"Of course in Don's world, that would be a good learning experience for the airplane to have a mechanical problem in Warren and the student and instructor loose a few toes and fingers to frostbite"
UND airplanes don't break? I would think that could happen to anyone.
They break all the time, reason for me stepping in on these flights.
"So you are telling me that at "your" part 61 fbo there will be nobody saying a word if a 100 hour private pilot decides he is going to take his buddy flying in the ratty old 172..."
There might not be. It all depends. Don't you think a well trained pilot can make the call to not fly in the conditions you mention?
You would be surprised, 600 students (UND) is a far cry from 30 or so at a small FBO, a lot more chance of someone making a bad decision, so safeguards are in place.
Sounds like "the FBO" didn't stop the Crookston accident from happening. Nor should they have. The PIC should be the one that makes the call.
That is a bit out of line, we have no idea what caused this accident, nor at what time the accident actually occured, lets not use this tragedy for ammo against UND, we all have a bit more class than that.
"Would you send a private pilot applicant on their solo xc with less than 2000 foot ceiling and 5 mile vis with a crosswind of 25 knots at the destination airport?"
Noooo...would you? You're really stretching things out now.
Not stretching anything, thats the min wx for a PPL student to do a solo XC, and 25 knots is the max crosswind a instructor could endorse a student to, not much of a bubble huh?
A pre-private student needs someone else making the decisions for him. A 300 hour CFI shouldn't need his hand held. An FBO telling a highly experienced, airline pilot, renter the ceiling is too low seems kinda odd.
Yup, UND's mins for instructors was, well, approach mins, but your local part 61 FBO wouldn't let a 3000 hour ATP take a 182 into less than 1000 foot CIG, bubble, I don't see it.
When I used to live in Seattle, the local schools made renters do a "mountain checkout" to fly east of the Cascades. There were some insurance limitations on grass strips, too. Don't fly to Mexico or Canada.
UND had mountanous terrain restrictions too, hmmmm, but we could fly to Canada??
My point with all this is there is something to be said for the "independence factor" of a guy that trains at a smaller school. UND is hardly an unstructured enviornment. There are plusses and minuses to it. Some people like it that way and that's fine but there are some things about it that I see as negatives.
I haven't seen you post one thing that is a negative, that you don't admit to being present at a part 61 FBO, to me, you bash UND because you can, I am, however, waiting for a valid complaint from you.
The UND guy I know best was a great low time CFI but was working as a bank teller reading a Flying magazine as I walked up to the window. Struck up a conversation. Ended up checking him out in my Cessna that I was going to start a small school with (never happened, thank God). He was working at a bank cause he couldn't get a CFI job. Eventually, he did, built up his multi, and moved on to a regional. He's a friend and will eventually, I'm sure, be able to talk me out of a UPS recommendation.
Good for him, says something about UND I think.
I don't mean to unfairly knock you're beloved school right here on the UND forum. At the same time, I've seen both sides of the coin and think "some knocking" is well placed.
