ZUKO - Out of curiosity, are you planning on doing your training in AZ with ASU (Mesa does their training)?
Also, I'm sorry to hear about your complaints with your former instructor, but I'd have to agree that your experience is NOT the norm up at UND. I think your former instructor is just guilty of not making the shift from full-time student (and the partying, free-for-all lifestyle outside of classes and flying) to professional that people rely on and may have been unable to manage all the new tasks. You need to remember that the templates that UND creates are for a minimum number of lessons to be accomplished to finish on time, and not the only days that you can get lessons done. If everyone flew 5 times a week, the need for airplanes and instructors would skyrocket.
More Airplanes = More money to buy them
More money = more cost
more cost = higher aircraft rates
UND works hard to find the happy medium between cost and convenience. The benefit of a state of the art fleet and nationally known and respected school is that airlines and other companies come in and hire UND grads with way less hours than street minimums because they know the product (the students) is better than anywhere else. You may be able to get time faster somewhere else, but you won't necessarily be able to do anything with it.
Don't forget that CFI's can only give 8 hours of Flight training in a 24 hour period. Let's say a CFI has 4 students whose normal launches are 0800 (A) & 1030 (B) MWF and another 2 that are 0830 (C) & 1100 (D) TRS. This instructor only has 4 students (considered part-time). If the 0830 TRS (student C) has to do a long cross country for their course, the MWF students may HAVE to be cancelled so the instructor does not exceed FAR's and risk losing their license and possible fines from the FAA.
EXAMPLE
Instructor flies with student D on Thursday (CFI's first flight of the day) and they flight begins at 1115. The instructor's clock starts to count down from 8 hours. The flight lands at 1305 (oops they are a little late) and lasts 1.8 - the instructor's clock is down to 6.2 hours left.
Student D and the CFI debrief until 1330, and the CFI gets lunch and meets with the next student at 1400.
Student C wants to go GFK-EAU-STP-GFK in a Warrior for their XC. They leave GFK at 1430, and land in EAU at 1730. After fuel, restroom, etc, they takeoff for STP at 1800. They land at 1845, top off, and take the Jag for dinner. They take off for home at 2000 and pick up a tailwind home. The time on the aircraft ends up being 6.0 exactly when the aircraft lands at GFK at 2200 (10 hours until his next flight-duty rest period). The CFI has provided 7.8 hours of Dual that day. He goes home goes to sleep and can start instruction at 0800 Friday morning, right?
WRONG
The instructor only has .2 hours left on his 8 hour clock that started at 1115 the day before that means he is only able to give 12 minutes of instruction before 1115 Friday morning. Student A and student B must be canceled due to duty day restrictions. Could they be rescheduled with a different instructor? Possibly. If they are 102 students-most likely NOT. FAR's dictate that initial training up to the first solo must be performed by the instructor that endorses the solo flight. If a lesson was to be done with a different CFI, the student's normal CFI would HAVE to review ALL new training given on that flight. Cost? A review flight - around $150. Most CFI's would rather cancel the flight and try to get an extra one in here or there than make the student shell out more cash.
Moral of the story is this CFI has 4 students, and some WILL get canceled now and then due to VERY normal circumstances. If the instructor is a full-time instructor (6 new students each semester) and has a couple that did not finish from a previous semester, let's say 3, that instructor has 9 students. If they are teaching courses with XC's early in the syllabus, (221, 325, etc) the cancel scenario may happen to more than a couple students more often. While the instructor should communicate this to the students, it can and will happen. If the instructor wants to factor in some personal time (friends, family, husband/wife, kids) they should be able to. Your doctor doesn't sit at the hospital waiting for you 24/7, neither should an instructor.
I do think that it is funny 3 people in this forum are going to see a screening of a movie together. One was upset their former instructor was unavailable due to needing personal time, but is carpooling with an instructor that tied up a hard-to-get SEMI launch, then canceled it to do something personal.....
ZUKO - I'm happy to hear you've found an instructor that you can coordinate better with. This post has been solely for informing you and some others the delicate balance of things that happen that students don't always see. In the end, everyone will do what they think is best, and will think what they believe is right. While I personally think you may not make the best decision leaving UND for a "get-rich-quick" training program, you will obviously do what you think is right. Maybe you'll stick it out and make sure you never have students that feel the way you feel when you're instructing at UND with your username as your indentifier...I have to believe you picked ZUKO because it's probably part of your last name and you saw all the CFI's at UND had similar things as their ID. I think I may have even marked by books with what I thought my ID was going to be if I got hired. (I found out UND does not re-use ID's and instead may use the a combination of your first and last if the first 4 of your last name was already used....damn!!)
