PPL failures nearly 50%

Flyinthrew said:
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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I will admit to one bad piece of solo cross country flight planning I had while training. I was well prepared, rested, hydrated and alert when I set off from Burbank to Daggett, of course it was summer and a bit warm. I arrived at Daggett, got some fuel and some more water and I headed to California City. After dodging some skydivers I landed, used the restroom, smoked a cigarette and got some more water. I was in a 152 and was about to enter the Newhall Pass from south of Palmdale after having been beat up by mild turbulence the entire way back from Cal City when I realized I really needed to pee. I was a student pilot with two full bottles of water and a full bladder and it didn't occur to me to empty one overboard to relieve myself into, throwing anything out of the airplane was verboten, so I did everything I could to get that airplane back to Burbank as expeditiously as possible, no flap approach with a skid as I deployed the flaps and flared onto the runway (thanks for that lesson Danny) and a spirited taxi to parking. Pulled the mixture on my way out of the door and a beeline to the corner of the closest hangar and sweet, sweet relief.
From that point on I always carried an empty Gatorade bottle, and ended up using it.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Yikes. Not sure exact reasons why, but not a good look!

www.aopa.org

Better luck next time

First time pass rates for private pilot airplane single engine land practical tests hovered somewhere in the 50 percent to 60 percent range in the past six months.
www.aopa.org
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As an owner of a flight school, we train 150ish students a year and do about 70-75 checkrides a year. More than 50% of The generation that is coming thru now has major major deficiencies in general in the way parents have brought them up and it is now reflecting poorly on them. None of them were taught to think for themselves. I took 2 years of auto shop in high school that helped me start to figure my way around mechanical things. They have been raised to Google everything. They have zero hands on experience when it comes to anything practical, let alone an airplane. They have huge entitlement issues and try to get by with the minimal amount of work. We practically yell at them daily to get their written tests done and nothing ever gets done. Laziness is an understatement. If I could best describe it in a few words: “I’m here, you owe me”.
This is what happens when you give prizes for 8th place. I deal with this exact issue on a daily basis from the same industry this article is written about. I solod at 15 hours at SNA and we can’t get them to solo in less than 25. Most are taking 30-40. The instructors teaching them are of a different mindset. There is no sense of urgency or passion, everything is at a casual pace. Flame away
 
Re: soloing at 25hrs -

ya, not at a busy towered field on my ticket. Maybe if it's a gifted student who already has a ton of experience flying around with his dad in the family skywagon, but not the usual student.

Stick and rudder wise, most people are ready no problem. It's all the other stuff they need to be proficient at to be signed off - mainly radio and local airspace. Even the most gung- Ho hard studying student requires hours of experience to achieve a minimum competence.

It's one thing to solo out of an Iowa corn field in a radioless cub. Quite another to solo at a busy Class C with a significant amount of commercial jet traffic.
 
@Derg

I remember a kid on his first solo in a 172, I think he was on pattern number 2; traffic patterns on both sides of the runway, tower controlled. A dual crewed 172 called out the wrong traffic and was cleared to turn base, they unknowingly flew under the solo student who was on a longer final. Left main landing gear came through the dual planes windshield and smacked the CFI in the right seat in the forehead. Planes stuck together for a few seconds as their wings and props began ripping up the other airplane. Somehow they separated. Dual airplane made a forced landing 1 mile short of the runway and flipped over, no injuries. Solo kid managed to land his plane on the runway with a bent and bashed up wing and tears throughout the fuselage belly and a bent up prop and loss of engine power. He taxiied clear, shut down, and never flew again.
 
Fixtur said:
Re: soloing at 25hrs -

ya, not at a busy towered field on my ticket. Maybe if it's a gifted student who already has a ton of experience flying around with his dad in the family skywagon, but not the usual student.

Stick and rudder wise, most people are ready no problem. It's all the other stuff they need to be proficient at to be signed off - mainly radio and local airspace. Even the most gung- Ho hard studying student requires hours of experience to achieve a minimum competence.

It's one thing to solo out of an Iowa corn field in a radioless cub. Quite another to solo at a busy Class C with a significant amount of commercial jet traffic.
Click to expand...
I learned to fly at KBUR, but soloed at KWHP and did a lot of solo practice at KVNY. I've always considered learning to fly in busy airspace as beneficial, I didn't know any different and uncontrolled fields initially made me uncomfortable.
 
I solo’d at ISP which is a decently busy pattern and towered at around 17 hours. To this day I think, the most stressful thing of my aviation career including ATC was after my ppl and the first time I flew to an untowered tiny little field to actually park overnight and having to pump my own gas, two things that were not covered in my lessons. Always had a fuel truck and all my Xc’s were to towered airports. We did pattern work at an untowered field fairly often but never stopped there.
 
While I would love to blame the Asian kid with poor English skills, I can’t ignore the fact that there’s a bunch of folks that hate instructing but want to reach 121 mins.

My career was launched with a commercial ticket and a couple hundred hours of KA time. I’m not sure that my enthusiasm would have been sustained with a crappy CFI gig.
 
Fixtur said:
Re: soloing at 25hrs -

ya, not at a busy towered field on my ticket. Maybe if it's a gifted student who already has a ton of experience flying around with his dad in the family skywagon, but not the usual student.

Stick and rudder wise, most people are ready no problem. It's all the other stuff they need to be proficient at to be signed off - mainly radio and local airspace. Even the most gung- Ho hard studying student requires hours of experience to achieve a minimum competence.

It's one thing to solo out of an Iowa corn field in a radioless cub. Quite another to solo at a busy Class C with a significant amount of commercial jet traffic.
Click to expand...
It doesn’t help that a friend of a friend is a pilot giving them “advice” that they should be in the pattern at 8 hours.
 
Fixtur said:
Re: soloing at 25hrs -

ya, not at a busy towered field on my ticket. Maybe if it's a gifted student who already has a ton of experience flying around with his dad in the family skywagon, but not the usual student.

Stick and rudder wise, most people are ready no problem. It's all the other stuff they need to be proficient at to be signed off - mainly radio and local airspace. Even the most gung- Ho hard studying student requires hours of experience to achieve a minimum competence.

It's one thing to solo out of an Iowa corn field in a radioless cub. Quite another to solo at a busy Class C with a significant amount of commercial jet traffic.
Click to expand...
After I tell them this during meet n greets, the look on their face is “you’re just trying to push more hours on us”.
 
MikeD said:
@Derg

I remember a kid on his first solo in a 172, I think he was on pattern number 2; traffic patterns on both sides of the runway, tower controlled. A dual crewed 172 called out the wrong traffic and was cleared to turn base, they unknowingly flew under the solo student who was on a longer final. Left main landing gear came through the dual planes windshield and smacked the CFI in the right seat in the forehead. Planes stuck together for a few seconds as their wings and props began ripping up the other airplane. Somehow they separated. Dual airplane made a forced landing 1 mile short of the runway and flipped over, no injuries. Solo kid managed to land his plane on the runway with a bent and bashed up wing and tears throughout the fuselage belly and a bent up prop and loss of engine power. He taxiied clear, shut down, and never flew again.
Click to expand...

I remember distinctly!
 
mrivc211 said:
As an owner of a flight school, we train 150ish students a year and do about 70-75 checkrides a year. More than 50% of The generation that is coming thru now has major major deficiencies in general in the way parents have brought them up and it is now reflecting poorly on them. None of them were taught to think for themselves. I took 2 years of auto shop in high school that helped me start to figure my way around mechanical things. They have been raised to Google everything. They have zero hands on experience when it comes to anything practical, let alone an airplane. They have huge entitlement issues and try to get by with the minimal amount of work. We practically yell at them daily to get their written tests done and nothing ever gets done. Laziness is an understatement. If I could best describe it in a few words: “I’m here, you owe me”.
This is what happens when you give prizes for 8th place. I deal with this exact issue on a daily basis from the same industry this article is written about. I solod at 15 hours at SNA and we can’t get them to solo in less than 25. Most are taking 30-40. The instructors teaching them are of a different mindset. There is no sense of urgency or passion, everything is at a casual pace. Flame away
Click to expand...

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mrivc211 said:
After I tell them this during meet n greets, the look on their face is “you’re just trying to push more hours on us”.
Click to expand...
When I was teaching, I would tell students that the MINIMUM of 40 hours was established in the 1950's when most airplanes didn't have radios and airspace wasn't really a thing. I would tell them to budget for 100 hours. When they get their ticket then at around 90 hours, they've got some extra money for flying.

I soloed at 27 hours at KOAK - busy C surrounded by busy B and adjacent to busy Ds.
 
Managing expectations is huge. @Fixtur has the right of it.

Whenever I had that conversation with prospects I’d give them the same spiel about how the minimums were realistic in the right context, but in a towered class G (that operated almost exactly like a Delta but wasn’t one) under a bravo with the SFRA, it would likely take longer.

Then I’d explain that the national AVERAGE for completion was 65-70 hours.

Not all of them came back. The ones who did rarely had a problem with it, and if they were taking a little longer it was easier to get past the already-managed expectations.


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The minimum time to complete the certificate conversation likely goes all the way back to when the rule was implemented. I was having the same conversations back in 2005. Everyone always expects to finish at the minimum.

In ways technology could have made training more complicated. Imagine doing all your training using all the technological advances as tools and getting and ole skool examiner with an ole skoool mentality taking it away from you because he wants to see you do it the old way (when in actuality he's not comfortable with the technology)...
 
Flyinthrew said:
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.
Click to expand...

10 years ago I was teaching intro geology at a flagship state university, so the students were largely in the top 20% of their classes. They were overall really bright, but good lord they sucked at reading maps. I don’t doubt that flight students are challenged in that regard now.
 
zmiller4 said:
10 years ago I was teaching intro geology at a flagship state university, so the students were largely in the top 20% of their classes. They were overall really bright, but good lord they sucked at reading maps. I don’t doubt that flight students are challenged in that regard now.
Click to expand...

That’s a pretty good point. A lot of us in the 40ish and older age group grew up using things like a Road Atlas. I navigated across the country a few times just using that, and have been using Topo maps ever since I can remember. The jump to sectionals wasn’t all that difficult.

I can definitely see why now it’s just a really foreign concept for younger people to get used to old school charts.
 
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