PPL failures nearly 50%

I mean I know its fun to blame Asians and immigrants and all that….but is there any empirical evidence to support that statement?

I don’t have any empirical evidence either but anecdotally, when i was instructing in AZ, so long as the English barrier wasn’t an issue, the Chinese students blew away their American counterparts for the most part. And I’m not sure where the assessment came from that they don’t want to be there either, that was absolutely not the case in my experience. These students have already gone through a ton to get to the point of US flight training, kids get weeded out in China.
 
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.
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Best part of it:
RXX: “RXX is going down!, RXX is going down!”
ATC: “Uh, Roger RXX, you are cleared to land.“

Last I heard, the solo student was selling cars in SDL…
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Yikes. Not sure exact reasons why, but not a good look!
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Me either!?! ...

Completely baffling and ineffable... Like, totally!

If this is true, the good news is "candidates" are finally failing at a rate that is at least somewhat more commensurate with their readiness for the checkride. We've now had at least a decade of blind guide dogs leading the blind.

Note to newbies: Don't step foot on a regional jet. Increasingly... use caution stepping onto a major.

Oh, snap... being an aviator is NOT about pushing buttons in the correct prescribed order?!? Damn. I learn something every day.
 
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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.
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Are you saying they couldn’t find their ass, even if you held a map in front of them and let them search with both hands?
 
NovemberEcho said:
How are younger students with glass cockpits? I would think that would be any area where gaming and growing up with tech would be an advantage.
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Glass cockpits aren’t exactly challenging are they? I’ve never even heard of that being an issue, that’s kind of the whole point behind them.
 
schloopy said:
I mean I know its fun to blame Asians and immigrants and all that….but is there any empirical evidence to support that statement?

I don’t have any empirical evidence either but anecdotally, when i was instructing in AZ, so long as the English barrier wasn’t an issue, the Chinese students blew away their American counterparts for the most part. And I’m not sure where the assessment came from that they don’t want to be there either, that was absolutely not the case in my experience. These students have already gone through a ton to get to the point of US flight training, kids get weeded out in China.
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NovemberEcho said:
How are younger students with glass cockpits? I would think that would be any area where gaming and growing up with tech would be an advantage.
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They’re good. Definitely better than some of their older counterparts that I’ve seen. For ones that admit to playing games or flight simulators, They’re often off and running before I even finish giving the quick rundown.
 
Glass isn't all that tough even for old guys. However, I will say that they younger guys I've flown with were often really good with the FMS very *quickly*. There was definitely some carry-in there.
 
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CoffeeIcePapers said:
“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.
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Not disagreeing with any perceptions of what DPEs see in the course of their exams, but might we also think that maybe the "pass" standard for DPEs has changed? Just a perspective.
 
NovemberEcho said:
I have no idea if they are or aren’t to a beginner, I’ve never used one
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I started off flying primary “steam gauges”, and didn’t fly glass until well into my professional pilot career. Glass is so much easier, it’s just no comparison.

To Todd’s point, we did have a few older guys at SkyWest that couldn’t make the jump from Brasilia to CRJ, but that was rare and those guys were pushing 60 years old over ten years ago.

But it’s not like flying glass and using computers is this “new fangled” thing anymore. I’m in my mid-40s, and we were using computers by first grade and almost always had a computer in the house. I was programming in BASIC and using modems before I was even in middle school.

If anything, the younger generations are now regressing in their understanding of technology because it just works so seamlessly:

www.theatlantic.com

The Smartphone Generation Needs Computer Help

Young people may be expert social-media and smartphone users, but many lack the digital skills they need for today’s jobs. How can we set them up for success?
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com

 
schloopy said:
They’re good. Definitely better than some of their older counterparts that I’ve seen. For ones that admit to playing games or flight simulators, They’re often off and running before I even finish giving the quick rundown.
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As far as students with flight sim experience, I found that to be a double edged sword as a CFI. Great for the IFR rating, often times terrible and riddled with bad habits for the PPL.
 
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