Picking a flight school

"Bob Gardner"
Summary: Use Addison...you'll be better off in the long run. The worst
thing
you can do to yourself is to develop a reluctance to fly into class B, C,
or

Well, it seems unanimous. I am a little surprised, I expected to hear that
a little country airport was the way to go.

while little airports disappear every week.

They do? Where do they go?....

(just kidding)


Dallas

I'll throw in a dissenting opintion. :-)

While I agree that it is alarming how many pilots are reluctant to fly
into the local Class B, C or D airport, I don't think that is the place
to start your learning.

Flying is a bit like juggling, with about a dozen things going on all
at once. While, given enough time, it's possible to learn them all
simultaneously, I believe that a progressive approach is a better
method of instruction. It's much easier to give progressive instruction
when you fly out of a quiet, non-towered field.

Is it possible to give/get good instruction at a towered field? Sure,
but it's harder to find instructors who are capable of giving it.

Whatever happens, make sure you spend plenty of quality time at both
towered and non-towered airports. It will be worth your while. :-)

-Rob

---
Rob Montgomery
www.ScaryLittleAirplanes.org

Dallas wrote:

They do? Where do they go?....

Oh, they're still there. Under the parking lots at, for example, Hadley Center
in South Plainfield and Airport Mall in Hazlet.

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.

"George Patterson"
Oh, they're still there. Under the parking lots at, for example, Hadley
Center
in South Plainfield and Airport Mall in Hazlet.

....and putting greens?
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsite...03-1-157x.html

:-(

Dallas

Dallas wrote:


Well, it seems unanimous. I am a little surprised, I expected to hear that
a little country airport was the way to go.


It is not unanimous.

I made a lot of flights in and out of Addison during the years that I
was in Dallas. I don't recommend it, not any school there, for flight
training, though there are reasonable places to rent airplanes there
once you have a ticket.

There are two big negatives that I see. Number one is time: it just
takes too long to get to and from the practice areas. The Hobbs
ticks just as fast when you're getting out from under the class B
shelf as it does when you're really making progress. It's already
expensive enough, why add to it?

The really big one, though, is the quality of instructors. The big
majority there are arrogant know-nothing time-building (on your dimes)
airline-pilot wannabes. They can't teach you how to fly because they
don't know anything about aviation. They have barely an hour in the
air that was not spent either doing exactly what it takes and nothing
more to get their own ratings or teaching folks like you exactly what
it takes and nothing more to get ratings. They're hopeless as teachers
because they have no experience and don't particularly want to be
teachers in the first place.

Takeoff and landing delays tend not to be bad during weekdays but can
be pretty depressing on sunny weekends--being 12th in line for takeoff
with 13 in the pattern while the Hobbs spins isn't a great way to start
a lesson.

The advantage of learning in a busy environment is over-rated. Learn
to fly the airplane first, then take an hour or so, not much more,
to get comfortable dealing with Dallas approach control and ADS tower.

So sez me, who did do primary training at a rural strip not far from
Dallas and then rented from several FBO's at ADS.

xxx wrote:
There are two big negatives that I see. Number one is time: it just
takes too long to get to and from the practice areas. The Hobbs
ticks just as fast when you're getting out from under the class B
shelf as it does when you're really making progress. It's already
expensive enough, why add to it?


An excellent point. I learned at a suburban airport only about 15 miles from
what is now a class B airport. I learned to fly first, then I learned to talk.
Then I learned to talk at the big airport. We went in and out of there
periodically and so it had no particular horror for me. Later, I had a flying
job where I flew out of that same Class B airport twice a day five days a week.
It was just another airport to me by that time... but I wouldn't have wanted to
start learning how to fly there.


The really big one, though, is the quality of instructors. The big
majority there are arrogant know-nothing time-building (on your dimes)
airline-pilot wannabes. They can't teach you how to fly because they
don't know anything about aviation. They have barely an hour in the
air that was not spent either doing exactly what it takes and nothing
more to get their own ratings or teaching folks like you exactly what
it takes and nothing more to get ratings. They're hopeless as teachers
because they have no experience and don't particularly want to be
teachers in the first place.


After being out of flying for 15 years because of medical problems, I'm back.
And when I look for an instructor these days for recurrency work, I look for
CFIs who are already ATPs as well. They're not building time; they've got it.
I assume they teach because they enjoy it. And I know they've flown enough to
have practical experience about which they speak.

I had to snicker when getting an aircraft checkout from a young instructor one
day when he went into great detail about what to do if the engine quits.
Between the two of us, there were two airplane crashes related to engines
quiting to draw experience from. Unfortunately, he hadn't made either of them.
G

So, when I was looking for instrument recurrency training, I found an ATP to get
it with. It tends to be a much more refined lesson than I get from someone
who's never actually done it but has only read about it. Many of the CFIIs I
run into actually have very little real IFR experience, which surprised me quite
a bit. But the ATPs....



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE