Originally Posted by
flensr
Lots of reasons. The training is quite condensed, and the initial academics are taught by people with no experience or context. And then if a student self-identifies as being behind, the training department knee-jerk reaction is to label the student a whiner and tell them to suck it up and fail like a man, regardless of how much experience that student has.
I ran a major flying training shop for a couple of years, and our instructor training shop for a year. Among other roles, I was responsible for identifying students who were at risk of washing out and making direct recommendations to the boss on if we were going to keep them or wash them out. So I have some experience judging when a student is at risk of failing. Asking for a single study day to prevent failing my checkride got me the standard spirit training answer of "All students complain about the program, suck it up, request denied."
So it's a combination of a minimalist training program, inexperienced instructors, and a training department that is at least partially stuck on stupid. My advice to anyone going through spirit training is to quit early if you think you're gonna fail, since there's absolutely no reason to ever go to a checkride you think you might fail. Call out sick, chop off a toe, whatever it takes, but do NOT go to a checkride you're not fully confident you'll pass. And certainly don't fail a checkride for $38/hour and a restraining order. You're much better off explaining why you quit a training program, than having to explain a checkride bust or getting fired.
Seriously??? What universe are you living in? This is all 100% false. The training department will bend over backwards to get new hires through. Including extra sims and lots of extra OE. You clearly haven’t the faintest idea what your talking about and are flaming out of anger towards the current labor environment. The level of experience from new hires is in the crapper. PERIOD. They struggle with this program which was implemented when the “low time” applicants had 6 or 7k hours. Your definition of a “knee jerk reaction” is so far from reality it’s unbelievable. The training department is suffering from the lack of qualified pilots due in large part to an incompetent DO and COO which leaves us with new hires who barely or don’t at all have ATPs and belong nowhere within 10k miles of an Airbus. Fact. I’ll agree one one point and one alone... if you don’t have a high level of experience, your leaving yourself VERY succeptable to a training failure. That has little to do with instructors and much more to do with crappy management and a lack of resources.