Students perspective

[AndyJ]

Not sure if Yozz is a difficult student or not, but he does give insight from the student's perspective (title of this thread) about the two factors that are killing off GA at its roots right now - poor customer service and high costs.
Costs are a tough one that we're really not going to solve quickly.
Customer service, on the other hand, is an area that all of us can work on. People will be willing to pay the price if they feel they are getting a good value. The FBO I instruct at part time is a bit more expensive than some other small FBOs, but we provide well-maintained newer airplanes and good instruction without the BS that people get at some of the more bottom feeder FBOs in the area. (They also expect CFIs to have 10+ hrs in the CT before doing any training in it, to avoid Yozz's experience)
A lot of students who get the runaround just stop coming back, and are never heard from again. They can go out and drop their money on any number of other pursuits where the principals have their ducks more in a row.
We as CFIs need to recognize and understand this. I think that this is an area where the sport CFI can excel relative to the standard twenty something epaulette-wearing timebuilder.

[drseti]

(They also expect CFIs to have 10+ hrs in the CT before doing any training in it, to avoid Yozz's experience).

Seems like a very good policy, Andy -- but, who pays for it? Or, more specifically, are part-time CFIs generally willing to pay retail for the time required to build up proficiency in FBO's particular aircraft, or does the FBO somehow subsidize or give them a discounted rate? Most of the freelance CFIs around here can't find two dimes to rub together...

[yozz25]

Ok. Let's make my story simple.

As you see, I love to kid around when I write. As a student, I'm actually quite quiet, but my mind is absorbing what is going on around me and I'm touch with my feelings and sensations of the experience. I vent here.

Due to taking meds, which are now on the ok list, I still wanted to fly. No lsa in town, but still went to FBO and told them just to teach me and I'll figure it out as I go along.

Ok, trained in warrior with the kid who is 23. Liked him, learned all the maneuvers but was never happy with my landings. He seemed ok, said I was on course, I was not happy.

FBO kept asking if I was getting ready to solo, I said I really don't care at this point, just want to learn. Need medical to solo. This FBO I liked, they treated me like family, but didn't have a lsa.

Ok, in any case, the kids schedule was filling up, and I usually worked around him, since I was available on the spot. So I tried another private guy, Krusty, who had his own Tomahawk, told him I needed a perspective on landing.

He took me up and it was a disaster being with him. He told me how to adjust my seat backward, whereas I needed to be more forward in that I knew and felt I needed to be closer to rudder, otherwise my leg tends to cramp. He also was insulting, since it was a new plane and I tended to get the death grip in it as it rolled. He belongs in ground school.

Next I went to PHX where they had a remos. Spent 2 lessons with a young lady who was very professional, she learned in ASU, has her bachelors in aero, was very gentle, polite and I enjoyed the remos and decided to go with her, but it's a commute from vegas to phx

Got back to vegas, voila, local more "elite" school has remos. Went there, didn't like their artsy fartsy vegas style set up, but bit my tongue. The set me up with what I call a nuts and bolts type of fellow, who ended up being a hand grabber and my way or the highway type. Not for me.
The Nazi party went out of business years ago, no way.

Now I have a young guy, same school. He doesn't know the plane well and you know the rest of the story.

If the local FBO has a lsa, I would have stayed with them, otherwise I would have went for a week or 2 to a school either in phx, or elsewhere to get the ticket.

So now I have over 20 hours, confused, a bit pissed at this artsy fartsy school with it's arsty fartsy prices and sizzle but no steak, promise you everything, deliver mediocrity.

The original nice FBO here had all their ducks lined up, the one in phx had their ducks lined up, artsy fartsy has ducks all over the place.

And yes I will complain. I don't like my hand handled, I don't like to be told how to adjust my seat by someone who I believe should hang up the shingle and impart his knowledge on the ground. This may insult some, but this is my experience, this is what I took home from them. The more pleasant ones, and that is the majority, did not give me such impressions.

So in sum, I did learn to fly a plane, can pre-check, can get it up and get it down a bit rough, but can do it. I spent a bit more money, but I learned, not just to fly, but about the business and it's little secrets.
I do enough ground study to choke a mule, had to lay off, due to migraines.

What I'm thinking now is going back to artsy fartsy school and telling the boss that he owes me one, for giving me an experience that is not up to par. Nothing wrong with the CFI, if he speaks up to the boss, he will be canned. I'm the one to do it, but I am afraid that FBO will take it out on the young CFI.

I see absolutely no reason why the FBO can't give the kid some hobbs time to get his act together. This school is raking it in, and getting up to speed on Remos should not be my problem. They even have another remos they just got in, they have a big fleet.

I wish I didn't have the medical issue precluding me from the ppl, but that has changed for me. I would have stayed with original school, original instructor and worked up to ppl. Now my one freaking pill is legal.

But I still want the sports ticket since I happen to like the lsa and have no interest AT THIS TIME, to train for ppl. It's confusing, believe me.

My complaining is just the inner me coming out. And perhaps some students who read this will realize it can be a sleazy world out there and CFI's come in all different sizes and shapes, as well as FBO's, and their are gems out there, and there are scams. Caveat emptor.

yozz

[flyguy1]

Yozz,

I have read all of your posts since you arrived on the site with great interest and amusement.

I am a CFI and Flight School owner. Been in this crazy flying business since 1989. I think as others have expressed here, that the dialog on sites like this can help all of us raise the bar and get G.A. going in the right direction.

I wish I had at least 10 more students just like you.

Keep up the good work!

Now where's Brian at so I can help him with that case of beer!

[bryancobb]

Hey flyguy!
I never knew yozz's post were to be read to have a light tone! Never saw a LMAO in them, best I can remember.
If the posts were intended to be light hearted in nature, I took them WAY too seriously!

[yozz25]

Hey Brian.

I love sticking my tongue in cheek. The world is rough enough, life is tough, when you are having a hard time with anything, best to make some humor in it.

My frustration is nothing compared to real problems, it's all BS. Even in the toughest of times, and we all have them, I tend to make up little wacky stories to break tension. I love to put animals in them, squirrels, coyotes, anything I come across.

As for flying, you may not get this one, but when I first met the handgrabber, we were tying down the plane, we needed to cut the thick cord to push it through the hole in piece hanging from the wing. The rope was a big frayed, so he pulled out a pocket knife and held it in his hand and tried to cut it.

It didnt' work, so I took the knife, put the cord on the ground and then was able to cut through, I told him I'm an expert at this since I'm currently training to be a ritual circumciser and have to be very good with cutting implements.

He looked at me puzzled, real serious, and said "why would you want to do that with someone's penis" Man, he took me seriously!!!!!!!!

I just shook my head and knew this was not going to be good.

Take it easy, have some more brews, play with the squirrels, take em up for a flight, charge them hobbs time, nah, better not, they'll pay ya peanuts

Good Easter to all
yozz

[Doss79]

I laughed out loud there, yozz.

Keep 'em coming.

[yozz25]

Doss:

Now would you continue with some guy who would take that seriously??

I can tell you more as I did some research on him, I'm even suspecting he may have clogged the pitot tube because I didn't go up with him anymore.

Around this type, you have to watch your ass. Middle aged, no sense of humor, takes things literally, drives a macho car, poses in front of muscle plane facebook photo, is an "officer" in local CAP, has few friends, looks at me with daggers coming out of eye, after I took on younger CFI, authoritative, etc. Has submissive wife, putters in muscle motor cycle. He cannot take being rejected, you can smell it. I can go on. Only reason I checked him out was that after I "fired" him, the pitot tube was crapped out on flight with new guy. Now isn't that a coincidence!!!!

This is the type of guy who will cut your tires if he felt you were a threat to him. He'd cut 'em, then go on like nothing happened. Seen it dozens of times.

This is what I did in my former life. Most people have a hard time believing that the people they meet in life are not capable of doing some pretty nasty things. I've seen many nasty things in my work, so this is the norm for me, he gave off the signals, better to be safe than a statistic.

yozz,
I have my squirrels camped out in his back yard with their cells phones giving me updates on this sucker.

[bryancobb]

I feel like the guy in the back who heckled the stand-up comic! That's usually a mistake.

[yozz25]

Hey Brian:

This time I'm serious, there are nut cases out there.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that a certain percentage, probably higher than you may think, of plane crashes due to "mechnical" failure, are due to some sort of sabotage perhaps by a pissed off mechanic, so don't piss them off, or someone who knows well how to tinker with your craft.

About 10 years back, when I was in NYC, there was a crash on takeoff near Newark, NJ, involving a pilot and his family, whereas the pilot was a former Israeli air force pilot with loads of experience currently working in an academic position near Wash DC.

Something about this crash which killed him, wife and 2 kids, and splattered the whole plane into bits all over the streets kind of irked me. To me it was a hit.

Recently reading it on NTSB records, show that he flew up from DC, left plane at small airport near NYC, came back, maybe next day, wife went shopping, weather was rainy and overcast.

Upon takeoff he went into clouds and started bitching about his gyro on radio, indicating that he had no idea about his flight attitude. He lost his bearing and probably stalled and spun splashing all over the streets, nasty crash.

Investigation revealed that he was on heavy meds for migraines.

No emphasis was put on possible criminal aspect. Just the meds, but yet EWR has him bitching that he had no gyro.

NTSB does not do criminal, they just write it up. Criminal is up to FBI. There is a very good chance this israeli national was hit either by his own government or ours, doesn't matter. Blame it on migraine drugs, but what about gyro? Nothing said, case closed. Gyro, migraines, CIA or Mossad, take your pick.

I would give this a 50 percent chance that it was a hit. Planes do get sabotaged, not hard to do, by people wanting to get rid of others on official business, or just some freaked out nut case. Criminal investigations seem to be lacking in many crashes. Why so?

Nothing seems to be said about this possibility which to me is more like a probablity in some cases, why?

yozz

[drseti]

Upon takeoff he went into clouds and started bitching about his gyro on radio, indicating that he had no idea about his flight attitude.

Yozz, even multiple gyro failures (whether mechanical or induced) should be no problem for a well-trained and current IFR pilot. This is what we train for, with every Instrument Proficiency Check (typically once every six months). Partial panel skills are taught, and practiced, regularly (in Israel as well as in the US). Airspeed indicator, altimeter, magnetic compass, and ball are sufficient to keep a plane right side up, even in the clouds - even if all three gyros fail. And, in fact, since the turn coordinator is typically electrically powered, and the DG and AI powered by vacuum, it is difficult to make all three go out at once, by either mechanical failure or sabotage.

If you know you have a gyro failure (as this pilot evidently did), there are specific procedures for keeping the plane "shiny side up, greasy side down" while returning to the airport and executing an approach. In addition, if the gyro had been sabotaged, it would have shown up as inoperative during the runup and IFR instrument check, or on taxi-out prior to flight. If all three gyros aren't giving proper indications on the ground, you simply do not take off. So, it is my opinion that something else was at play here, besides a simple gyro failure.

[yozz25]

Doc.

I see your point, yes there is training, but perhaps if this was rigged to fail was done so as to develop as the plane became airborne.

What was mentioned as I may recall is the spatial difficulty one has, especially when one has to act fast. Experienced guys do get killed, even the best. Recently a fellow, naval pilot as I recall, crashed in windy weather up near Reno in his private plane with daughters aboard. It was at the end of his one hour private flight.

It happens,, throw a monkey wrench in, make things happen real quick in crappy weather, and it goes down.

Of course the israeli would have seen his gyro out before takeoff, maybe he saw everything ok during runup, but as he got up into the clouds, then it crapped out, panic ensued, and he didn't know which way was up.

He probably was not high enough, not enough time to correct, knew he had his family aboard, all sorts of stuff go through the mind.

Sabotage can be delayed by a person who knows his "craft" well. We'll never know.

On another note, after reflecting on it a bit, there did seem to still be airspeed problems on remos, perhaps the pitot in the remos was not repaired properly.

I've never had this before, in the remos in az, or the warrior. I did complain about the proper rpm's but when I think about it, I put them in the same place as when in phx, about 3000 rpm, 1000 ft agl, lined up with numbers, but could not seem to get it right.

At one point it indicated almost stall speed, this never happened before running a pattern. Bizzarre.

It seems I had trouble setting up landing due to either too high or low airspeeds, couldn't get a handle on. Perhaps they didn't properly fix the problem that I experienced when I last went up in this plane and airspeed didn't make any sense, was all over the place.

Don't know about this school. Last week was told I couldn't use remos this week, since boss was taking it for a week, so I scheduled some R and R for myself, now I look at schedule and see remos is open. It's like they don't care.

This is what I mean about lack of integrity, sort of screw the student, kind of an arrogance in the customer service department. If your running a school, and know a student is using a plane, have it available, don't jerk a person around for your personal whims.

It's the kind of arrogance you'll find in the artsy fartsy businesses.
yozz

[yozz25]

Doc.

I see your point, yes there is training, but perhaps if this was rigged to fail was done so as to develop as the plane became airborne.

What was mentioned as I may recall is the spatial difficulty one has, especially when one has to act fast. Experienced guys do get killed, even the best. Recently a fellow, naval pilot as I recall, crashed in windy weather up near Reno in his private plane with daughters aboard. It was at the end of his one hour private flight.

It happens,, throw a monkey wrench in, make things happen real quick in crappy weather, and it goes down.

Of course the israeli would have seen his gyro out before takeoff, maybe he saw everything ok during runup, but as he got up into the clouds, then it crapped out, panic ensued, and he didn't know which way was up.

He probably was not high enough, not enough time to correct, knew he had his family aboard, all sorts of stuff go through the mind.

Sabotage can be delayed by a person who knows his "craft" well. We'll never know.

On another note, after reflecting on it a bit, there did seem to still be airspeed problems on remos, perhaps the pitot in the remos was not repaired properly.

I've never had this before, in the remos in az, or the warrior. I did complain about the proper rpm's but when I think about it, I put them in the same place as when in phx, about 3000 rpm, 1000 ft agl, lined up with numbers, but could not seem to get it right.

At one point it indicated almost stall speed, this never happened before running a pattern. Bizzarre.

It seems I had trouble setting up landing due to either too high or low airspeeds, couldn't get a handle on. Perhaps they didn't properly fix the problem that I experienced when I last went up in this plane and airspeed didn't make any sense, was all over the place.

Don't know about this school. Last week was told I couldn't use remos this week, since boss was taking it for a week, so I scheduled some R and R for myself, now I look at schedule and see remos is open. It's like they don't care.

This is what I mean about lack of integrity, sort of screw the student, kind of an arrogance in the customer service department. If your running a school, and know a student is using a plane, have it available, don't jerk a person around for your personal whims.

It's the kind of arrogance you'll find in the artsy fartsy businesses.
yozz

[yozz25]

Doc.

I see your point, yes there is training, but perhaps if this was rigged to fail was done so as to develop as the plane became airborne.

What was mentioned as I may recall is the spatial difficulty one has, especially when one has to act fast. Experienced guys do get killed, even the best. Recently a fellow, naval pilot as I recall, crashed in windy weather up near Reno in his private plane with daughters aboard. It was at the end of his one hour private flight.

It happens,, throw a monkey wrench in, make things happen real quick in crappy weather, and it goes down.

Of course the israeli would have seen his gyro out before takeoff, maybe he saw everything ok during runup, but as he got up into the clouds, then it crapped out, panic ensued, and he didn't know which way was up.

He probably was not high enough, not enough time to correct, knew he had his family aboard, all sorts of stuff go through the mind.

Sabotage can be delayed by a person who knows his "craft" well. We'll never know.

On another note, after reflecting on it a bit, there did seem to still be airspeed problems on remos, perhaps the pitot in the remos was not repaired properly.

I've never had this before, in the remos in az, or the warrior. I did complain about the proper rpm's but when I think about it, I put them in the same place as when in phx, about 3000 rpm, 1000 ft agl, lined up with numbers, but could not seem to get it right.

At one point it indicated almost stall speed, this never happened before running a pattern. Bizzarre.

It seems I had trouble setting up landing due to either too high or low airspeeds, couldn't get a handle on. Perhaps they didn't properly fix the problem that I experienced when I last went up in this plane and airspeed didn't make any sense, was all over the place.

Don't know about this school. Last week was told I couldn't use remos this week, since boss was taking it for a week, so I scheduled some R and R for myself, now I look at schedule and see remos is open. It's like they don't care.

This is what I mean about lack of integrity, sort of screw the student, kind of an arrogance in the customer service department. If your running a school, and know a student is using a plane, have it available, don't jerk a person around for your personal whims.

It's the kind of arrogance you'll find in the artsy fartsy businesses.
yozz

[yozz25]

Doc.

I see your point, yes there is training, but perhaps if this was rigged to fail was done so as to develop as the plane became airborne.

What was mentioned as I may recall is the spatial difficulty one has, especially when one has to act fast. Experienced guys do get killed, even the best. Recently a fellow, naval pilot as I recall, crashed in windy weather up near Reno in his private plane with daughters aboard. It was at the end of his one hour private flight.

It happens,, throw a monkey wrench in, make things happen real quick in crappy weather, and it goes down.

Of course the israeli would have seen his gyro out before takeoff, maybe he saw everything ok during runup, but as he got up into the clouds, then it crapped out, panic ensued, and he didn't know which way was up.

He probably was not high enough, not enough time to correct, knew he had his family aboard, all sorts of stuff go through the mind.

Sabotage can be delayed by a person who knows his "craft" well. We'll never know.

On another note, after reflecting on it a bit, there did seem to still be airspeed problems on remos, perhaps the pitot in the remos was not repaired properly.

I've never had this before, in the remos in az, or the warrior. I did complain about the proper rpm's but when I think about it, I put them in the same place as when in phx, about 3000 rpm, 1000 ft agl, lined up with numbers, but could not seem to get it right.

At one point it indicated almost stall speed, this never happened before running a pattern. Bizzarre.

It seems I had trouble setting up landing due to either too high or low airspeeds, couldn't get a handle on. Perhaps they didn't properly fix the problem that I experienced when I last went up in this plane and airspeed didn't make any sense, was all over the place.

Don't know about this school. Last week was told I couldn't use remos this week, since boss was taking it for a week, so I scheduled some R and R for myself, now I look at schedule and see remos is open. It's like they don't care.

This is what I mean about lack of integrity, sort of screw the student, kind of an arrogance in the customer service department. If your running a school, and know a student is using a plane, have it available, don't jerk a person around for your personal whims.

It's the kind of arrogance you'll find in the artsy fartsy businesses.
yozz