Well I got a memo in my mailbox as did everyone else at DCA. Here it is.
The purpose of this letter is to bring you up to date with what the academy is doing in regards to the fleet.
As enrollments are not even from month to month, it is typical to have a large "bubble" of students in one fleet type. For example, last september we had a abnormally high enrollment. This group first puts a strain on the 152 fleet, then the 172 fleet as they go through instrument and so forth. The impact of having too many students is exponential as it causes each aircraft to fly more hours and almost doubles the amount of inspections required to be performed in a given month. For this reason, we try to supplement the fleet with leased aircraft. For example, last week we added two 152's to the fleet and anticipate and additional 172 this week. That aircraft is currently having new avionics installed. We will continue to monitor and adjust the fleet side.
We have to have a "Fleet Plan" for the future as well and I thought you'd be intrested in knowing what direction we are going with regard to this also. We are in the development and soon will be in the proposal phase of a Part 142 Program. Under part 142, level 6 flight training devices are required. A level 6 flight training device has exact "control loading" and duplicates the aircraft down to the smallest detail. Given these flight training devices, and new aircraft to match, a much greater precentage of time can be accomplished on the ground.
You may have seen cirrus aircraft on our ramp latley. We brought those in to evaluate their use as our training aircraft of the future. We are also evaluating proposals received from Cirrus and Aerosim, for the flight training devices.
It is not known for certain that we'll end up with the Cirrus but we have known for sometime we want glass cockpits, which was not available a few short years ago. If we go with 142, all current single engine aircraft would be replaced with new aircraft.
**** ****** is currently assigned head up of this project. As far as the time frame, this is a big project, so if you are a student today, you likley will complete your ratings prior to implementaion and may be viewing it from afar (Right seat in a RJ)
The purpose of this letter is to bring you up to date with what the academy is doing in regards to the fleet.
As enrollments are not even from month to month, it is typical to have a large "bubble" of students in one fleet type. For example, last september we had a abnormally high enrollment. This group first puts a strain on the 152 fleet, then the 172 fleet as they go through instrument and so forth. The impact of having too many students is exponential as it causes each aircraft to fly more hours and almost doubles the amount of inspections required to be performed in a given month. For this reason, we try to supplement the fleet with leased aircraft. For example, last week we added two 152's to the fleet and anticipate and additional 172 this week. That aircraft is currently having new avionics installed. We will continue to monitor and adjust the fleet side.
We have to have a "Fleet Plan" for the future as well and I thought you'd be intrested in knowing what direction we are going with regard to this also. We are in the development and soon will be in the proposal phase of a Part 142 Program. Under part 142, level 6 flight training devices are required. A level 6 flight training device has exact "control loading" and duplicates the aircraft down to the smallest detail. Given these flight training devices, and new aircraft to match, a much greater precentage of time can be accomplished on the ground.
You may have seen cirrus aircraft on our ramp latley. We brought those in to evaluate their use as our training aircraft of the future. We are also evaluating proposals received from Cirrus and Aerosim, for the flight training devices.
It is not known for certain that we'll end up with the Cirrus but we have known for sometime we want glass cockpits, which was not available a few short years ago. If we go with 142, all current single engine aircraft would be replaced with new aircraft.
**** ****** is currently assigned head up of this project. As far as the time frame, this is a big project, so if you are a student today, you likley will complete your ratings prior to implementaion and may be viewing it from afar (Right seat in a RJ)