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Transpac or other flight schools?

Old 06-17-2018, 09:17 AM
  #11  
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At least all the accidents that happened when I was there recently were due to the what I mentioned. I did feel a lot safer about the midairs, the school purchased a bunch of Stratus's and foreflight for everyone, so every flight and traffic on their iPad, Luke SATR makes a huge difference. At the end of the day, yes training foreign students in the busy Phoenix airspace is without a doubt more risky than most other instructing jobs, but thats just the nature of the job.

The school has gotten better about rushing students through solo due to those crashes, management came out and said if you don't feel comfortable don't sign them off period. However on the flip side they do push the students into the solo stage. Once again, it comes down to the instructor, one of my coworkers had a student who has pretty bad and they instructor refused to sign him off, management trusted him, put the student through a flight review, the student didn't meet standards and was sent home. From my time there, the instructors who got into problems were the ones who put logging flight time ahead of teaching their students properly.
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Old 06-17-2018, 09:38 AM
  #12  
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Yea I don’t think anyone should avoid the school solely on the reason that there have been a lot of accidents. Just come in eyes wide open, do your due diligence and maintain your standards.

The company has a bottom line to maintain, and you have a clean record to protect while teaching high risk students. The rebranding is obviously a PR move and while the company would never admit to pushing students through, they exist to maintain a profit.

GL
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Old 06-17-2018, 02:06 PM
  #13  
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"High risk students" is the key phrase here.
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Old 06-17-2018, 03:45 PM
  #14  
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Transpac/panam/aerogard (et al) has long been a foreign-pilot student-mill. Three students and one instructor in the airplane, just land to swap students. Instructors have record numbers of student-failures for practical tests; it's common for students to have multiple failures on each of their certificates or ratings. Deer Valley is the busiest general aviation field in the country. A lot of student operations out of there, very little intelligible English on the radio or the general area.

When a school only allows four of their aircraft to be used for solo flights, and most "solo" flights are done with the instructor on board ("supervised solo"), it doesn't speak particularly well to the confidence of the school.
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Old 06-17-2018, 04:09 PM
  #15  
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Originally Posted by JohnBurke View Post

When a school only allows four of their aircraft to be used for solo flights, and most "solo" flights are done with the instructor on board ("supervised solo"), it doesn't speak particularly well to the confidence of the school.
I hadn’t heard of supervised solos...wow. It sounds like preventing more hull losses, and possibly making sure they actually do what they are meant to. I remember that students on solos would go fly circles over wickenburg on their “long XC”, and another instance of them running the tach out on the ground.
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Old 06-17-2018, 04:39 PM
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Originally Posted by BluePAX View Post
I hadn’t heard of supervised solos...wow. It sounds like preventing more hull losses, and possibly making sure they actually do what they are meant to. I remember that students on solos would go fly circles over wickenburg on their “long XC”, and another instance of them running the tach out on the ground.
It's also about pushing students through who have no business being in the air and aren't competent to solo an aircraft. There are major ethical implications involved with sending students to a practical test who aren't competent, and who will fail over and over again.

That some are willing to be a part of that just to jack their logbook hours up enough to move on isn't something one should be proud of.
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Old 06-17-2018, 05:29 PM
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In my time instructing there, supervised solos wasn't a thing. However the school did put a tremendous amount of effort into the solos, they had tons of rules and guidelines, the biggest issue was the students were on a timeline, they had to solo within a certain timeframe and both the students and the instructors knew this. I thought that was the biggest danger, forcing every student to solo in a certain timeframe, because as mentioned by JohnBurke, a handful of these students were not solo ready. How more crashes don't occur is an absolute, hands down wonder.
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Old 06-17-2018, 07:18 PM
  #18  
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Originally Posted by COKS View Post
In my time instructing there, supervised solos wasn't a thing. However the school did put a tremendous amount of effort into the solos, they had tons of rules and guidelines, the biggest issue was the students were on a timeline, they had to solo within a certain timeframe and both the students and the instructors knew this. I thought that was the biggest danger, forcing every student to solo in a certain timeframe, because as mentioned by JohnBurke, a handful of these students were not solo ready. How more crashes don't occur is an absolute, hands down wonder.
After flying out of a field where these yahoos show up regularly, I can only say a lot of these guys should never be flying in the US airspace.
I had 2 or 3 near close calls because of complete BS traffic calls they made just because they repeat them from memory, not because they actually understand what they are saying.

Like, "midfield right downwind", when they are actually upwind.
I hope these schools will be sued out of existence. They push through students who aren't even close on the "english proficient" requirement, and their DPE buddies accept it.

What they SHOULD do, is that the US embassies in China should conduct the visa interviews in English, not Mandarin/Cantonese as they do now. That would weed out the worst candidates. Read the interview of that cowboy deportation case. The guy was here to get his ATP, and his English was at "Policeman is best american" level.

People have died, and will keep on dying, because of them. Disgusting.
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Old 06-18-2018, 05:55 AM
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Originally Posted by dera View Post
After flying out of a field where these yahoos show up regularly, I can only say a lot of these guys should never be flying in the US airspace.
I had 2 or 3 near close calls because of complete BS traffic calls they made just because they repeat them from memory, not because they actually understand what they are saying.

Like, "midfield right downwind", when they are actually upwind.
I hope these schools will be sued out of existence. They push through students who aren't even close on the "english proficient" requirement, and their DPE buddies accept it.

What they SHOULD do, is that the US embassies in China should conduct the visa interviews in English, not Mandarin/Cantonese as they do now. That would weed out the worst candidates. Read the interview of that cowboy deportation case. The guy was here to get his ATP, and his English was at "Policeman is best american" level.

People have died, and will keep on dying, because of them. Disgusting.
I totally agree with some of that, sadly a lot of it is the instructors not correcting them on bad calls like that. 99% of instructors at large foreign student flight schools are young guys looking to get to the regionals ASAP, fastest way is through those schools, so their hearts and minds are really not committed to producing good, competent students. And every single student is business for the school, so while they may be incompetent and not able to fly, getting them through their stage checks means pay check for the school, its a backward system.
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Old 06-18-2018, 07:52 AM
  #20  
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Isn't there an English test with different levels, level 1, level 2, etc.?

Is the FAA just turning a blind eye towards all of this? The people who should be jumping all over this is the FAA.
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