Fuller: Focus on training can help GA...

[Armageddon Aviator]

"One of the things is to better understand how to help people successfully get through training," said Craig Fuller, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Fuller cited a recent AOPA study that found 80% of flight students dropped out after starting training.

http://www.ainonline.com/airshow-co...n-general-aviation-reverse-its-decline-28804/

I personally disagree.

The assumption that everyone can become a pilot is just wrong.

It takes a lot of determination and perseverance, discipline, skill, money...and a bit of courage (remember your first solo cross-country ?).

Some folks try their best to convince us that becoming a pilot is no big deal and that everybody can do it...

I don't want to glorify pilots (enough movies did that pretty well) - but I think the AOPA should not endorse that kind of statements...

 

[Jim Logajan]

What is hard about flying? The hardest part is money required.

You must have wads of free time, too. I set out in earnest in June of last year - first to get the written out of the way (using Gleim's computer-generated endorsement) then secured a CFI by August. Although I'm self-employed and can adjust my work schedule to make time for flying lessons, six months later I'm only now nearing the final stages for the examination. I expect another month for that to happen - weather, weather, and weather have continued to impede progress.

I also happen to disagree that nothing about flying is hard. That's not relevant - it's the learning that is hard! Based on the posts here, I can only assume that I rank among the inept. Yes, it is not difficult to fly - once one has learned how.

I think anyone claiming that it is "easy" to fly has to explain just why 75% to 80% of accidents are pilot error even after all the training - and why there are roughly 10 times as many accidents per hour in small airplanes as in automobiles. I think it is disingenuous to suggest or claim that flying is "easy" in any honest sense of the word.

 

[Jim Logajan]

I think there are a lot of CFIs that must not be giving much instruction at all, since there are almost more CFIs than there are student pilots.

An astounding 94,000 CFIs:

http://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/civil_airmen_statistics/2009/

With only about 613,000 active pilots and 1/3 of that number being private pilots that probably aren't getting much instruction beyond a flight review every other year, there probably aren't a whole lot of instructing hours to go around.

If each of the annual 72,000 students gets maybe 20 hours dual (taking into account "drop outs",) that is ~1.44 M hours there. Add in ~210,000 hours for BFRs (~2 hrs every 2 years) that is ~1.65 M hours/year/94k CFIs, or ~17.5 billable hours/year/CFI. I suspect a single CFI needs 50 times that number to make a living of it.

Clearly there are either a lot of unemployed CFIs or many of the certificates holders never had or have any intention of instructing. With all that competition I would have expected the cream to rise to the top. My very local and limited experience is that it appears to have.