Two hindrances here in the USA: not enough instructors and not
enough examiners.

As far as instructors go, until recently, one needed to pass four
exams (private, commercial, instrument, instructor) to become
an airplane flight instructor. All this to fly a Piper J-3 Cub
on a sunny day.

Glider instructors needed a private, commercial, and instructor rating.
The private and commercial standards are identical for all performance
tasks except banks are +/-5 deg, airspeed is +/-5 knots, and landing
spot is +/-100feet (instead of +5/-10 deg, +10/-5knots, and +/-200ft).
The commercial test seems utterly redundant to me; one could acheive
an indistinguishable level of safety by simply applying a second
Private Pilot test.

The newly finalized Sport Pilot rule eliminates the commercial
rating (and the instrument for power) for those wanting to be instructors in
"Light Sport Gliders," something like a SGS 2-33 or Ka-7 or ASK-13.

So part of the problem has been ameliorated. It has also become very easy
for instructors in one category (like airplanes) to become glider
instructors. This just takes the signatures of two glider instructors:
no examiner is involved.

Which brings us to the subject of examiners. There aren't that many.
With over 80,000 instructors and about 1100 examiners, you can figure
out the effects.

When the FAA sort of relieved itself of the responsibility of
giving many flight tests, it gave this over to US "designated pilot
examiners(DPEs)." These are private profiteers, vetted by the FAA for
quality, who give (most of) the FAA flight tests.

As related to me by a longtime examiner, this was his story. He said
when this program began, the FAA granted the DPE to whoever met the
minimum qualifications, and was competent. After the first few years,
there was heavy complaining from the DPEs that they weren't getting enough
business to justify the recurrency and "hassle," and many didn't
renew. Over time, the FAA got sick of the fairly high turnover of DPEs,
and became more selective. The minimums were just a start: beyond that
they took only the best.

DPE quality and consistency improved. Less turnover. The FAA was better
able to manage the DPEs. Standards were developed over longer terms,
and the professional DPEs became more common (although there are
still some low output DPEs who essentially do exams part time).

So cost to the FAA decreased, and quality improved. What's the problem?
Well, a four week wait to get an exam is a problem (for some people).
For some people, paying $250-$500 to have a very overqualified 10,000 hour
pilot watch them do steep turns is a lot of money.
Especially if you already have a pilot license.

Is this necessary? Well, no. The FAA with Sport Pilot has moved
to a point where the FAA or a designee (DPE) gets one look at
you for each level (Private/SP or Instructor). Then the switch to
other cat/class in low(er) performance aircraft is easy (just two
instructors, who outnumber examiners by 75/1).

Win win win for everyone. The examiners may actually get MORE
applicants as airplane pilots get sucked into and hooked on
gliders under the "easy transition" rules, and then want
full privileges (in Grob 103 and Blanik L-13, requiring a checkride).
The FAA is happy, because they get to keep the quality of the
DPEs high.

The instructors get more students, getting the same amount of
training but with a result that is slightly better than
just soloing.

The pilots get relief from some checkride pressures.
For the ones that want to be a Sport Pilot CFI in gliders and
in airplanes, this is only two checkrides. No IFR, no complex,
no commercial time, just two checkrides. Before, this was
SIX checkrides. A huge difference...

So if your country doesn't have something like Sport Pilot,
then I can see issues.

Good luck!

Mark

In article ,
Don Johnstone wrote:
I have just read through this thread. I don't think
the problem is one single factor but there is a problem
with infrastructure. Just look around your club, what
is the average age of the instructors? Is that average
reducing? Are the numbers of instructors increasing
year on year? The sad truth is that if we were able
to recruit large numbers of new students most clubs
would not have the instructor resources to train them
and sadly if you don't enable people to see they are
progressing at a decent rate they become disallusioned
and find something else 'more exciting'.
We have been seeing (in the UK) a gradually decreasing
instructor pool. I had my first instructor category
at 18 and until this year I had retained it. Over the
years being an instructor has become less and less
of an advantage and the club where I flew even charged
me more membership that someone who did not instruct.
I flew about 5 hours in 2003 in my own glider from
my own club. The only time I could fly it was if I
went away where I could not be the duty instructor.
I don't think my case is unique. It is absolutely
pointless trying to attract new students until we have
put right the decline in the numbers of people qualified
to teach them, and that means attaracting young people
into instructing. With the cost of attaining an instructor
category, where the potential instructor has to spend
large amounts of his own cash, it is perhaps not surprising
that becoming an instructor is less popular. There
is no doubt that it is possible to purchase your own
glider, with a reasonable performance, for less money
than you will spend on getting a full cat rating or
even an Ass Cat. Given that choice which way would
you choose?
Seeing what happens tomorrow is not a plan!!!!!

At 08:30 04 December 2004, Mike Lindsay wrote:

Todays youth have more disposable income than most
of us could ever have
dreamed of at their age and in the future they are
likely to have more
leisure time and even more money.

Not sure about more leisure time. People seem to have
to work harder
than they did 30 years ago.

Flying has to become something that
youngsters 'want to do' it has to become cool. Rather
than sticking with the
old way of doing things perhaps we should fire every
club committee member
on the planet over 30 and let the youngsters with backwards
baseball caps,
wrap around shades and baggy pants drag soaring into
the 21st century. Us
old farts are not doing too good a job of stewardship
if you ask me.

Er, what younger people do you mean? At our club the
average age of the
members attending on Wednesdays is just short of 70.
It may be slightly
younger at weekends, but not by very much.

We need a new approach.

Ian





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Mike Lindsay






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Mark J. Boyd