We Still Do It Like Lindy Did, And We're Still Learning Like He Was

Once again in looking at a subset of the year in review we can see certain trends emerging. A cursory glance at flight training says it's much like it was in 1925. Hmmm... yeah. If you don't look deeply.

First, there is a shift in who's taking flight training and how underway, and as a result of this there's a shakeout in flight schools.

Second, Part 141 ab-initio programs continue their growth, even though they too are seeing a brutal shake-out in their ranks. Despite the desperate straits of the airline industry, young people are gambling big money -- parents' money, or borrowed money, but big money nonetheless -- on Part 141 complete all-in-one training packages. We have seen that some of these consistently produce outstanding pilots, some produce bare-minimum seventy-percenters, and some are ratings mills where the output varies wildly because the individual has a great influence in his or her training.

There is a definite need for the student to caveat emptor when he or she is laying out most of $100k to become a sky god (or goddess). A couple of these schools have folded, leaving students holding the bag for the loan. Even well-established, successful programs have been threatened with closing.

The Student Trend

Student starts are down a little in 2005, a trend we can hang on soaring fuel prices, and the student that we're seeing fewer of is the "hobby" student. The curious kid, the mid-life crisis guy, the retiree ordered out of the house to find a hobby, all are down in 05, and a larger share of starts consists of people who intend and hope to fly for a living. This is good news for those flight schools, Part 61 or 141, that can move a student along briskly and offer advanced ratings, and not so good for the small school with few airplanes and instructors with tight schedules. For the industry it's an alarming trend, at least that part of the industry that thinks GA ought to be healthy in its own right.

Two Major Schools Down In 2005

Two schools closed in 2005, leaving irate students filing lawsuits against what appeared to be empty shells of corporations. Both schools were oriented towards a Part 141 airline curriculum, and took large cash deposits, or loans up front, from students. After the closure of the schools, it turned out that the pre-paid tuition had been spent in Ponzi-like desperation.

TAB Express was an egregious case, with one of the owners locking the doors, giving the instructors a half hour to empty their closets as "the money is gone," then driving off into the sunset this June.

In a Ferrari.

Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, also closed its doors abruptly, in this case, in September. The school, a long-standing low-budget leader, was a favorite for foreign students. Some small nations' entire Air Forces (Suriname springs to mind) had been trained at Airman. But with new requirements, it's harder, and more hassle, for foreigners to train in the USA. When Airman folded, at least 66 students lost some or all of their money, but the resulting lawsuit soon only had six plaintiffs, because the other 60 in the class were foreign and could not remain in the US on their student visas once the school closed.

For experienced aviation-training hands, it was "deja vu all over again," a near replay of the 2003 scandal when the Airline Training Academy in Orlando, Florida closed down overnight, leaving students in the lurch.

Meanwhile, Pan Am Closes A Location For A Different Reason

Pan Am International Flight Academy, another aggressive advertiser, didn't close a school or leave students in the lurch, but it did close a campus.

After living through the weather of 04 in Florida, they decided to bail in April 05... it worked out well for the school, as their suburban Phoenix training operation kept going while a record hurricane season ravaged Florida and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

If The Schools Are Shaky, The Equipment Keeps Improving

We're seeing a paradox with new educational technology. Vendors are keen to have it adopted, but pilots and instructors often resist, and hornet swarms of salesmen are chasing few fleeing customers. But that's mostly true about simulators.

In the airplane, everybody wants the latest, and that means glass and GPS. It will also come to mean, very soon, NEXRAD weather. Even the most callow student today knows that the FAA is gathering up the NDBs one by one, soon to be followed by the VORs. These are going the way of the four-directional low frequency range, and will someday be something you can play greybeard about.

("You flew the NDB? Big deal! I flew NDBs and LORAN! Arrrrr! Nothing but NDBs and DME arcs between me and safety... there was a headwind both ways and it followed me around the hold. Aye, men were men in those days, sonny! And so were the women.")

That's why you have paradoxes like slick Avidyne flight decks in 110-knot Piper Warriors, and Garmin glass in 172s. In fifteen or twenty years you probably won't be able to fly a regular six-pack without specific training and an instructor endorsement, like you need for a tailwheel now.

The glass panels will make better prepared pilots, and they'll be safer to fly. the day there's an AD scrapping the last vacuum pump in America will be a great day for flight safety, as it's the most accident-prone thing we put in planes, apart from pilots.

Sport Training - Taking Off

It's been slow getting started, owing to the chicken-or-egg conundrum, but now that we're starting to see some CFIs and Sport Pilot examiners, we're starting to see some uptake on Sport Pilot training. It's looking like 2006 will be a make-or-break year.

Safety And Training - A Cautionary Tale

An unusual lawsuit filed in late May resulted from a very unusual training accident. Now, primary training accidents -- fatal accidents, as opposed to solo student undercarriage abuse -- are extremely uncommon to begin with. Indeed, flight training is the safest thing we do under Part 91.

We are no great fans of the plaintiffs' bar here at Aero-News; I suppose you could fairly say we are biased against tort lawyers, and we will admit that. (This is new media. We will try to be fair, but we won't feign an objectivity we don't really have; we'll level with you). But in this case, there may be something to the complaint, against American Flyers.

American Flyers is a venerable Midwestern flight training operation that actually began as a charter and scheduled airline. (Indeed, commercial pilots today take EKGs because the founder of American Flyers, Reed Pigman, had The Big One on approach and crashed in 1966. He had been the Beatles' pilot for their US tours).

But in this case, an AF instructor took a novice pre-solo private pilot student on long IFR cross-countries, and during this untimely IFR training, they crashed and died. Attorney Paul Marx, whose flying hours are a near match for the unfortunate instructor's, thinks that a pre-solo student probably ought not to be on instructional flights in conditions of 200 feet and 1/2 mile.

And There Are Those That Don't, and Say They DId (and get CAUGHT)

To close on news of the weird, training figures in an unusual court case. Lawyers charged, and a pilot admitted, that he'd pencilwhipped his training records. "This entire document is one big giant lie, correct?," the lawyer asked, and the pilot admitted it. That'll leave a mark.

Still, better leave a mark in the courtroom (and on your FAA record) than on the terrain.

FMI: 2005 Year-in-Review Comments?