Posted by MHK on June 18, 2001 at 12:01:48:
In Reply to: Re: This weekend's observations from Casino Point posted by Jeff B on June 18, 2001 at 11:51:26:
Posted by Jeff B on June 18, 2001 at 11:51:26:
but I dont wholeheartdly agree with you on the introduction of students to skills. Our pilots are not trained to perform a takeoff or landing on their first intro to flight nor do they perform stalls and missed approaches, the latter being very common occurances in everyday flying.
Not that I want to delve into the minutae of an analogy, but one major difference that I see ( and I'm glad you used pilots as an example for reasons I'll discuss later) but as a pilot on training you are required to complete the training before you are in a position to need those skills.. With PADI it's 4 dives, usually of 20 minutes average and then you are certified for life and if in your 1st open water dive post cert your mask get's kicked off by an equally unpracticed diver, it's a receipe for disaster..
Training standards should NOT get lowered to accomodate a couple that just wants to get certified so they can go on vacation, and that is what is happening.. Would you train a pilot under such mediocrite scenarios just because he wants to fly to a vacation???
GUE's training curiculum was developed by Andrew Georgitis, who is a pilot instructor, and he did in fact use the pilot training methodology in developing the GUE curiculum..
The other major difference, as I understand pilot training ( and I'm in NO way an expert here) is that pilots need mandatory flight hours to maintain their rating whereas diver's need never do another dive for 20 years and still be certified...
If for no other reason than that, they should raise the bar to include the expiration of C-cards...
Just my thoughts...
Later