Student Drop-Out Rates...why?

Ben Hallert wrote:
I've heard it said that buying the plane is the cheapest part of the
aircraft ownership experience.


To borrow from the boating set, the two happiest days of your life are the day
you buy and the day you sell your airplane.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

I don't know about that. It sounds like the newbie gets way too much
advice up front. All he/she wants is to get in the air. When he/she
asks "how do I start?", the advice should stop right after the part
where they get their license. After that, if they want to work their
way up, be available to advise.

AJ

wrote:

PS -- I've taken most of my friends and s.o.'s up over the years, and
everyone comments on that musty smell. What's the deal with that? Can't
something be done. I'm not kidding. A little can of "new airplane
smell" perhaps?

Rolls-Royce sells cans of stuff that give an interior the smell of a 1966 RR.
They did some research, and that was the year that smelled the best to most
people. They even spray their new cars with it.

If it works for them, maybe ...

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

wrote:
I don't mean to psychoanalyze, but your son's friend's statement seems
suspect. He apparently has spent some time practicing simulated ILSes
into JFK (not to mention paying for and assembling a spiffy flight
simulator), so he must have found it somewhat entertaining on the
computer. How could it have been less entertaining in a real aircraft?

I would guess that the real aircraft is long periods of more-or-less straight
and level flight, which he finds boring. He might find doing touch-and-goes at
JFK during a push exciting, but that could get a tad expensive.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

Put foggles on the kid and tell him to fly for awhile.

"john smith" wrote in message
...
Put foggles on the kid and tell him to fly for awhile.

Didn't have to. I couldn't get him to stop looking at the instruments when
he was up there.

I couldn't get him to stop looking at the instruments when
he was up there.

No wonder he was bored. Cover them all up and take him flying again.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:rEcNe.42126$084.40784@attbi_s22...
You'll notice I've not mentioned the Number One reason people mention for
quitting: Money. We've beaten the relative cost of flying to death, and
(for
the purposes of this thread) I will just leave it at this: Learning to fly
is about as expensive as a semester of college, and less expensive than
buying a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Let's leave "cost" out of this, for
now, as I think it's safe to say that there a millions of Americans who
could easily afford to learn to fly, if the urge were to strike.

That aside, can you name some other reasons for the abysmal drop-out rate
of
student pilots? What can we do to make flying more accessible to those
who dream of piloting an aircraft?

"If God had meant man to fly he would have given us more money", or the
corollary,
"Aviation is God's way of telling us to make more money".

To ignore the money issue is to ignore the elephant in the room. Money
spent for education is usually justified as being an investment that will
earn a financial as well as a personal return. The cost of training to the
level where one can even begin to see a reduction in the cost (let alone see
an income) are substantial and certainly cannot be justified by the return.
When a close to minimum wage part time job requires an investment of time
and money similar to a university degree there is not much incentive. A
real piloting job will require more like 1000 hrs TT and 500 in type, that
will entail an investment similar to medical school or several years in the
minimum wage area. All of this investment can be lost with one bad medical.

An investment in a used Harley or Corvette will earn a greater return than a
similar amount invested in an aircraft, and both can be reconditioned in
your home garage, have cheaper (but often identical) parts and qualify for
"owner maintenance". I would love to have my own aircraft (and have the
cash) but have listened carefully to the experiences of other owners and
have run the numbers for myself and I just can not justify the cost (or the
financial risk), especially after considering that the ongoing burdens of
insurance, fuel, regulation, hangar and maintenance are going nowhere but
up. The private fleet is getting more than a little long in the tooth and I
must question where the new buyers are coming from to continue to subsidize
the keep of our aging hangar queens that we can not afford to fly due to the
rapidly increasing costs of fuel (approaching 6$C/usgal) and maintenance.

I continue to fly as much as possible but there are not many interesting
aircraft available for rent and the level of liability we assume as renters
is frankly scary. The liability issue is solved by flying dual and that
does not require a (wallet) checkout flight, but does raise my standards
regarding the types I wish to fly. One of the local schools has just
obtained a new Husky on amphibs that I am looking forward to flying but not
of paying for (250$C/hr dual). After getting accustomed to that price I
will be able to justify getting some multi time and probably a rating. Both
of these aircraft should provide me with a learning challenge which I am
looking forward to and I will also do some more acro with a Decathlon which
will seem cheap by comparison.

The cost of a PPL is not the final cost of learning to fly. We say that "we
are always a student in an aeroplane" and the cost of learning to fly
continues long after the PPL (or CPL). I find aviation study and training
personally rewarding and should probably be pursuing the instructor route in
order to minimize some of the cost but I recognize that being an instructor
has its own costs and requires a level of commitment to the student that I
am not keen to accept and also means that I would be spending a great deal
of time in order to sit in the right seat of an aircraft that I would not be
too excited about flying from the left.

Until I find a way to make the cost of flying more reasonable, I will
consider it a luxury that I will consume as long as I find it enjoyable and
in the amount that I can afford. None of my thoughts are likely to make any
of my friends wish to take up the addiction.

Just my .02 YMMV

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:36:50 GMT, "private"
wrote:

To ignore the money issue is to ignore the elephant in the room.

There's another elephant. The instructor explains that flying is all
about risk management, and the student thinks, "Well, ****. Probably
90% of the people who died in airplanes thought they were managing
their risks to the extent that they didn't expect to die that day.
The instructor as much as said right now that only way I can
*completely* manage the risk of dying in an airplane is by staying out
of them. There's lots of risky things in life I can't avoid, but
flying is a lifestyle choice."

Don (Flying with that elephant since 1968. "So far, so good.")

You'll notice I've not mentioned the Number One reason people mention for
quitting: Money.

To ignore the money issue is to ignore the elephant in the room.

Right. However, we can't change the money situation. We CAN change
the other variables that are causing the appallingly high student drop
out rate in aviation.

An investment in a used Harley or Corvette will earn a greater return than a
similar amount invested in an aircraft, and both can be reconditioned in
your home garage, have cheaper (but often identical) parts and qualify for
"owner maintenance".

Well, I don't think a Corvette is going to appreciate as much as a
common single engine plane. I bought my Warrior for $32.7 K and sold
it for $40 K, after flying the pants off of it for four years.

Now, of course, I put a TON of stuff into it -- mostly with sweat
equity. I think you are under-estimating the amount of stuff an owner
can do to enhance the quality and value of an airplane.

Cosmetics make a HUGE difference in the value of an airplane, and it's
one of the easiest areas for an owner to address. Replace the ratty
interior, fix the cracked plastic, reupholster the seats, buff out the
paint, put some ArmorAll on the rubber, and shazam -- you've got a MUCH
more valuable aircraft.

I would love to have my own aircraft (and have the
cash) but have listened carefully to the experiences of other owners and
have run the numbers for myself and I just can not justify the cost (or the
financial risk), especially after considering that the ongoing burdens of
insurance, fuel, regulation, hangar and maintenance are going nowhere but
up.

Sounds like you're a candidate for a homebuilt aircraft?

The private fleet is getting more than a little long in the tooth and I
must question where the new buyers are coming from to continue to subsidize
the keep of our aging hangar queens that we can not afford to fly due to the
rapidly increasing costs of fuel (approaching 6$C/usgal) and maintenance.

Gasoline is only now getting back to the price it was (in real terms)
back in the 1980s. As painful as I'm finding it to refuel our plane
(and we burn car gas!), I must remind myself that the last 20 years
have really been a tremendous bargain.


I continue to fly as much as possible but there are not many interesting
aircraft available for rent and the level of liability we assume as renters
is frankly scary.

In what way?

Until I find a way to make the cost of flying more reasonable, I will
consider it a luxury that I will consume as long as I find it enjoyable and
in the amount that I can afford. None of my thoughts are likely to make any
of my friends wish to take up the addiction.

Yes, you should probably keep them to yourself, lest we scare away any
new pilots!

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"