Student Drop-Out Rates...why?

wrote in message
oups.com...

...snip

I come from a boating family and it's enlightening to compare the two.
Boating is unregulated and almost solely recreational. Flying is
heavily regulated and has utility as a means of transportation.

Boats might be a source of fun, but they can be, and are, used for
transportation. Come visit the Chesapeake Bay area and you will see plenty
of boats out for fun, while also being used to go somewhere.

wrote:

The real problem we should focus on are people who get their license
but then become inactive. There's no shortage of these, and they are
low-hanging fruit.

Ok. You help me find a job within an hour's drive of my home that requires less
than 60 hours a week and pays at least 60K a year (much more if I have to
commute to Manhattan). Preferably involving computers, since that's what my MS
is in. I'll be flying again soon after I find that job.

One friend of mine probably will never fly again, but you never know. He quit
because of lack of time and money, but I think he's lost interest to the point
that he wouldn't start again if he won the lottery.

Another friend of mine quit when the kids started arriving. He was also upset
because he could never find the time to study for the instrument rating (he'd
get maybe two weeks of study and then work would ramp up again). That's a man
who may be back when the kids get through college.

On second thought, maybe these people don't have to be attracted back into
actively participating in aviation. As I understand it, Jay's main issue is that
we need more flyers to allow us to apply more political pressure. It is to be
hoped that that pressure will prevent airport closings and harsh restrictions.
With a few exceptions, most former aviators are likely to be friendly to our cause.

Perhaps the way to go is to start up a non-profit that will concentrate on
informing and/or pressuring non-active pilots about political issues. Go after
people who used to fly and now don't, former AOPA members, former EAA members,
etc.. I suppose that funding would have to come from active aviators, but you
never know.

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.

What I described is most emphatically NOT being a passenger. It's
being a driver.

Fair enough - you didn't mention an autopilot. But I can't concieve of
one of these being marketed without one. Lots of present day pilots
swear by George already.

Why shouldn't we make it that simple?
It would give us the advantage of numbers, and that of course would
reduce costs, regulation, etc.

Don't confuse "simple" with "simplistic". It would most certainly NOT
reduce regulation; if anything with all the influx of barely trained
drivers climbing to ten thousand in some light midwinter rain, I
anticipate lots of new regulations, bringing flying down to the least
common denomenator. No, it's not anywhere near there now.

I most emphatically disagree that weather will not be a problem. No
matter what you do, you are still being held aloft on a blast of air by
a piece of something whose shape matters a lot.

Every plane would have the
equivalent of a Garmin 396 (its failure would be considered an
emergency condition warranting a call to ATC for emergency handling)

1: Even if they don't fail much, with lots of them out there, they will
fail often enough to make ATC into AAA.

2: Even if they never fail, I don't see the average joe who can't
program their VCR making head or tail out of what it does when it dishes
out an "interface surprise", especially as it gets a tad bumpy up there
and they are threading their way through the frowny faces on the moving map.

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.

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

BTW Nixon was president in 1972

Oh yeah. That was the year he was impeached, wasn't it.

nope.

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule

I'm not sure you're onto something there - as a group, the pilots I know
are probably the least athletic and least fit and eat the worst foods of
any group I know! Go to any fly-in and notice the propensity to being
rotund.

How odd. Maintaining my medical has become one of my exercise mantras.
And
they're working. I'm in better shape now than when I started flying
several years ago.

It may be that I know a few people that lost their medicals (although at
least one got his back after a "final rejection" {8^).

Amen. After my recent high blood pressure scare, I lost 25 pounds. (And
I've been working out regularly for several years.)

Why? Because I want to live forever? Hell, no! I just want to keep my
medical for as long as possible, and there is simply no other way to do it.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

It's not crude price increases which are causing the increase in oil
industry profits lately. It's world demand for refined product (we have
to import actual gasoline now, too), and limited refinery capacity in
this country -- a supply-demand problem. The gov't could easily cause
refineries to be built with changes in environmental regulations, so the
cause of the "windfall profits" is essentially -- our gov't!

Well said.

We are dangerously low on refinery capacity, and current EPA regulations
make it essentially impossible to build any more in the U.S.

It's insane, but it's the law.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article . com,
wrote:

IMHO this is the wrong problem to focus on solving. Up through solo,
flying is all fun and no work. Then you get into the written test and
all the crap to prepare for the checkride. Now it's a chore. I'll bet
getting rid of the written would reduce the attrition rate by at least
25%, perhaps more, but it won't happen anytime soon.

I guess that depends on the order in which the student does things.
I passed my written and had my medical before the first lesson.

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule

With modern technology, it would be no problem to design and build
airplanes that any idiot could learn to fly in a weekend, never mind a
week. We wouldn't get the Harley crowd that way, but we might well get
the Mercedes crowd.

NOW we're getting somewhere.

Maybe that's the ticket. Take the original Ercoupe concept (unstallable,
easy to fly), combine it with bullet-proof GPS navigation, and a ballistic
parachute.

I think maybe there might be a Light Sport Aircraft that fills this niche?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

It doesn't matter how desirable something is to someone who can't afford
it or how affordable something is to someone who doesn't want it, desire
and resources have to match. Aviation doesn't appeal to many of those who
can afford it.

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

Yep,
It's called an Ercoupe! Model C and C/D both qualify as sport pilot
planes. But the company who owns the rights to the design has no plans to
make any more, though they may just sell like hotcakes

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:xR5Pe.62775$084.46520@attbi_s22...

NOW we're getting somewhere.

Maybe that's the ticket. Take the original Ercoupe concept (unstallable,
easy to fly), combine it with bullet-proof GPS navigation, and a ballistic
parachute.

I think maybe there might be a Light Sport Aircraft that fills this niche?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"