But in that case that’s the perception that was left. There were certainly posts of value (which got. Deleted), and I imagine most of us never saw the offending posts, so then one is left to wonder! Locking the thread would likely have avoided the perception problem as everyone would have seen the cause of the lock and left the informative posts (so that one could point to the thread when needing to present concrete arguments correct statements made with less strong / no concrete arguments;))
My edit above may have crossed with your post, Noe. That thread is still there.
Locking threads just leads to the (very small group of) indignant posters to start another thread about the locked thread. We have a policy on that in Guidelines but people still do it. The “give the mod a good whipping” thing just moves along to the new thread… So locking threads is used very rarely; I actually can’t remember the last time.
Sometimes, running a forum is not easy and there are no obvious answers.
Bathman wrote:
.I’ve even had to say it to a freshly minted CPL holder whose parents were sat in the clubhouse.
Currency could not have been the issue but it must have been something quite negligent to trigger something like that in front of his parents..
Airborne_Again wrote:
It really saddens me to read things like requirements for a checkride after 28 days of not flying, flying with an instructor the first time you visit any other airfield
It really sounds weird, and can’t imagine that this is a real club. I can imagine it can happen if an instructor runs his own little private “club”, doing instructions and renting out (his own) planes on the side. Anything that can possibly cause down time on the planes, must be prevented as much as possible. It’s simply a method to handle the economical risk. Such a place is very far away from being a club though, in the right sense of the word. Could of course also be a club with very, very bad experience during the last years, and/or with a leader and a board consisting of pilots who hardly fly themselves without instructors.
Bathman wrote:
The hardest thing that I have to do in job is to say to a pilot who wants to self fly hire that they can’t because they are not safe
Makes me think of the newly adopted policy of the Norway CAA to ban all foreign FTOs as training to get a Norwegian PPL. It was the inspectors who notified the CAA. The candidates lacked the theoretical and practical knowledge. They simply were way below standard. The inspectors were tired of wasting their time and notified the CAA. There really must be a whole bunch of piss poor schools out there in “Europe” 
and this will later on cause all sorts of strange things on the internet…
Airborne_Again wrote:
It really saddens me to read things like requirements for a checkride after 28 days of not flying, flying with an instructor the first time you visit any other airfield, not being allowed to be away from base overnight…
These things happen in restrictive clubs and those are the ones which give the whole scene a imho undeservedly bad name. 28 days is a bit few but I’ve seen it after 90 days (we even had it in our setup in the beginning but dropped it as it simply doesn’t make sense). Going to other airfields requiring an instructor is really a job creation scheme for FI’s it looks like.
If people are not trusted enough by the club to prevent such stuff then they should not let them fly at all. Which of course would mean the end of the rental business of that club.
Bathman wrote:
The hardest thing that I have to do in job is to say to a pilot who wants to self fly hire that they can’t because they are not safe.
If these are people your club trained themselfs, then I wonder how they got their license. Particularly the CPL guy. If a guy is that unsafe, how the hell do they pass their checkrides, let alone for a CPL??
If the result of a 100k flight training with a licensed pilot is that a club instructor has to find them incapable and unsafe, then there is something MASSIVELY wrong with the training system. How would someone like this be allowed to progress to a full CPL if he is unsafe to fly his parents around in a self-hire? What was the reason for that? Checkflight in the club or repeated incidents?
Peter,
here in Switzerland most clubs are sub divisions of the Swiss Aeroclub. All together they are one of the two noteworthy lobby organisations we have, with the other one being AOPA. The Aeroclub per se runs a very necessary business for all kind of aviation (including gliders, modellists e.t.c.) but primarily is the combined organisation which is the first to be consulted on upcoming law changes e.t.c. by the lawmakers and the FOCA. So generally, having that organisation is important and it is positive. I am tomorrow going to one of their youth camps to talk to young people who want to go into aviation. That camp is booked out every year.
Things like this are quite necessary in todays climate.
The reason some clubs have bad names and have come to our attention due to malpractice and due to certain people behaving in an undesirable way are mostly annecdotical, but that does not make them insignificant. Clubs who behave in that way and obviously want to hinder their flock to progress beyond a certain level they can easily control have a problem which needs to be addressed, as they contribute to making the whole scene suspect, which is mostly undeserved.
What I have been criticizing I’ve said earlier here. Clubs should be open (many are) to owners on their premises. Clubs should operate their aerodromes as infrastructure, not as states within a state where they treat visitors or owners with hassle and as cash cows. And they should look at their own structures to avoid breeding little “airport dictators” in their own ranks. That are the pitfalls and they need to be addressed as one of these in a flock of good ones will create a lot of distrust on a general scale.
There really must be a whole bunch of piss poor schools out there in “Europe”
I am sure there is a whole bunch of schools out there who are piss poor at teaching the intricacies of flying in Norway That is really what so many of these debates are about. If you do your PPL in X you won’t know Y airspace and Y practices (substitute any X and Y where X is not same as Y). With a lot of currency this can be learnt but the average PPL currency is very low.
If the result of a 100k flight training with a licensed pilot is that a club instructor has to find them incapable and unsafe, then there is something MASSIVELY wrong with the training system.
It’s actually “OK” because the student ends up in the jet RHS with a training captain in the LHS. Most of the CPL/IR training was barely relevant. And the really bad ones drop out of the TR course before that.
LeSving wrote:
Makes me think of the newly adopted policy of the Norway CAA to ban all foreign FTOs as training to get a Norwegian PPL. It was the inspectors who notified the CAA. The candidates lacked the theoretical and practical knowledge. They simply were way below standard. The inspectors were tired of wasting their time and notified the CAA.
A blanket ban for this is against EASA ruling and therefore probably illegal. However, if students from particular organisations or countries are found deficient in such a level, EASA should be informed about this, as should the CAA of the country of the schools these people come from.
Frankly, that European candidates should be so totally deficient is something I can not begin to understand. From what I am seeing here, most schools and clubs need to comply to a rather high standard set out by Part FCL these days, there are no much variants anymore how people are trained. The most pilots whom I consider critical are mostly folks who have been doing what they do for decades on a mediocre standard and always found sympathetic instructors to let them slip through the net, but that is not basic students who apply for a new license.
LeSving wrote:
There really must be a whole bunch of piss poor schools out there in “Europe” and this will later on cause all sorts of strange things on the internet…
There are piss poor organisations everywhere not only in aviation and they will cause these kind of rumours and distrust on the net. Weeding them out is one bit which has happened under part FCL in terms of schools, but of course there are better or worse outfits. Here often the net also has a function to make people aware that there are better places to go to if they are dissatisfied.
But to conclude that MOST of the club schools are like that is way over the top. Where there are problems, they should be addressed. The rest of the clubs should be left alone doing their thing.
Bathman wrote:
The hardest thing that I have to do in job is to say to a pilot who wants to self fly hire that they can’t because they are not safe. I have to do it maybe 2 or 3 times a year.I’ve even had to say it to a freshly minted CPL holder whose parents were sat in the clubhouse. Who after paying 100K in flight training wanted to go for a flight with their son.Its horrible but its the right think to do. And it might be a bind and a rip off for many but for some its a life saver.
Yes, certainly. But a safe pilot does not suddenly become unsafe after 28 days.
I think the silly rules are the ones that “you must do a checkride if you’ve not flown specific airframe G-XXXX in 28 days” – even though you might have 5 hours and 15 landings in the very similar G-YYYY in the last 28 days.
It’s probably reasonable for a low time pilot with low currency who hasn’t flown anything in 28 days to do a quick lap or two around the circuit, but insisting that you must do a checkride even if you’re very current and have flown another single engine piston aircraft enough in the period is incredibly silly.
