Hey fellas, have you at any point in your life made a decision/judgement/choice that seemed incredibly foolish and incomprehensible at the heat of the moment but looking back via present day it was something you knew for certain it was the right thing to do/most optimal choice and that you will do the same thing again if given a second chance?
A couple of years ago I was a cadet pilot in training in my first flight school which also happened to be the second biggest flight school in the nation at the time in terms of total flight operations and total commercial pilot graduates. I flew with them for 30 hours but for some strange reason the instructors refused to let me go solo citing a bunch of explanations I still cannot comprehend to this day including poor situational awareness, sporadic errors LOL and even poor discipline by the chief flight instructor once. I had two choices from here on out; either try to endure and press on or give up and maybe pursue something else in life. I chose the latter because I felt like I couldn't handle the workload almost giving up my career altogether. However, I did notice the same training airport had another 3 more flight schools so I decided to give myself a second chance and just move to the next one. This time I actually went solo in less than 30 hours without the same issues I had with the first one.
Now leaving one of the nation's most prestigious flight school for a smaller one seems incomprehensible at first and throwing away a golden opportunity but coincidentally there were multiple scandals breaking out regarding flight schools around the nation that did one or two things - instructors taking advantage of their cadets by milking as much logbook hours for themselves as possible so that they can reach 1500hr mark which is necessary to get into airlines or the schools themselves promising a certain number of training hours but only delivering 90% or the promised value for example (I don't have the exact ratios). Multiple legal actions were taken against these training schools including my old one although they were extremely lucky to have the dispute settled for an undisclosed amount. One school even had to shut down completely because the scandal got way out of hand.
To this day this is an unfortunate paradox in pretty much every flight training academy. Each instructor needs to grind his logbook hours and training cadets is one way to get it. However why would he train someone just to get hours considering they would likely be competing for the same job in the future?
I have to admit leaving the first school initially seems like throwing away a golden opportunity considering it is not exactly easy to get selected in in the first place but my goodness considering how they are operating their business and the way they operated looked eerlie similar to the scandals that broke out in other schools is definitely a red flag I should have noticed sooner. Oh well better late then never. At least I didn't spend THAT much in terms of tuition and training fees. Could have been worse. MUCH worse.
Definitely a bullet dodged.
A couple of years ago I was a cadet pilot in training in my first flight school which also happened to be the second biggest flight school in the nation at the time in terms of total flight operations and total commercial pilot graduates. I flew with them for 30 hours but for some strange reason the instructors refused to let me go solo citing a bunch of explanations I still cannot comprehend to this day including poor situational awareness, sporadic errors LOL and even poor discipline by the chief flight instructor once. I had two choices from here on out; either try to endure and press on or give up and maybe pursue something else in life. I chose the latter because I felt like I couldn't handle the workload almost giving up my career altogether. However, I did notice the same training airport had another 3 more flight schools so I decided to give myself a second chance and just move to the next one. This time I actually went solo in less than 30 hours without the same issues I had with the first one.
Now leaving one of the nation's most prestigious flight school for a smaller one seems incomprehensible at first and throwing away a golden opportunity but coincidentally there were multiple scandals breaking out regarding flight schools around the nation that did one or two things - instructors taking advantage of their cadets by milking as much logbook hours for themselves as possible so that they can reach 1500hr mark which is necessary to get into airlines or the schools themselves promising a certain number of training hours but only delivering 90% or the promised value for example (I don't have the exact ratios). Multiple legal actions were taken against these training schools including my old one although they were extremely lucky to have the dispute settled for an undisclosed amount. One school even had to shut down completely because the scandal got way out of hand.
To this day this is an unfortunate paradox in pretty much every flight training academy. Each instructor needs to grind his logbook hours and training cadets is one way to get it. However why would he train someone just to get hours considering they would likely be competing for the same job in the future?
I have to admit leaving the first school initially seems like throwing away a golden opportunity considering it is not exactly easy to get selected in in the first place but my goodness considering how they are operating their business and the way they operated looked eerlie similar to the scandals that broke out in other schools is definitely a red flag I should have noticed sooner. Oh well better late then never. At least I didn't spend THAT much in terms of tuition and training fees. Could have been worse. MUCH worse.
Definitely a bullet dodged.
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