Rant

FlyChicaga said:
If we could hire well-experienced 66 year old retired pilots to be simulator instructors to teach primary students, why would that not be a great alternative? Share decades of experience to young pilots who can then find employment at 400, 500 hours, rather than that young pilot doing something they don’t want to do.
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I'm not sure how it would go with primary students, but I can tell you from my experience that THE ABSOLUTE WORST instructors I've ever had have been retired guys teaching in the simulator. Bonus points if they never worked for the actual company they're training pilots for. Horrible, horrible experiences!
 
ERfly said:
I'm not sure how it would go with primary students, but I can tell you from my experience that THE ABSOLUTE WORST instructors I've ever had have been retired guys teaching in the simulator. Bonus points if they never worked for the actual company they're training pilots for. Horrible, horrible experiences!
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Agreed. The opposite side of that is line guys teaching technique in the sim. I have seen it burn new students.

In initial training at my new company, the best instructor I had never worked for us. But he knew the book very well, and taught us exactly what was in the book. But that's not the usual case I feel.
 
Has the training environment gotten any more or less restrictive in recent years with regard to where/when a lesson can fly and how much supervision or approval is required?

When I was teaching full time I was mostly a one man show and there was a culture of pushing limits, in what I consider to be a good, healthy way. I'd take students to grass strips, 30 foot wide private strips, fly in actual weather, nothing super low, but maybe 500-1 kind of weather. We'd do spin training with student pilots, fly cross countries late into the night, like past midnight, get Special VFR clearances for pattern work, and on and on. I followed a syllabus and provided good instruction while packing in as much adventure as I could.

It seems like a lot of that was going away about the time I got out of teaching 14 years ago. I get it, the airplanes are more expensive than ever and scale of flight schools is bigger and bigger. Risk management has to be taken seriously. It sounds so scripted and tame now. Getting special approval to do anything out of the ordinary, can't fly even instrument students when it's less than 2000-3, etc.

I think those adventures taught me a lot as an instructor. Whatever the case, they sure were fun, and I rarely felt like I was robotically doing the same maneuvers in VFR weather all the time.
 
jrh said:
When I was teaching full time I was mostly a one man show and there was a culture of pushing limits, in what I consider to be a good, healthy way. I'd take students to grass strips, 30 foot wide private strips, fly in actual weather, nothing super low, but maybe 500-1 kind of weather.
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When I got my ppl in 2020 we weren’t allowed to land at any runway under 3000’ and pavement only even with my cfi.
 
Fixtur said:
HA! I'm coming in VFR from the East. YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME!

(Seneca 8401M)
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Oh but I do. I do indeed sir.

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ASpilot2be said:
Agreed. The opposite side of that is line guys teaching technique in the sim. I have seen it burn new students.

In initial training at my new company, the best instructor I had never worked for us. But he knew the book very well, and taught us exactly what was in the book. But that's not the usual case I feel.
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I also agree with this statement!

The MD-11 guys were all spot on and it was probably the most standardized training I've ever received (with ONE exception...see my post above about old guys as sim instructors).

The 767 was nearly ALL tech-cedure! Frustrating as all hell!

"When are you going to do your T-Brief?"
"When they put it in the book."
 
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