rather than risk. I did have enough planes online to move over to another plane. The 100-hour inspection and annual should have been kept on a board so the instructor and I knew when a plane was due for inspections.
You are so right buddy. There should be a rule of payback when the school makes you pay money and waste your time. I was at a school at Long beach that charged up front. Lied about the airworthiness of the airplanes, robbed you on ground school and put in higher numbers on the Hobbs time. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND NEVER FLY AN AIRPLANE WITH A FAULTY HOBBS METER. you will be robbed of all your money. I sat in a Hotel for 6 days with no flying and I spent $1,000 on this, the schools do not care about how much you pay. The AOPA or the FAA should hammer down on schools for this. Many students are from other countries and we do not know the laws in the USA. Now I am working on my ATL in the A320 Airbus and I am treading carefully.
Unfortunately, that has been going on for years and years. I ran a flight school the right way, but the bad guys put me out of business. they used the old bait and switch routine. One school I did check rides for had the worse plane I have ever saw. I don't know how they made it. I charge tach time, not hobbs. The big flight school I worked at had new aircraft, kept the old Cessna RG in pretty good shape, parts were hard to find. As a corporate pilot, I flew factory fresh new aircraft. Good Luck on the A320- I had a little time in the B-737-400
I learned to fly in the 1950's. Either I was very lucky or things have changed. I just visited a local airport and went up on a familiarization flight and immediately enrolled. I had three excellent instructors when I wanted to fly, depending upon who was available; Boyd Phelps, my lead instructor, Frank Wallace and Caesar Vai (I think our instructors are people pilots remember all their lives). Caesar was an ex-Italian WWII fighter pilot, who loved to shout from the back seat (which helped at times over the engine noise) in an Aeronca 7AC. One time on final approach as we passed "over the fence' in the tandem 7AC, Caesar started shouting in Italian and slapping the back of my head with a chart. After we touched down and I was taxing toward the parking area, he said, "Excellent! You kept your focus on what is important with chaos all around you. Crazy stuff usually happens at the worst time" Some people would be offended by that, but I considered it a great confidence builder and here, 60 years later, I still fondly remember Caesar and his handful of charts. The lead instructor, Boyd, insisted that I learn to fly in a "tail dragger", hence the 7AC. He pointed out that being able to land a tail dragger properly would be a valuable skill if I wanted to be a good pilot. After I got my license, he checked me out in tricycle gear in just a few minutes. I've always appreciated that because, as it turned out, my favorite aircraft to fly were 1930's era machines.
Yeah, the industry has changed a lot, and not for the better, at all... It sounds like you had a chance to fly some of the greatest aircraft of our century of aviation. I'm more than a little jealous. I would give anything to visit the days of Hughes Aviation and fly some of the masterpieces of the time.
You should emotionally dis-engage with other people and concentrate on you landings... after you're on the ground, you can have an extensive conversation about why the other person is having some issues.
Like you Ron, I was fortunate. I soloed a Citabria (a mild-mannered, tandem stunt plane), and then got my check ride in a Cessna 120 (a side by side tail dragger built in 1947). At the time of my check ride there were only two places in the state of Georgia where you could check ride a 120. Today you probably can't find an FFA check pilot that has ever been in a 120. My instructor, Frank Hancock, was an old retired Eastern Airlines pilot. I really feel sorry for the kids today who never have the opportunity to fly a tail dragger. Like Boyd told you and Frank told me, tail dragger pilots are real pilots - tricycle pilots are just wheel turners. Having said that, today's GA world is so much more complex than when we started.
The people who are “disliking 👎🏽” your this video they are those Flight instructors who want to milk our money. 🤣
Yeap LOL
Call em out 😂
I agree with nearly everything except the solo at 10-15 hours…
Pls am still a new guy trying to apply, but don't want to be milked 😥, so please can anyone recommend a good flight school I can go as an international student in Canada, am thinking of Waterloo, what do u guys have to say about it?
@@flywithme7843 same here, I'd say 15-20 hours
I'm 15 and turning 16 in February. After having several different instructors, I am now flying with an older gentleman who really pushes forward with my flying. I'm now set to go solo on my birthday and can't wait!
Congratulations, and let us know how it goes! :D I love those old guys too ;)
Friendly Skies Film Thanks, and I will :)
Just letting you know if you read this that it had to be cancelled on my birthday, but I completed it today just 6 days after! An amazing experience!
Harry Johnson how many hours do you have?
Hi, which flight school is it. Could u suggest me a good part 61 school. I'm planning.
I was doing my flight training with a young instructor who was hours building. When he left the school, I suddenly felt uncertain about whether I wanted to continue with the school, as I was being shunted around different trainers. So I went to another school to have a try-out and went up with an older, career instructor. I immediately noticed the difference in his style, which was totally hands off! Whereas my first instructor kept making corrections without telling me (and I would counter correct because of his inputs), my test-ride instructor waited until the absolute last minute to correct me (and take control), which gave me a much better appreciation of flight control. Unfortunately, I couldn''t continue training after that due to financial constraints.
Many of my students ask, how can you just sit there and do nothing when i feel i am about to crash the plane. I say don't worry, i will soon take control if it gets to far out of hand. Being a passenger with other instructors is a bigger problem though. Never trust any pilot no matter what their experience.
Yours is a perfect example of why you should use a simulator and then a glider and then an ultra-lite to teach yourself to fly. 🤠
Flight Schools are notorious for bleeding students dry. I have a few recommendations one being fly MS flight simulator (old versions are cheap and work great) and practice, practice, practice your flight before you fly. That means everything from pattern work, watching airspeed, altitude, flaps settings, and so on and getting a feel for turns, descents, climbs, and landings. #2 is practice an instrument landing EVERY TIME you come back to land!!! This way when you start instrument training, hand flying an ILS approach is something you can do with your eyes closed even if you turn way inside of the outer marker and have little time to get established. It will all be so natural to you.
For the Commercial, practice the run-of-the-mill maneuvers and know them cold. Do them enough in the simulator and it will be a lot easier when you do it in the aircraft. Know the ground school stuff cold. One thing I highly recommend is buying the Private, Commercial and or Instrument ground school course and passing the ground school portion on your own, independent of the flight school. Do that, and it's that much less B.S. you have to deal with in the aircraft.
Study, Study, Study The trick is to need the instructor very little and only needing to get a feel for the aircraft, but knowing in your mind exactly what you're doing and what you need to do in the aircraft to get it done. Give me a student for a week and I can reduce their flight school costs by thousands of dollars. Ignorance and passivity is what costs you money in flight training. Be knowledgeable and take charge of your training.
Simulators are great for IFR procedures after you actually start your IFR (or just for fun), but you are only going to introduce bad habits using them to train for your PPL or trying to self-teach yourself IFR before you've even got your PPL. There's very little useful about a simulator with your PPL training except just to have fun or practice when to turn on a pattern or something else simple like that.
Trying to self-teach yourself can lead to a lot of wasted money as an instructor then has to break your bad habits and there's a reason no instructor (that I've heard of) recommends that approach.
And I'm an avid P3D/XP simmer so I've got no biases against them like a lot of pilots do.
Even better if you can get a sim aircraft the same as you are training on and VFR scenery of the area you fly in to get used to finding waypoints, VRPs etc
That's a good use of the sim if the VFR landmarks are there. For IFR, if I'm gonna have to fly a new approach in real life, I may fly it in the sim first just to get a feel for it.
Congrats on going solo!
Yes Flight sims are great for practicing maneuvers and if you have VFR scenery useful for practicing land-aways and qualifying cross countries. You do have to be strict with yourself and not cut corners in the sim "I'm only 100ft into the controlled airspace" in a sim is ok, real world and you'll get a phone number to call and a fine!
TheTriumphant675 h
I am glad to have had the experience to have 3 instructors during my training - and all those 3 were wholly invested in training me effectively and having me complete my training. Thanks to them, I earned a top private pilot award at my club.
Aw, what a great experience! Glad you had that :)
i took a flying lesson a couple of years ago and loved it, but it was too expensive to learn how to fly, then i took skydiving lessons and fell in love. im sticking to skydiving, so much fun. but learning how to fly will always be on my list
Now you just have to stay in the plane a little longer ;)
Don't worry #4 counts for skydivers as well.
"Too expensive" so you decided to learn to skydive, lol. Get ready to spend about the same amount of money on gear, jump tickets, and coaching jumps :) But you are right in that it's so much fun!!!
Qualifications:
Tandem Instructor, AFF Instructor, Coach, FAA Senior Rigger
I will stick with a perfectly good airplane.
My introductory lesson was taught by Denzel Washington. We flew upside down for some reason, but he managed to land safely.
Newly passed PPL from the Uk! And I must say, the flight school I trained at (Bodmin Flying club) was completely fantastic! They sent me on my first solo circuit the second I was ready for it, Whilst this was at 20 hours of flying, this was just due to living in Cornwall, where over the winter, we can go for months without going above the weather minima. I had 2 instructors during my time there, both of them were very enthusiastic and cared deeply about how well I was doing, by the end of my PPL training, he became a good friend. I paid what they called a PPL package upfront for the 45 hours required by the CAA, it included all of the books, a flight bag, map and all the other equipment needed. Saved us a lot of money and they made sure to tell us about how refunds could be done, and what is actually included. And they didn't charge me for ground training either. Their planes were always in top condition, and all checks (50 hours and annual) were never even neared before being done again. Passed with 69.4 hours, 2 weeks ago today! Time for the adventures to begin!
> 69.4 hours, 2 weeks ago
> 69.4, 2.0
😏
(I know it's a stretch anyway)
I’m a canadian flight instructor and I can tell you all of that is REAL! And you will be able to see those bad flight school behaviours today. One of my students made a deposit and lost it in an other flight school! $1500 vanished... I have a passion to fly / teach / learn. My goal is to “create” the best pilots in the minimum number of flight time at the highest knowledge possible. Talk with a minimum of 5 students in the school before paying anything. Enjoy your flights!!
Im canadian is there any school you can recommend?
Hi sir. Which province you belongs to
I am learning to fly through Wisconsin Aviation and it is amazing. I love my instructor and the airplanes are very well kept, I have never had any of the problems that are on this list. Sorry to all those people who have had issues with flight schools.
Sounds like you found a great school :)
My old flight school didn’t take care of their aircraft, and one day an instructor went up with a student and the propeller flew right off. It happened to be the same day I went flying as well. We then moved to a different flight school, and this one actually takes care of their aircraft. Thanks for making this video👍
One thing to remember regarding maintenance is that a fresh paint job and interior refurbishment is worth about the same amount of money as an engine overhaul. I'll take the ugly plane with the good engine any day over a pretty plane with an on-condition engine and cylinders in the low 60s going through a quart of oil every ten hours.
As long as all record, AD's and maintenance are uptodate and the plane has been fliwn at least 1-3x a month, your good. If a plane doesn't fly for more than a few months, it gets VERY expensive to maintain, keep registered and airworthy.
I hear what you are saying but a lack of maintenance in any area is a warning sign, poor paint and poor interior is only the tip of the iceberg.
With the expense of training the planes ought to be in tip top shape
Wogden 700 Or it shows that they use new machines. Which is spooky in of itself. New planes have unknown quirks
In 30 years of aviation, the places you need to be wary of are the flight schools with gold plated front offices and shiny pretty airplanes... more often than not, they put the priorities on show, rather than go. A quick look at the last few 100 hour inspections is pretty telling.
I took my flight training from a CFII who owned an aerial applicator business (crop duster) and he was awesome! I was enthusiastic and he was happy to teach me flying in his off days. He solo'd me at 6 hours and I got way more solo time than needed for my certificate (100 hrs TT with only 25 dual) - but I was ok with that. I took my time and when I would drop in for some solo hours, I'd usually go up for 2-3 hours and do multiple TO&L's. The BEST part was I was hired to be a mixer/loader/driver for him and his sons when they went spraying. That was great money and helped pay for my license. (Was paid $15/hr cash and this was early 80's - so very good money then). I was also taught the art of "Low 'n Slow" and "FAST 'n Low" flight! I've landed on frozen lakes, freshly harvested soybean fields (just to take a leak, lol) and everything in between! I also got very proficient on ATC and radio usage. Better than any flight school, imo.
Good stuff man. You did your research on this one. Awesome.
Hey, hey. If it isn't the latest member of the 100k club ;) Thanks, mate.
@@FriendlySkiesFilm i know of an academy that asks for 15k upfront then down payment of the same amount at the end and 1.5k instalments for 4 years is that cool by your standers? its in total 100k
@@salommk9426 what!?!?? 100k for what license/certificates/etc?
@@salommk9426 way too much. What would you even be getting in return? You should get atleast 500 hours for that
Nick, as much as I respect your opinion, I think number two shouldn't really be a blanket statement. I'm trying to get to the airlines and I have about 350 hours, but I take pride in teaching my students to be safe pilots. Just because an instructor is trying to build time, they shouldn't be labeled as bad. Frankly, the best way to judge a flight instructor's character is on the ground. If you go in for lesson one and they're very nonchalant and carefree about the lesson, it's a negative sign. But, if the CFI is excited and seems willing to really teach you what they know, he or she is a keeper.
Also, as an independent contractor, I do take my students up in the clouds for their 3 hours of instrument time. It gives them a healthy dose of respect for the clouds and instills in them that pushing their minimums is a bad idea.
Flightx52
I dont think Nick was attacking you per say. But often times than not if an instructor is trying to get to his final destination [airlines] then he/she may not "take pride" in their student. Thank god my instructor wasnt that way with me, although he told me i will be his last student when i chose him.
I'm sure he wasn't attacking me, I just think instructors should get a fair shot. Make a determination of how good your instructor is early on, and don't think that because he or she is airline bound that they don't care about you. That's all. :)
Flightx52 I concur with what you say as well. But how many ppl walking in to a flight knows what ask when all they want to do is fly..😊
Hence my line about university professors. Same thing. See, this video was about the bad instructors... I expect you to chime back in when it's about the good ones ;)
Flightx52 I am not sure that he was making it as a blanket statement I know of an emery riddle grad he was 20 working as an assistant chief instructor he was a great CFI an extra great pilot who now works as first officer for I believe Jet blue
My cfi was late an hour to my ground lesson and was rushing me on my preflight inspection
My cfi didn’t show the first day! The owner of the school took me up that day and had a new one for me in 5 days!
I flew an airplane in Call of Duty so im pretty sure I don't need to take flight lessons. I had an amazing K/D.
*SARCASM*
If you look at more popular videos about aviation that hit trending on youtube, literally every comment is like this, except not sarcasm...
Friendly Skies Film this makes me sad
You’re completely wrong, and there’s one giant thing wrong with that statement...
You can’t fly planes in call of duty.
Pug Scorpion Cow yeah in advance warfare you cqn for a mission and again in wwII
Daniel Rodriguez
WeLl, AcTuAlLy, what you fly in advanced warfare isn't an airplane. And Call of Duty World War 2 wasn't released when I made that comment.
For people around Chicago, I went to Illinois Aviation at KDPA. Great school, got my private in under 60 hours, and the owner was really nice. They did none of the things this video highlighted. They do 50 hour, and oil changes all the time. I saw the records myself when I did my checkride. Started in late November, and got my temp certificate in early June.
One guy there, an older gentleman named Elmer, did my pre-checkride flight with me. He was awesome! he pulled the power on me at 500 feet and said "Show me that 500 foot thing you were talking about during your brief" Well, that was the day I learned that I need more than 500 AGL to make it back to the runway.
Your videos are fantastic, as are everyone else who flies. Really proves that the aviation community is respectable.
Excellent video! Well done.
Rod
Thanks, Rod!! I see your photo with the owners of my flight school, the AeroVenture Institute, every time I'm in their office!
I worked at a flight school that hired instructors based only on their Instructor Certificate, no check ride. When I became Chief Flight Instructor that changed, every applicant for employment was given a check ride with me. I wasn't a hard ass but I wanted to be sure that the folks I hired could at least fly and instruct at the same time.
I'm an ATP and CFI with over 15000 hours. I recommend doing your private pilot part 61 with a non time building instructor. Avoid 141 lump sum payment pilot factories when you're starting out. Find an instructor and school that is geared towards having you fly solo. You will become a much better pilot when you don't use an instructor as a perminate security blanket.
Half Crab hi half crab, you sound like you're a seasoned vet. Im a low hour pilot (250 hours), graduated this year in fact and am looking for my first flying job. I'm from New Zealand and the industry is pretty slow here so am thinking of moving abroad to find flying work, any advice would be so helpful please!
You can't go wrong getting a FAA ATP.
At 250 hours, it's gonna be tough. Your best bet is probably to get your CFI, convert your ratings to FAA, and come instruct in the US. There's plenty of work doing that over here. You can either instruct to get your ATP or get to Part 135 minimums and fly cargo or whatever. Europe and probably NZ airlines won't require the 1500 hours the US does as well. But to get started, instructing is your best bet to get time and get valuable experience.
Hey bonchie1 I'm honestly considering same sort of thing- getting the instructor rating but then you think "You hire an instructor who has experience so they can teach you well, what good will I be with such little experience- the essentials sure" but not vet style aha
Sounds like my experience - got ripped off at the international aero academy (www.internationalaeroacademy.com). Money upfront, minimal training after the check cleared. Oops, too bad! Full of low quality, time building zero to hero CFIs. Never would go there again!
That last one is a huge pet peeve of mine too! Years ago, i had an instructor who would NEVER cancel over the phone. If i was on the schedule, he was not taking me off or postponing, no matter what. The school was an hour away, so this meant driving all the way there, only to have him tell me that the weather was above SFAR73 limits, or that it was too rainy. I wasted a lot of gas driving up to the school, then just going back home.
Luckily he got fired because he ACTUALLY WAS ripping off students (he was putting students on the schedule without them knowing, then cancelling their flights and charging the cancellation fee to their account without them ever knowing.)
I've had a fantastic experience with 2 glider clubs for instruction. I've had several instructors and I've enjoyed flying with all of them. It's comforting when your instructor is a volunteer and is flying with you to share their passion and premenstrual the sport.
Hopefully Spartan School of Aeronautics has cleaned up their act - my experience with them is from 1973 when I moved to Tulsa with my PPL and wanting to earn more ratings. The airplanes (Cessna 150's) were in terrible condition - I'd be told to go out on the flight line and pick one ... sometimes that took several tries to find one that looked air worthy and not something I'd be carried out later in a body bag. I had two instructors that I most remember - the reasons I quit - one told me he was an instructor only so he could build up hours to become a corporate pilot - the other had me flying close to the airport so he could listen on the radio to his other students flying the pattern ... all on MY DIME .... I'm sure there are great schools out there - but at that time, this wasn't one of them.
There was another guy who also complained about that same flight school. They must be really bad to find two comments about them in one youtube video!
Shop for flight schools just like you date. Keep at it until you find the right one... Then "date" all of the CFI - they are as different as people you meet walking down the street. Generally the more rule-crazy & buried in a checklist they are, the more airline & own-career focused they are, and the worse you will learn. Its your money - tolerate NO BS. I've met a few CFI who are more afraid of flying, or afriad of letting students fly, than most of my students are.
That last line. Yes. Also that first line. Yes.
Ah, I see you're local! Where are you based out of, if you don't mind me asking?
KADS
Mike Smith
Oh, so you used to be in New England, or you just happened to run into someone from East Coast Aero?
Yeah... Came to KADS....ran into him looking for lessons here, small world. You at DTO? TKI?
3 was me all along. I was told that I was not good enough and went through so many instructors until a new one came along and sent me solo. Thank goodness Flight Training Australia went bankrupt. I then moved to a better school and got my Commercial Pilot License and Multi Engine Command Instrument Rating.
Great video! The production value was very high. And your points are well taken. Thank you for all the time and thought you put into this one. I really appreciate the spirit with which you published this.
So glad you enjoyed! :) That's why I make them!
My instructor is a 26 year old "time builder" with a college degree in aviation. I thank my lucky stars every time I get into a plane with this guy because he is an AMAZING instructor. My previous instructor was 40 year old that told me that college educated time building instructors were inexperienced, bad instructors that didn't care about teaching you to fly safely. Turns out that was the perfect description of himself. 80 hrs flying with him and not a single ground lesson and 1 solo flight. I have completed my private, instrument, and am currently working on both my commercial and CFI with my current instructor. He can fly rings around my previous "experienced" instructor. He genuinely cares about teaching all his students, making sure they are having fun flying, and saving them as much money as possible. He is also incredibly fun to be around and puts 110% into each lesson. All the best instructors I know are "time building" instructors. They are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and understand students don't want to waste a lot of money. All the time building instructors I know are very up front with people about their time frame for moving on and make sure they have a new instructor their student is comfortable with before they move on. I know my instructor will move on one day in the future, but until that point we fly as much as possible so that I can learn as much from him as I can. I use him as my role model of the great instructor I want to be and consider myself so lucky to have the privilege of learning from him. I hate to think I almost passed up the opportunity to fly with this amazing pilot and naturally gifted teacher because I wasn't going to give the "time builders" a shot. This is just my experience but I'd hate to see someone pass up an amazing opportunity like I almost did. Please just meet with CFIs until you find the right fit. Don't rule out anyone you haven't met. There is a perfect instructor out there for everyone and I am so grateful to have found mine!!
My first flight lesson was so awesome. I got 15 minutes of ground school and then after takeoff I took the controls and proved to my instructor that I could land our Cessna 172 and I did it. It was a bit hard but it was my first landing on my first time up in a single engine plane! Will never forget that.
"A bit hard".... do you mean "difficult", or "ungentle"? :-)
a hard (ungentle) landing. My instructor was controlling speed and I flared a little early I think.
Hahaha I'm going to start using that to describe my landings! XD
Friendly Skies Film Knew an instructor once who referred to "carrier-style" landings.
Margaret Leber
Ha. That's our summer bush flying course! Slamming a Cessna onto the threshold and stopping in 200ft.
Hello I am a realtor who is looking to start to a flight school. I love this video!! I have to imagine the the 322 people who did not like this video are awful pilots. I enjoyed this! Very informational. Thank you sir!!
My flight school:
I can choose to pay as I fly, theory is done at home and on my own time, once I feel like I've covered enough, I book a flight - is this good or bad?
That's what I am doing. If you can self teach, I dont see anything wrong with it.
I did my ground school via books in a home study course. It prepared me well for most of my flying and my exams, but I had difficulty with the weather portion of the course and really needed help. If I had to do it again I would definitely appreciate a classroom environment where thoughts and ideas could be shared between students and instructors. I think I learn better from hands on and in person scenarios than just from books.
If you can do self study, that is the cheapest way of accomplishing the theory part. The written test is the same no matter how you learned the material. If you have passed your written before you start the flight portion, you can spend less time on the knowledge part and more time on the flying bit.
I wasted lots of time with the wrong flight school, drove 1.5 each way to be told it's too windy to fly. This video is on point. Good job..
Isn't that what METARs/TAFs are for?
Thanks for the video. I took lessons from a local community college. Great ground instruction, terrible flight instructors. One instructor would do everything inside the cockpit before we started the plane. I was to young and dumb to realize I should have stopped him or found a new instructor. When it came time to solo I didn't know what buttons to push to get pass the GPS menu because he always did it. If that wasn't bad enough he brought us in behind an airliner and just about flipped is on our top. It was a busy day at the airport and he took control from me. I saw it coming and was praying I wasn't going to die. Unfortunately that was the last time I flew. Kinda ruined it for me. 15 years later I'm going to try it again.
This was a good video and some great advice. Make sure the instructors are competent and providing instruction. They should be creating a safe environment and teaching, not collecting hours.
When you initially meet with your instructor, find out how long they intend to be there. I had just got to solo and was building time when my instructor left to go fly airlines. Now, I had to reprove everything I had already done to the next instructor to get to again build solo time. This added a ton of flight time before getting my license. None of that extra dual instruction was helpful either as it just added cost and delay.
To get to where I'm at today I had 29 instructors I learned that when you're using the VA benefits your flight school will try to get every dime they can!
Thats what my flight school did. I got my private cert and got the hell out of there. Actually heard of one of the instructors ask a veteran, "why do you care about the flight time it takes to get your certs? The government is paying for it." The student was working on his private cert. (Not covered by the VA)
You're by far the best aviation channel on UA-cam!
Too kind ;)
Well, I soloed in 8 hrs. 17 year old kid who did flight school as a formality: my father taught me to fly, shot my first landing at 12. My truck has sticker that says "I'd Rather Be Flying".
Good Lord, Everything here applied on ME during my PPL training ( except 60 hours first Solo), Got my First Solo done 35 Hours,( Changed School ), because I pointed out the issues, flown with over different 10 instructors,
5000€ deposit for 10% 2 months later school closed, Stalling after Stalling, your account balance is low , you need 500 before each flight, next day ( Aircraft in Maintenance ), no instructors today come back in 2days , knowing the WX would be bad and i asked can i have my money back ( not refundable ) the list goes on.....The new school did not recognized or found any records of my hours flown,....
But i never gave up .....Now I'm a qualified Pilot ..
this is so inspiring
Being ready to solo is so subjective to each student. I instruct at a very busy training airport and my students that are very on the ball are usually soloing around 20-25 hours. Those that struggle will solo closer to 30 hours, simply because we operate in very complex and busy airspace. There are also students out there who reach 50+ hours and do not solo simply because they cannot develop the skills and the trust of their instructor to prove they are safe to be out there on their own.
I am an instructor to build my hours, and I don't plan on doing it forever. That doesn't mean that I don't care about my students, and I think that generalisation is unfair to the vast majority of instructors I know that are building their hours but are also very dedicated to their current job. There may be some bad eggs out there, but I believe they are few and far between. Also, if ownership saw an instructor cancelling flights all the time for no apparent reason, that instructor would not be around very long as they are not making the company any money!
My school has good business practices and we keep up our maintenance to the letter.
Source: I am a flight instructor
Syrupsipper hahaha let me roll around in all my money... All $24k/year of it! If I was in aviation for the money I would have given up a loonnnggg time ago.
How often a student flies also has a HUGE impact on the hours before solo. A student who flies once a month may never solo: he doesn't retain anything from one lesson to the next.
The school where I instructed, the students flew 2 one hour lessons every day; they immersed themselves in flying. Most students soloed by 15 hours; I cannot recall one that hadn't by 25 hours.
Far be it from me to question your teaching, but your best students still don't solo until 20-25 hours? That just seems excessive in my experience. Plenty of guys take until 20-25 hours, but I'd think you should have some over-achievers who do solo at 12-15 hours like so many others have. What's the lowest you've soloed someone?
bonchie1 we have a more expensive program due to the very busy airport we operate at. At times there are 5 in the circuit in addition to arrivals and departures, so we need to make sure our students are solid on complex communications and instructions from ATC. In addition, it takes a bit more time to get to solo because we operate in Terminal Class C airspace and it is about 20nm to our practice areas each way.
Just giving my experience, I originally learned in the FRZ under the 1500ft layer of DCA's Class B shelf and our airport didn't even allow pattern work (KVKX). We were on an SFRA flight plan and in constant contact with ATC everywhere we went. Practice area was due south about 15 minutes. It's about as tough a place to learn as their is from a technical standpoint. Yet, we soloed students well under 20 hours plenty of times.
But you are the instructor and have to do what you are comfortable with and I respect that. Just giving a different POV on what's possible.
I have had the best and the worst and everything in between when it came to learning to fly. I have gone to the best and to the worst flight schools and clubs. I have good and bad experiences with male and female instructors, young and old. I have had good and bad experiences with flight school and club aircraft. I might have bought an airport or two for what I spent on flying lessons. My good and bad experiences culminated in a single engine land and glider ratings. I know the maintenance history and configuration of the planes I fly because I own them. I look back on my journey to a ppl and would not change a thing. I am a better pilot for it.
AMEN!! Leaning from positive and negative experiences is the best way to become truly learned.
Friendly Skies Film
I think so. But, it is an expensive ($$$$) and sometimes risky way to learn. Taught me more about aircraft, airmanship, regulations, and ways to think than I would otherwise have received. Some of this experience actually save my life a couple of times.
Thanks for all the tips. For my birthday a couple of years ago my wife bought my an introductory flight. I met the pilot(an FAA employee at the time) he showed me around the plane, talked to me about flying(the basics of what to do). Then, once we got in the air he let me fly for about an hour. It was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope one day to be able to take lessons.
My instructor was the instructor to the Tuskegee airmen in Alabama. Easy on the ground hard ass in the air. He taught you like you were in the military. You better have your i’s dotted and t’s crossed before you even thought about flying with him. Loved it!!
Can we get a list of the best flight schools in every state
Look up Cessna training centers. This is a good indication they are worth the time and money.
Louisiana is Louisiana Tech University.. and Utah is Utah State University Logan. That's all I know.
Join the Air Force and learn at an aero club
@@Rockoblocko Are those still around? The one at Barksdale closed several years ago. At the time, I was told they were all closing.
@@jimhimes6451 Yep, Im learning at the Edwards Club.
Well I don't know if this qualifies as a bad flight school experience or not, but a few years ago I got checked out at a local flight school for the purpose of the occasional aircraft rental. I was told that they were a little short on CFIs but that they were training more (had a couple "in the pipeline"). Apparently a few had moved on recently. So I mentioned that I was/am a CFI but that I have a full-time engineering job so I could only instruct on a part-time basis. However I would be glad to help out if they were short or in need of part-time help. I was flatly refused with little more than a wave of the hand and a scoff. I found that odd, since my offer was made in the spirit of helping; I neither needed or necessarily wanted the extra work, though I did miss instructing. But whichever I still wanted to rent from time to time so I proceeded with the checkout. That went fine, and I used the CFI renewal for the hour of ground WRT the flight review. Cool. I told the guy I flew with, who was older AND a part-timer, of my experience with the chief pilot (the roll-of-the-eyes refusal thing). He stated that he wasn't surprised and that he "got in" only because his plane was one of their leasebacks. Hah! Interesting. Well I'd had enough of this bizarre experience for one day, so ended the session by telling him that I'd like to fly with him again soon to do some instrument currency. He told me to just give the school a call to set it up but that I couldn't request him because it was against their "policy". Wha-???!?! He told me that the school wanted students to go with whomever and not be "loyal" to one instructor. I KID YOU NOT. So that was it, I'd had it. I did rent from them about a week later but only because I promised a buddy that I'd take him flying. I haven't been back since and have warned other off of that school.
Despite the crazy number of stories like this I've heard through this video, it's always good to hear more, because it emphasizes the sheer number of these weird stories and company policies exist all over the US. You are so far from alone. Thanks for sharing.
I must be one of the lucky ones. No ground school fees. My instructor drives a flash car and picks me up on the way to the flight school then lets me borrow his car if i wanna go get food on a break.
where do you go?
My flight school was (unknown to me) in bad financial trouble. One lesson, we set off from the airfield with low fuel ("the airport was out of fuel again"), flew to another airport to fill up (on my card as the CFI had 'forgotten' his). Of course, see realise now their home field had put their credit account on hold. After they went bust, it was found they had cancelled their insurance after a month (thus having the correct but invalid certificates on display). They employed a very dedicated instructor who was working for nothing on the promise of future type and rating training - he lost out massively! Instructors did change around often but I found this very beneficial, they each had their points to make and it acted as a second opinion and a well rounded education. The downside was as said in the clip that each new instructor had to back step to see where I was at. I'd recommend getting a credit risk check on your school, especially if you're thinking of paying upfront.
Wow.... sounds like a really special place. Thanks for sharing.
I was around 60 hours when I soloed. My instructor was one of the youngsters building hours on my dollar. LOTS of pattern work; he said he wanted 30 (!) perfect landings. He moved on and my next instructor was in it for the love of flying. He really worked with me, and had me soloing in only a few hours.
Jesus, 30!?! Glad you ended up with the right person :)
@@FriendlySkiesFilm Should have replied, you show me 30 perfect landings!
GIFTS Good information for the student. A coupe of these things happened to me but I was wise enough to see it and kept my money in my pocket. Case in point, too wind and it was, she said we;ll do some ground training, I laughed at her. I have already passed my ground school, and went home for the day. When not flying I enjoy using X Plane, keeps my skills sharp with instruments and many other aspects of flying.
Sea Pilot Do you use X Plane for PC or MAC. If MAC, can you recommend a YOKE. Looking for a realistic yoke that has a minimal null area. thanks
PC , I use a saitek yoke I have a logitek stick that I like much more than the yoke
If you're loaded, Yoko the yoke. If not, all the other options I know of have a axis orego that is horror compared to how flight controls work.
Nope, not loaded at all, hence a yoke for the desktop simulator to help with instrument practice.
I feel the sim-yoke is not all that important, as despite the design, yokes in aircraft are pretty much one-handed tools, your other hand constantly adjusting power, trimming, leaning, tuning radios and instruments, etc. I had the saitek yoke, which was OK, but it was too bulky, space demanding, and unrealsitic for me to get any joy from it. My logitech stick isn't any more realistic in terms of control feel, but it is robust, small and light and of good quality. It can be stowed away in a second. For sims, if you plan to put time in them, I definately recommend rudder pedals though! Bit pricy, but the twisty joystick stuff is just crap (imo, of course).
Had an amazing flight instructor. I flew sims since I was a little kid and have a natural knack for stick and rudder skills. Allowed me to solo at 6 hours, was the 21st student of his in a row to pass their private checkride and did it at 47 hours. Also got flight instructor of the year award in my state.
Oh, new record on this page! 6hrs is crazy! Congratulations :)
What's the name of the instructor and where are you from?
When you solo "as early as possible" I hope you mean when the student is a safe enough pilot to fly without a CFI... not the FAA minimums.
My flight instructor, Bob Halprin was a sergeant at Walker Air base in New Mexico in 1966. I soloed in 15 hours in a Cessna 172, but had little instruction on navigation, charts, or anything of that nature. I was informed some months after I soloed that he had been fired by the On-Base flight school because he soloed a young man at night when Bob was drunk. Soon after I was moved to Plattsburg NY on Lake Champlain. The traffic was far more than I wanted to deal with as well as the base not having its own flight school, so I did not pursue my training, because I could not afford the cost on a sergeant's pay.
I just started, went up Monday for a intro flight at a small air port near me. My instructor has been flying for 9 yrs and seems to be really knowledgeable, the winds were high and he said he hated to take me up bc he didn’t want to deter me from flying bc it’s be a rough take off and flight but I said let’s do it! He taught me alot and even let me fly the plane about 65 %off the time we were in the air. Can’t wait to learn more
I had the good fortune to be instructed by a woman who had been a member of the Women Air Force Service Pilot in WWII. She was a great instructor. Passed my check flight in a breeze.
The biggest thing I took from my sister learning to fly, was don't use L3 Aviation if you're an independant student, not already affiliated with an airline... She would get bumped from lessons in favour of the airline students (they didn't want to lose their contract with those airlines), had multiple instructors because they kept leaving to take jobs with airlines, had months of breaks between ground school and actually flying which she was expected to continue paying for, and eventually took about a year longer than advertised to get her frozen ATPL
I just started this whole flying thing after spending years flying in sims and when the instructor asked if I had any experience I told him about the sim and how now we are able to run the sims in VR and he got all excited. He said he highly recommends sims because those students are more times than not, light years ahead of everyone else.
I got my PPL after 40 hours. I was an avid flight simmer and still am today. Some things don't line up perfectly with real life however. My biggest surprise was flying into rain storms. In the sim there are just some droplets on the window, but in an Oregon downpour you cant see anything out of the front. Another challenge sims don't do a great job of preparing you for is finding airports. In sims they stick out like a sore thumb most of the time, in real life some airports I had never been too aren't visible unless I'm almost right on top of them. Even my home airport was hard to find sometimes and I knew what I was looking for. Searching for an airport while looking for traffic and trying to gauge your position for communication was also a surprising challenge.
One of the advantages of learning where i did was coming to rely on my instruments early on. I know a few pilots that learned in Arizona that rarely had to deal with bad weather that flew outside the window more often than not.
To this day, no matter the conditions I always prepare for IFR even if it looks like blue skies all the way. There are too many stories of pilots that just loose their sh*t the minute they see a cloud, sadly many have lost their lives to this. Another helpful hint, always check the altitude of mountains and obstacles within a 1-5 range of your chosen flight path and fly at least 1,000ft above them until you are ready to land. I remember a person from our school flew strait into a mountain in Washington state and that made me obsessive about preventing that.
I agree with this. I fly in DCS a lot and really like the prop airplanes it has. My instructor told me that he definitely thinks it’s helped me fly better. He was surprised to be letting me land when I had only 6 hours under my belt.
You always have to be proactive and find out if the weather is less than marginal. Especially if you have to drive at least a half an hour to your flight school.
I went to ATP Daytona with about 10 hours dual. They milked me for about 70 hours NO SOLO and then requested another 30k for me to continue. I switched to another small, less known school and got more for my buck for 1/3 of the price, and soloed immediately. Be careful of flight schools that ask for money up front! Wished I would've seen this video a year ago! Great information.
What school did you eventually go to
This is really helpful so I know what to look for before I start going to flight school. Thank you so much!
A couple you missed: computer training in lieu of ground school & part 141.
My first instructor was terrible; just building time & could not teach. He held me back soloing until I was over 30 hours. However this is partially the issue with part 141, in the syllabus didn't allow it much sooner. The other thing he did was tell me I needed 30 hours of ground school; even though I had to buy a king school online course. Which the school said was to cover the ground school requirement. My instructor's 30 hours were extra on top of the normal training. I then got in a long argument with the school over the bill for that 30 hours.
I had wanted to switch instructors most of the time I was there but the school had the terrible instructor who was always available & then a number of part time instructors who were all pretty good & thus had full rosters for their limited time. I also looked to other schools but again due to being part 141 & differences in syllabi, I couldn't directly transfer. The schools I talked to wanted me to start over on their syllabus. Fortunately the school finally hired a new fantastic instructor who I finished my private with.
Unfortunately she left for a real job 5 lessons into my IFR training. And the terrible instructor is my option at this school. My current plan is to try one of these accelerated scrolls in the southwest.
My school is PArt 141 and I am at 15 and about to solo. That is kind of messed up if you have to wait till 30, 5 under the minimum, to solo. It defeats the purpose of Part 141.
Don't dismiss part 61 schools. They are much more flexible and if you can find a good one the instructors will be just as good or better. Commercial is the only time the hour difference should be a real factor. It takes about 40 hours of instrument time to become proficient anyway.
Joshua Landry the part 141 school I go to is very flexiable and honestly the instructors are top notch. I am not dissing the part 61 schools but I am happy with my school and my instructor.
I'm not saying 141 is bad. Practically the only difference from a 61 school is the use of an approved syllabus. Since Aviator Mike was looking specifically for a 141 it seemed appropriate to point out that operating under 61 is not an indication of lower quality and he shouldn't count it out.
The required hour difference between 141 and 61 should not a factor except for the commercial rating. The private takes 60-70 hours for most students. Most instrument students take at least 50 hours of instrument time. Even the difference between 120 and 250 for commercial isn't that great since most students end up building the time anyway.
What I meant when I said that part 61 schools are flexible is that they can accommodate alternative ground schools, such as home study like the King course, or previous training while 141 cannot. A 141 school is bound by their syllabus and cannot deviate from it.
Even for the commercial rating, it's meaningless. No one is hiring you with a wet 190 hour CPL. So going Part 61 and getting it at 250 hours is basically just as well and you'll probably save money in the long run with Part 61 schools. Those extra hours will actually help you down the road too to get that first job at a drop zone or where ever.
i love my instructors. thwy seem to push my limit for insttuction too. like putting me in a 25 kt direct crosswind in a c152
Congratulate them! They're one of the few :)
I had the same instruction being schooled in Texas, mid 80's. 32kt crosswind and the instructor showed me how to slip in on an offset drift. Anytime the weather was crap yet still VMC, we flew, he called me!! Fair weather days were ground school days. He always said there wasn't enough room for us and the butterflies.
I believe the max xwind was 20kts for the pa-38. I do remember being afraid of the ole Pipe Traumahawk. Wings falling off and flat spins.
It was built to make pilots not girls.
My instructor does the same thing! Puts me in 15kt cross winds and allows me to also "dig myself a hole" so I can learn from it. He says as long as it doesn't put us in danger of anything I will make you make mistakes so you can learn from them.
All the history I heard today coming from my experience. This is the best video about flight school in USA. Wherever Connecticut... New York.... !!¡!!!!
Another good thing is choosing a flight school who’s main focus is on flight training. I had an instructor was was a former airline pilot (retired) based in Iowa and working for a company who had flight training and chartered flights. He was a great instructor and taught me as if I was flying an airline jet on every lesson, but it really sucked when I wanted to schedule a lesson and he was scheduled for a charter flight. It was nice to tag along with him on some of his charter flights though.
Another favorite scam is an instructor sending you out to preflight while that chat with their girlfriend on the phone. After the lesson they try to charge you ground instruction time for that period of time. Happened to me. I told the guy not a chance, reported him to the school and refused to fly with him again. If they do it to you, chances are they have done it to other students.
How about the Instructor who gets the hobbs meter turning while you're still adjusting your seat and headset, getting weather, talking w/clearance delivery and picking up flight plan or programming route?
Matthew Wells and doesnt teach you how to do any of it, ya been there
Just don't start the engine. Most have an oil pressure switch. I actually pissed off an instructor once in a Seneca getting some IFR training because I did all of my ATIS, VOT, autopilot, etc before starting the engines. He said I wasn't doing the checklist is the proper order and that I could forget items. I said 'sure I am' as I went through the list again saying 'completed' and 'done' ten times faster than I would have the other way. He lost .2 of MPIC and I kept $65 in my pocket.
From an instructor's perspective (CFI, CFII, MEI. ATP), if I student wants to get out to the plane, get the clearance, ATIS, etc. before I get there, GREAT! Shows initiative. Heck, most decent FBOs will have a radio in the planning room to get all of that before getting to the plane. This is how "real" pilots do it because aircraft owners do not want to be burning fuel sitting on the ramp.
Or... if he wants me to be in the aircraft, engine off, monitoring while he does all that, fine. But I'll add whatever time spent as ground school. Don't expect to use an instructor's time without paying for it.
John H
To infer from my comments that it's students who are cheating their instructors when instructors are stretching the hobbs meters for greater flight time pay, illustrates perfectly why less and less folks are training to fly. And, why less and less folks can afford to fly. Who wants to pay the extraordinary high a/c training fees of today if it's coupled with used-car salesman instructors whose lesson plans contains the following entry: Nickel and dime your student before he cheats you! You lecture how "real" pilots don't burn money on the ramp, while impugning the motives of the student just trying to fly more of his flight time. Of course, Instrument/commercial students fuel, pre-flight, get ATIS and clearance, etc. etc. all before the instructor arrives -- my comments, of course, were concerning primary flight students...
I never set out to milk my students. The school where I instructed had so many students that I averaged over 7 hours each day without milking them: there was no need to milk, there was always another waiting in the wings.
Flying has never been cheap. If you think it should be, well, put wings on a Yugo and have at it.
Your initial comments "while you're still adjusting your seat and headset, getting weather,
talking w/clearance delivery and picking up flight plan or programming
route?"
The first flight I teach my primary students how to adjust the seat. That is on the house. If an instrument student needs to learn how to adjust the seat in a plane he has been flying, then there is an issue.
Getting weather: I don't even expect them to do until at least the fifth flight. Picking up a flight plan or programming the route (I'm guessing the aircraft has an FMS) would not be done by a primary student ever; that would be someone seeking an instrument rating.
And yes, real pilots who are earning a living flying get clearances and programs the FMS long before the boss shows up, because when the boss shows up, he wants to be moving and airborne ASAP. If that sounds snobbish, then wait until your first flight with an owner, sit on the ramp for 15 minutes getting ready, and see how grumpy that owner gets.
I knew what I spent to learn to fly, and didn't want to add unnecessary costs to a student.
Some students are go-getters and don't need proding. Some need to be spoon fed. Go getters spend less because they work harder. Spoon feeders pay more because they want or need more attention.
Finally, nickle and diming.... A cursory look at my logs show my students soloing around 15 hours. All of them got their private before 45 hours.... all 160+ of them. Oh, as an added bonus, they all passed on their first attempt. And as a double added bonus, I had a 92% first time pass ratio for CFIs (if you doubt that, talk to the FAA, because they renewed my CFI based on my students' pass ratio).
Flying ain't cheap. I have helped students save money as much as I could. When I had students working on their commercial and eventually the CFI, I suggested they train for the commercial and take the check ride from the right seat. Why? Because they would spend fewer hours on the CFI. It only amounted to about 3-4 hours less, but it WAS 3-4 hours less.
I’m going to a college that offers aviation so I hope I don’t get bent over and cream pied in.
How is it going?
Did u get cream pied
You pregnant yet?
I had an instructor that was getting hired by an airline. He awful and only there to build time. (He was my third instructor in the same flight school in less than 3 months also) One day while I was doing the preflight checklist, he said, "I just flew it. It's fine. Let's go." After leaving the ramp and calling my takeoff, half way through the runway, we weren't getting any speed and there was no way to take off. We couldn't figure out what was going on. Finally, I looked down and noticed that during my preflight, I had lowered the flaps and because he made me quit, they were still down. I pulled out the throttle, stomped on the brakes and got us off the runway before it ran out of asphalt (barely). I was livid and refused to fly with him that day. I actually had such a bad time at that flight school, I walked away from flying for awhile. I'm slowly getting back into it and hoping to finish my PPL this year.
Good for you getting back into it. There are plenty of great schools and instructors out there that will make your very happy, I promise :-/
My own experience is in some ways similar to your indication of a bad school, but the fault was mine.
When I was young, it seemed there was never a lot of money. So, I would buy an hour of flight time here and there as I could scrape together the money. My training was incoherent. I changed schools and instructors many times.
Needless to say, I flew a lot of different airplanes, too (maybe a good thing in the long run, but for training, I was always re-doing the basics).
On my final day of instruction before the check ride, I just lucked out and got a really old C-150, with manual flaps. Honestly, I felt like I finally had a plane I could relate to! During my touch-and-go's, I was nailing the numbers every time. My instructor's last comment on the last rollout was "You'll have to show me how to do that".
I was so proud. Who knows; maybe coming up the hard way made me a better (or at least a more well-rounded) pilot.
I think students routinely forget that they are a "paying customer" and they have BOTH responsibilities, and, some rights too. For example; with such good flight simulators for home PC's, anyone looking to learn to fly really should have one and get damn good at flying it in your spare time. It is relevant and it will cut down on your training costs. If you are a student pilot and you do not fly a quality home simulator on the most realistic settings possible (maximum difficulty), then you are not serious about learning to fly.
FWIW - I learned to fly near The Great Lakes starting around March at an ATC controlled airport. I routinely had to request special VFR to go flying (poor vis, snow, low ceilings). I went from ab-initio to solo in 6.3 hours. I passed my PPL check-ride at around 40 hours and I had to fly another 4 or 5 hours of circuits afterwards so that I had the legal minimum of 45 hours (at the time) to be a licensed private pilot. The flying school had no issues with any of this, and, they let me do all of those extra hours in one day...
Well said. You're totally right too, you can learn sooooo much from a simulator and save yourself so much money.
hey what would you recommend for simulator thanks
I do my training in a piper pa28. In my school you just pay for what you fly. It is normally $160 an hour
With or without instructor?
Friendly Skies Film that's with an instructor
Pretty good price!
Pay for ground training? My school made all non flying lessons free of charge!
Could you say what is the school name?
That is actually a very bad thing. It comes out of someone's pocket and its going to be the instructor. There is no way to keep qualified instructors around if they are not paid for the time they work. Think about it, would you go to work a 40 hour week if you only got paid for 20 hours at close to minimum wage?
That sort of thing is a very serous industry problem that is leading to a shortage of instructors. If you book 2 hours with someone you should expect to pay them for 2 hours. More expensive, however then people are more likely to make teaching a career rather than a throw away job waiting to find a flying job with a reasonable wage.
For selfish reasons you also don't want the free instruction. If the instructor isn't payed for a pre-brief and a post-brief then they are very unlikely to give one of any quality which means you have to pay for more flight instruction and one hour in the air would cover three or four on the ground. A 45 hour pilot isn't that difficult but it does take about 40 hours of ground.
Could you suggest a good part 61 flight school?
My flight school only charged for a briefing if it was a mandatory lesson on the syllabus.... All the rest were free.... But I guess that's the nice thing about learning at a flying club that wants to keep you as a member versus a traditional school.
Great video, I actually stopped my training because of a bad instructor. He would not communicate well at all and like mentioned in the video, he would cancel flights to do "ground school" often. The issue I had with this is that he was teaching me out of 7 year old books at the time. I asked him about it because we were having issues with changed information between his and my book and his answer would always be "My years of training and book are right, just because your book is newer does not mean they got the information correct." This happened probably 7 or 8 times before I finally went to the owner of the school and made a complaint and asked not to use that instructor any longer. He was wayyyy overconfident and I felt that he was the wrong instructor for me. He was for sure a smart person and seemed like a competent pilot but not a teacher. After I asked to change instructors, this guy would call my phone at like 6 am and leave pretty rude messages several times. I finally just quit training and I regret it now, I wish that I had just gone to another school. This happened in Sacramento, CA. back in 2015.
Wow!! This really hits a nerve. I wished I would have seen this years ago. All except one happened to me. I really wanted to get my private pilot’s license. I even scheduled a week end guaranteed to pass ground school and yes I was so excite I choose to pay all fees up front to entice them to get me preference. I was willing to fly as much as possible to get my license, I already had a Cessna 182 lined up for purchase. And I only 5 miles from to 2 local airports. I also bought all my flight tools and an electronic flight computer. There is a lot more to this story. I was there 1st student and the instructor’s 1st student. He was a great pilot but a very poor instructor. Then I found out the flight school at Lake Berryessa airport in California was already in bankruptcy when they took my money. I talked to the lieutenant governor, he said I was out of luck, vendors had already came in and removed all the valuable items. Who knows were I would be today if I got my pilots license today??? GREAT video! I hope this really helps someone like me.
Doug Harlow hey Doug i am just starting to change my career into aviation and i am also in California, is there any way that we could get in touch? It would be nice for your input. Thanks
Why I didn't go through a flight school and, instead, found a private CFI.
Jeremy Ellwood - Private CFIs open Pandoras box for risk of separating you from your money if you ever get into tension or dispute, or just don't like them, since you're so confined. Doing research and strong recommendation is key for them.
Agreed with the chosen dude. You can get really lucky, though! Sounds like you did. There are plenty of great CFIs out there, just waiting to become your best fiend :)
What was he turning at 2:20?
That's the trim on older pipers. Really an awkward location for something you do a lot of.
That was the stabilator trim. I always liked the overhead position in the Cherokees. That guy was apparently low time and was fumbling for it and should have had the plane properly trimmed for approach way before he was. I never had to look down for a trim wheel, but I had a lot of time in the Cherokee so I knew exactly where to reach.
was also wondering lol
I agree that the "above the head" trim crank is NOT Piper's best design....
coffe grinder!
N530PU...that an old Purdue bird?
Yup. I had to look and see if I flew that one. Looks like I did back on '02.
If I were to become a CFI, I would for sure make sure every student can be a great pilot and enjoy their journey ahead to the airline industry. 🙌
As a student I'm happy to report that I've experienced exactly none of these problems at my flying school. The school is actually owned by the maintenance company which performs all the servicing for the Aero Club at that airfield. When the weather isn't suitable for flying they've never charged me for ground school, favouring a brew, biscuit, and a chat rather than an hour's tuition in a classroom. Although I have about fifteen hours flying now I've not flown solo yet, but I know that that is because I'm actually not ready to land without supervision as yesterday's circuit session proved! We won't be doing any cross country until I've flown solo and have learned some air law and navigation. And payment isn't an issue, because I pay for the hour (or whatever we've actually flown) upon landing each lesson, so no up front fees.
Good advice for new students though, thanks for publishing this. I've been watching a few of your videos and they're really very insightful.
for number 4 I'm at 55 hours and have never soloed, actually probably like 60 a this point, but this is because I'm still only 15 and have been in training since I was 11 and I won't be able to fly for like 4 months due to surgery tomorrow so even when I do turn 16 I will have not flown in like 4-5 months and will likely need even more time
Especially for young pilots, don't be in a rush. learning over your life is a bit different. this is in terms of you signed up for slight school and get plenty of recent hours and instruction to solo and they hold you back to milk you of money. Being that young, always keep learning. You have a huge natural safety concern of being an overly sure of himself teen possibly in your future. i've seen a lot of young guys die. Keep learning and stay humble. 60 hours and no solo as a young person is NORMAL.
I agree with Dann, and luckily, it sounds like you know you're not being cheated. Good luck in surgery. Let us know when you're back in the skies :)
dann nierhoff
Yeah true, and I like to think of myself as a very safe student pilot, who always leans on the side of safety, but I do see the potential risks
Friendly Skies Film
Thank you :) and yeah true, also I will
In this case he can't solo because of the regs. Gotta be 16 to solo and 17 to take the checkride. But he's building time he'll need down the road anyway so it's not wasted.
whooo. don't blame CFIs building hours... especially in your country it's nearly the only way to do that...
by the way... what is the average solo time after all... mine is 12,5h...
Probably around 25, which I think is a little too much, but not bad. Our school is definitely closer to 20.
Very good video. Unfortunately, I happened to be victim of all of your topics. I believe, (my opinion). that 80% of flight schools are cheating their students. This is so counter productive to the advancement to general aviation.
Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking... This is such a sad industry right now, and I wonder how it got here.
I attempted to change the flight school that I worked for when I became Chief CFI. I think I did a decent job. However, you have to negotiate with the FBO owner, he usually saw things my way, however. We had a good reputation with the FAA.
My dad's flight instructor was Marty Kasey the pilot who collided with PSA flight 182 in 1978. Marty taught my dad how to fly here in Ohio so when we heard his name mentioned on the news we didn't know he had moved to California from Ohio. My dad flew until he developed dementia. He started taking me for plane rides at 6 years old and I learned how to fly from my dad but never got a license since my dad owned 3 planes during his life and I would fly whenever I wanted since the planes were kept on our farm. My dad made a 2000ft grass air strip in 1970-71 and named it J&B Skyranch for Joe and Betty, my parents. Its still registered with the FAA but the new owners of the farm have let the grass grow and now its just tall weeds. Great memories growing up and having an airplane hangered right outside the house to go flying any day or any time. I remember one Saturday morning in the summer about 6am I heard the plane starting up and there would be my dad in his pajamas taking off for a morning pleasure flight. My dad at 16 said his goal in life was to have a home in the country and to have his own plane on the property to go flying whenever he wanted without having to drive to an airport. He accomplished that goal at age 33. Looking back I realize today that my father was a great pilot and flying was his passion.
thanks, this brought me back to earth and im gonna be trying another flight school after realizing my current one might not be the best.
Let's cut to the chase. The irrefutable fact is that most primary students who actually study their lessons and use the flight simulator extensively will be better prepared than those who do not. I also assert that MOST students who've done so will agree with me that it saved them time, and money.
I agree! Did I even bring up flight simulators in this video? XD
No, you didn't .. but you don't seem to be the problem with today's flight training either. Thanks for posting your vid!
“Report them to AOPA??” What authority does AOPA have? It is like if you see a bad driver down a road and you report them to AAA!
They have quite a bit more influence than one might think, actually.
Who the heck is the AAA? Alcoholics Anonymous Aviators???
I didn't solo until 52 hours... that was because my medical however lol
ill hopefully be soloing by new years at 12hrs
Me too, but I still had my checkride with 40 flight hours. The plane's owner (who had the aircraft leased to the flight school) didnt't want student pilots to fly solo on his plane
Nice! Keep up the good work like that and you'll have your license in no time :)
Could you recommend any good flights schools in the U.S. ? Or even which school did you use for your training?
TeckGeek I went down to my local airport and applied to their flight school. I wouldn't waste your money on some fancy flight school when you will get the same training at a local airport
In the 90's I had an instructor who, I learned, liked to nap on navex's. On approach to YGLB, operating as CTAF at the time, I saw and heard that there were both parachutists and ultralights within 10km of the aerodrome.
A bit after making my "all stations" call, I noticed an ultralight ahead, climbing, and getting substantially bigger in my windscreen, and not moving laterally, so basically we were headed for one-another.
I turned right by 30 degrees on the DG, passed by safely at about 1.5km after 30 seconds, then left by 60 for 30 seconds, and then resumed track to the aerodrome pattern on my original heading.
At some point during all this, he became conscious again, probably hearing my announcement of "traffic, ultralight 12 o' clock our altitude, maneuvering to avoid" on the interphone.
Later, checking my training record, I found he had written, for that particular flight, that my navigation skills were *so bad* that I needed to correct heading by large amounts to maintain track. This was both funny and sad, since I had basically flown a great portion of the nav (YSCN->YWOL->YGLB) with him apparently asleep, and had arrived where I was supposed to be safely and on time.
We didn't have dash-cams in those days, so I couldn't prove to him what exactly had happened whilst he was unconscious, but looking back, I should probably have sacked him as my instructor. Mentioning the incident to him, he replied "I know what I saw, and I saw you turning the aircraft by 30 degrees to regain track". He wouldn't change the training record.
Later, moving on to a new training facility, and asking for my training records, I found they had been "misplaced or destroyed" by the club. No apology or compensation. Why on earth would someone destroy written training records for private pilots?
As a former chief pilot for an FAR Part 141 flight school in White Plains, NY (KHPN) in the 1980s, I agree with the pointers in this video--especially #1 & #2. Nice to see all those ancient Cherokees are still flying--esp. the 1969-vintage one with the overhead trim crank--like the one I soloed in in 1977!
I would say that those cherokees are the workhorse of the industry after the 152 right now. There are SOO many of them out there.
Is he flight school in GTA 5 a good one? 🤔