PPL failures nearly 50%

“As a DPE, I can’t help but feel like too many flight training operations have transformed from a process of ‘training to meet or exceed a standard and happen to meet experience requirements along the way,’ to a ‘train to meet experience requirements, and hope they happen to meet training standards,’” he says.

This is pretty much the norm at Spirit, and also my experience at big box sim centers like CAE, FSI, etc.
 
MikeD said:
“bring back full spins!”
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1982 started in earnest with grandpa in the Chief. Every night after dinner we did an hour that summer. I was 12 and could reach the rudders, etc as well as start the airplane (hand prop) so he figured it was time to get serious. Fourth lesson was stalls/spins.
 
Although I agree with the majority of the article and the sentiment, I find the 50% pass rate a little hard to believe. The Denver FSDO's pass rate that I am apart of is 85%.

That means that there are some regions with 30-40 percent pass rates out there? If so, is it from specific flight schools? or is it from certain examiners? I'd like to learn more.
 
Fly_Unity said:
Although I agree with the majority of the article and the sentiment, I find the 50% pass rate a little hard to believe. The Denver FSDO's pass rate that I am apart of is 85%.

That means that there are some regions with 30-40 percent pass rates out there? If so, is it from specific flight schools? or is it from certain examiners? I'd like to learn more.
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I’m curious what the number is for Chinese students who don’t want to be there in the first place and barely speak English
 
Is the test harder than it used to be? I was able to pass without much difficulty and if you were to ask most folks around here I'm not very bright so it must be the test right?
 
knot4u said:
Is the test harder than it used to be? I was able to pass without much difficulty and if you were to ask most folks around here I'm not very bright so it must be the test right?
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It's not harder. I think we're on to something with foreign students. Nobody in their right mind is going to blow $5-9k so they can fail the test. The written, which you need to pass to get to the practical should be enough of a wakeup call for most.

I will go out on a limb though and say most of the US test failures are likely on the cross country planning, execution, and basic situation/spatial awareness. This is going to sound indelicately boomy, but most of the time in daily modern life people don't have to have any idea where they are on the earth. They don't build a mental model of where they are based on where they've been. They just plug in the destination into the GPS, put their heads down and just kinda get there. I am in no way saying this is the wrong way to do business, but orienteering is a very important part of getting the PPL.
 
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Flyinthrew said:
This is going to sound indelicately boomy, but most of the time in daily modern life people don't have to have any idea where they are on the earth. They don't build a mental model of where they are based on where they've been. They just plug in the destination into the GPS, put their heads down and just kinda get there. I am in no way saying this is the wrong way to do business, but orienteering is a very important part of getting the PPL.
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We get those idiots here in Northern AZ. Blindly following the GPS in January. GPS says to go down some random snow packed forest road as the shortest way from one highway to another, rather than the longer route. The road is obviously not well and likely to not get better for our 2 wheel drive car, but that’s where the GPS is telling us to go. Fast forward a day or week later, and a SAR finding them dead or suffering from extreme frostbite and hypothermia.
 
MikeD said:
We get those idiots here in Northern AZ. Blindly following the GPS in January. GPS says to go down some random snow packed forest road as the shortest way from one highway to another, rather than the longer route. The road is obviously not well and likely to not get better for our 2 wheel drive car, but that’s where the GPS is telling us to go. Fast forward a day or week later, and a SAR finding them dead or suffering from extreme frostbite and hypothermia.
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Wasn't there some poor dad that literally drove off a bridge to his death because the GPS was telling him to go there, and the bridge was broken for some reason? Carolinas I think.
 
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