How patient should I be?

[StraightnLevel]

May 3, my CFI told me I needed to schedule my pre-solo stage check. OK, fine. After getting cancelled three times including once to give the plane to a different student, I finally got to fly the check on Thursday May 16. No sweat, wrapped it up in about half the scheduled time without issue. That was two weeks of dead time.

Now I have plenty of hours, and all I have left is XC, some more night hours, and my 10 solo hours.

I got cancelled last night for weather (marginal - the pattern area was fine, but storms 15 miles away). Now the schedule is so packed that the first available time for me to solo with this CFI is all the way out to early June. This is just plain ridiculous.

Am I being unreasonable? A month of waiting for two flights - a stage check and first solo - just seems wrong to me. It feels as if the school has taken on too many students, so the time slots all get filled with discovery flights and early stage students, not leaving any time for more advanced students to schedule the longer sessions that we need to finish and prep for a checkride.

I'll be calling some other schools later today. I'm betting I can get most or all of the requirements complete elsewhere before I could get a single additional flight in with these guys.

 

[rhkennerly]

Just a guess: cheapest rentals in the area?

 

[StraightnLevel]

Just a guess: cheapest rentals in the area?

No, just the closest airport. There are less expensive options, but they are further away, and one specifically has a poor reputation for mechanical reliability.

This airport has multiple schools including helicopter training, and all are quite busy. I get a lot of CTAF comms and collision avoidance practice. The airspace itself is also quite busy. It’s under a Bravo-class airspace, 8 miles from a much larger towered Delta, and two private strips within a few miles. We also get a lot of NORDO traffic flying right through our patterns which can be interesting. ADS-B and constant visual scans are not optional.

 

[Justin M]

I was going to ask if you were training near Houston or West Bend, but it sounds like Houston by the air space description.

 

[StraightnLevel]

I was going to ask if you were training near Houston or West Bend, but it sounds like Houston by the air space description.

Yes. Right now I’m spending a lot more time in Houston than Wisconsin.

 

[rhkennerly]

All righty, then this might be a drive a little, fly a lot situation. Driving down county might help you find a school with fewer students and better availability.

 

[TCABM]

61 or 141?

Why do you have to schedule a CFI for solo flights?

Why aren’t you booking weeks in advance anyways?


Put 3 flights/wk on the schedule until eternity; cancel what you don’t need after your checkride.

 

[StraightnLevel]

61 or 141?

Why do you have to schedule a CFI for solo flights?

61. I haven't solo'd yet. This is a month delay to find an open slot for the CFI so that I can fly my first solo.

CFI approved the checkride. That took two weeks and multiple cancellations, but it's done. Now he's booked and on vacation for another two+ weeks. I can't schedule solo for myself until after the supervised solo and logbook entry.

 

[StraightnLevel]

LWhy aren’t you booking weeks in advance anyways?

The system won't let me.

There are multiple issues at play here, including the fact that it's now been too long since my last flight with my CFI, so the system rejects almost anything I try to book.

Getting to this point I have already completed everything except night flights and cross-country. XC requires longer time slots, which are never available because the system forces 2-hour blocks, which leaves no space for a 3-hour stage check or XC flight.

 

[Half Fast]

Time to change. Just be sure the new place will indeed be better.

 

[TCABM]

The system won't let me.

There are multiple issues at play here, including the fact that it's now been too long since my last flight with my CFI, so the system rejects almost anything I try to book.

Getting to this point I have already completed everything except night flights and cross-country. XC requires longer time slots, which are never available because the system forces 2-hour blocks, which leaves no space for a 3-hour stage check or XC flight.

I’d have exactly one conversation with the owner, then move to a different place. When I rent, the busy school/FBO I schedule with has a minimum 3-hr block and the plane can be scheduled for up to 24hrs. True, there’s a non-refundable 6-hr charge if you book it for 6hrs or longer, but that kind of flexibility is huge.

 

[StraightnLevel]

I’d have exactly one conversation with the owner, then move to a different place. When I rent, the busy school/FBO I schedule with has a minimum 3-hr block and the plane can be scheduled for up to 24hrs. True, there’s a non-refundable 6-hr charge if you book it for 6hrs or longer, but that kind of flexibility is huge.

Yeah, the process they use is a 2-hour "land grab" based on first-come, first-serve, but with a whole bunch of lock-outs that can prevent you from booking anything. If you just want a basic 2-hour flight and don't care which plane, which CFI, or what time of day, you can probably find one within a week. If you need a specific combination or a longer time slot, good luck with that.

It got worse today, but it actually worked for me.

I was venting to my CFI about the schedule via text, so he apparently had a conversation with the office. Turns out that they had a schedule shuffle because a plane had some sort of significant squawk arise out of town on a cross-country flight. A whole lot of flights got cancelled or changed as a result. In the resulting chaos, he managed to get me on the schedule for my first solo tomorrow.

This doesn't resolve my general concerns about the process, but it fixes my immediate problem and gets me back on track to finish my PPL. Of course, it really burned some other pilots - I just happened to finagle a good outcome.

 

[Gilbert Buettner]

Come on back to Wisconsin. We have five airplanes and six CFIs. You should have been able to solo long ago. We can finish you up this summer, though the DPEs are scheduled out to July right now.

 

[StraightnLevel]

To follow up on this complaint:

After a couple of pointed conversations with my CFI, I think that the message got through. I would guess that I was not the only student who was having some scheduling trouble.

The school has changed their scheduling policy so that stage checks and check rides get priority. They also added another low-wing plane to the fleet, which helps immensely. It's not a complete solution to scheduling issues overall (there is no perfect solution given wx and mx realities), but I have to give them credit for accepting customer feedback and making an effort to address the issues.

 

[Baked Potato]

To follow up on this complaint:

After a couple of pointed conversations with my CFI, I think that the message got through. I would guess that I was not the only student who was having some scheduling trouble.

The school has changed their scheduling policy so that stage checks and check rides get priority. They also added another low-wing plane to the fleet, which helps immensely. It's not a complete solution to scheduling issues overall (there is no perfect solution given wx and mx realities), but I have to give them credit for accepting customer feedback and making an effort to address the issues.

If it makes you feel better, I also have found it tough to get AGL these days. Similar issues - mx, wx, the "I" in IMSAFE, you name it and it has kept me grounded in the past two months.

 

[StraightnLevel]

If it makes you feel better, I also have found it tough to get AGL these days. Similar issues - mx, wx, the "I" in IMSAFE, you name it and it has kept me grounded in the past two months.

Absolutely. The other night I went up, planning to do some maneuvers practice. METAR was clear, but halfway to the practice area I ran into a whole line of clouds at 1,500+ AGL. Nice - that ends that plan. OK, so I'll go back and practice performance T/O and landings. Wind picks up, and after the 5th landing it exceeds the minimums set in my solo endorsement. End of flight.



I can't seem to catch a break, and we're running into that seasonal weather period where we get short pop-up t-storms regularly in the afternoon, making it really unpredictable.

 

[Baked Potato]

Absolutely. The other night I went up, planning to do some maneuvers practice. METAR was clear, but halfway to the practice area I ran into a whole line of clouds at 1,500+ AGL. Nice - that ends that plan. OK, so I'll go back and practice performance T/O and landings. Wind picks up, and after the 5th landing it exceeds the minimums set in my solo endorsement. End of flight.



I can't seem to catch a break, and we're running into that seasonal weather period where we get short pop-up t-storms regularly in the afternoon, making it really unpredictable.

Based on my history, I'd consider a session that includes five landings as a highly successful flight!