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Student Drop-Out Rates...why?
In another thread, we have been hashing out whether some pilots in training
quit flying because of a hair-raising event, such as a brush with disaster, or getting lost. Few ex-students seem to admit that this was a reason for quitting, but the drop-out rate seems to be far higher than it should be, and we all need to do our level best to get more people into flight training. The World War II and Korean War era pilots are dropping like flies, and formerly bustling airports, especially in the vast reaches of the MidWest and Western states, are turning into ghost fields. We need more pilots, pronto, or we won't have anywhere to land in 20 years! No municipality is going to pay to keep an airport open that is used by fewer and fewer pilots every year -- and I can't blame them. Off the top of my head I can think of three reasons (other than being scared out of the cockpit) for the continuing drop-out conundrum: 1. CFI shuffling - You just get comfortable with an instructor, and off to the regionals they go, leaving you to start all over with a new CFI... 2. Airport "snobbery" -- You walk into an FBO, prepared to spend thousands, and you feel like an alien being on a strange world. 3. No Syllabus -- Too many CFIs work off the seat of their pants, without a formal lesson plan. This drove me nuts, when I was getting my ticket. 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? -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
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