Have you ever "fired" a student?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 27505
  • Start date Start date

Have you ever "fired" a student? If so, did that person eventually crash an airplane?

  • No

  • Yes. I fired a student, but I don't know if he crashed.

  • Yes. I fired a student, and he crashed.

  • Yes. I fired more than one student, and all of these people crashed.

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Deleted member 27505

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It's been my experience that some people just don't have the judgement or character to be pilots. I have had several that I've had to let go over the years because despite my best efforts, I was unable to change their hazardous attitudes.
Every single one of them found a different instructor and ended up getting a PPL.
And every single one of them eventually crashed an airplane, one with fatal results.
What's been your experience in this area?
 
I voted no, because there needs to be a "...but they didn't crash" option. I've dismissed several students and none of them have crashed. In fact none of them are still flying. One is a flight attendant, another sells fitness supplements. Another one, i'm pretty sure is in law school.
 
I have fired four students, all at the same flight school. Thankfully, none have crashed.

One was a kid that didn't have it but took out all the loans. After I fired him the owner called him back and convinced him to spend all of his budget to his IFR ticket pre-solo.

Another one was a student who did PVT-CFI at that school. I fired him as a commercial student but the owner called him back and gave him a job. Four student failures later he was gone.

The third was a former B-52 pilot who insisted on climbing out in an archer at 120kias. Finally I gave him an engine failure on TO and he got the point but I was done.

The forth go caught flying a school plane over the beach at 75'. Someone sent us pictures with the school logo on the tail. That was ballgame and he was pissed.
 
Dude filed for a tower enroute clearance, and flew in IMC to his instrument checkride. He was apologetic and completely owed up to it, but I told the chief pilot I was done with him.

Later on, with another instructor, he smashed some runway lights at one of the neighboring airports. Guess that counts as a crash of sorts?

Last I heard, he did eventually complete training, and from his social media, looks like is about to start training for one of the national carriers in the middle east (dad is a CKA there).
 
poser765 said:
I voted no, because there needs to be a "...but they didn't crash" option. I've dismissed several students and none of them have crashed. In fact none of them are still flying. One is a flight attendant, another sells fitness supplements. Another one, i'm pretty sure is in law school.
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Doh! I don't know what happened there. I had that as one of the answer options, but apparently somehow I eliminated it. Now I can't edit the poll.
 
I've fired 3. None of them crashed. One of them decided to return to flying gliders.
 
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Yup. Guy showed zero interest in doing any work. He'd lie about doing his studying/ homework and come in completely unprepared. He also was pretty sure he could become Paris Hilton's pilot once he got his PPL because he worked at a Hilton hotel.

I was super busy and had a lot of motivated naval academy students so we had a meeting involving the owner of the school, my 20 something year old student, his parents, and myself. I told them I didn't feel right wasting their money and they were not pleased with him.
 
I had one student transferred from me because he demonstrated he didn't put the effort into studying and preparing for flights to a level that met my expectations. He got his act together and flies Hornets now.
 
I was told by a CFI that never reject students
Let them keep coming back and keep flying until they decide not to show up/quit/find another cfi
...and this was a career CFI.
 
Yes. Killed himself and his wife flying back from Montana.

Edit: He wasn't really a student per se, but I flew with a guy after he had crashed in prep for a 709 ride. One flight and I politely declined to put my name anywhere near his logbook. I don't believe he's flying anymore, but that was 10 years ago so who knows.
 
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daydreamer said:
I was told by a CFI that never reject students
Let them keep coming back and keep flying until they decide not to show up/quit/find another cfi
...and this was a career CFI.
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I know a few like that. That being said, I was generally busy enough when I instructed that I really didn't have time to be wasted.
 
Oh, I've also fired a renter before too after a series of recurrent training flights went very badly (read: scary as all hell). It effectively ended his short flying "career" since he was a Sport Pilot and the school I was working out of at the time had the only Light Sport aircraft available in the whole state (and he didn't have the means to buy a plane). I felt bad doing it because he put all he had into his lifelong dream of being a pilot (he was an older guy) and after much work with his primary instructor (owner of the school) and myself towards the end of his training, he managed to get his Sport Ticket....but his skills took a huge dive after getting his ticket and he was simply an accident waiting to happen.
 
I had one French aristocrat's son here on student visa for a summer tell me where he was going to cross country solo. It was a busy class C airport in So Cal along the coast. He was a below average student pilot at best, even at 140 hours and counting. I said no you will solo where the the school and I decide its best for you to solo, he went straight from the classroom to the chief pilot who loved him spending a couple thousand a week there and they reassigned him to someone else, with whom he did the same thing. So maybe I got fired? But then he slammed the nose gear in and prop struck it. Good riddance.
 
Never fired a student but I have told check outs that they aren't renting with us unless they do another training flight with me.
 
Jordan93 said:
Never fired a student but I have told check outs that they aren't renting with us unless they do another training flight with me.
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I'm a little more polite about it. I ask "How do you think that went?" "Oh, so how much more practice would it take to get that right." "Great, lets set another time to fly."
 
I had one student that wouldn't take instruction from me. After I asked him to climb to traffic pattern altitude three separate occasions he told me, "the plane if fine right where it's at". No, it wasn't, it was 300' below TPA. After my intervention he landed. Once on the ground he again refused to stop the airplane once clear of the active runway so we could get a taxi clearance back to the ramp. Again, I had to intervene and stop the plane and get the clearance.

I informed the chief pilot...he had some issues with a couple other instructors from my school. It also seemed like he was asked not to return to the school he began his training at. Needless to say, we also asked him not to return.

That guy was one of the first students I had coming off of a 5-year hiatus from instructing. Needless to say, it made me a lot more nervous than I should be going forward with other students.

I don't know if he's still flying or found another instructor to fly with.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
I'm a little more polite about it. I ask "How do you think that went?" "Oh, so how much more practice would it take to get that right." "Great, lets set another time to fly."
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I don't actually say verbatim what I wrote. I say something similar to what you say.
 
What if the student crashes before I convinced myself to fire them. Does that make me worse than them?
 
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