Stymied stu/colleague

bbchien

bbchien

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Bruce C
I have a former colleague (a neurologist) who is stymied at the local flight school. He is at 30 hours and has not soloed. Looking at his logbook, 30 hours over a year. Not much progress. Doesn't fly enough.

He's in solo medical practice and can't get away but for weekends, but the weather has been sucky and the local flight school is competitive to get in on a weekend.

I think the right thing for this fellow is to close the office for a week and go away, e.g "Get out of Dodge". It has to be to AZ or FL- someplace where EVERY day the winter weather is clear and a million. I know he can do a week away because he has managed it twice in the past five years. But just twice!

Any one have experience with say, Classic Air, in Phoenix, or Arizona Flight or have a suggestion? We are NOT looking for PVT ASEL in a week. We are looking to make or break "solo". He either can, or he cannot. I am unable to close for a week also....because on that basis he can't afford me, and the problem is he HAS TO GET OUT OF DODGE!
 
I would recommend Fla, weather this time of year is great and there are a ton of flight schools. I would check a few out over the phone first.
 
The other question is where is he? Does he have an extra room? Get a CFI to take a plane to him for a week.

I need to get my CFI. I have the perfect training aircraft. I have a job that allows me to work from anywhere there is a high speed internet connection and schedule flexibility.

Surely there are CFIs out there that can do this. The hard part is finding one that is finding one you trust. (I've seen too many posts about CFIs getting paid up front and then never being heard from again.)

Jim
 
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I guess the bigger question is should this guy be flying after he gets his ticket, as little as he is able to fly?
 
Kiddo's Driver said:
The other question is where is he? Does he have an extra room? Get a CFI to take a plane to him for a week.
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I'm pretty sure one of the problems is that where he lives, the weather is not that great in the winter.
 
Everskyward said:
I'm pretty sure one of the problems is that where he lives, the weather is not that great in the winter.
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Possibly, but it is really the "If I'm going to take a week off to fly, then the weather HAS to be good!"

The other issue he is having is that he cannot get an Instructor & Plane on the weekend. There appears to be too much competition. Surely there is a way to work around these issues. If the doc has a room or two to spare, then you have the possibility of an instructor & a student doing a long cross country up there and staying for the weekend. The instructor can work with the doc all day and squeeze in the other student if the chance comes up. The plane gets more than the FBO's minimum required hours. Doc gets his instruction/solo. A student gets his long cross country and a weekend in fabulous XXXXX.

Jim
 
Is it possible for him to carve out two mornings a week, schedule-wise? I know there's a risk of weather busting the time, but if he could shift his practice's hours to start at 10am two days a week and stay open later, he could get the lessons in then. Of course he might have an issue with staff flexibility.

Otherwise, there are plenty of options in FL. I imagine he could even work with a PIC instructor like CFI Levy who specializes in accelerated instruction and develop some goals. You just need to find somewhere that has an agreement with them to use their planes.
 
Sent you a PM, have just the guy for him, could potentially finish him up in a week, he's pretty good. Low (relatively for these days) cost 172s as well with plenty of availability of both instructor and planes.
 
Henning said:
Sent you a PM, have just the guy for him, could potentially finish him up in a week, he's pretty good. Low (relatively for these days) cost 172s as well with plenty of availability of both instructor and planes.
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...and thx, Henning.
 
Tail wheels in winter haven. They seen pretty nice and have a good rep.
 
Or have Jason Unger's crew finish him up here. Did it with a few students. Just the weather sucks here as you know. They will combine flight with Redbird FMX training.
 
Bruce, my sister is a doctor. She is considering tail wheels as they will customize a program over several weekends.
 
I recommended a CFI in Albuquerque for Scott Keyes. Scott came out and spend a few weeks just flying every day and finished up. I would imagine the same CFI could do it for him to get him to solo in a week. ABQ is usually fantastic this time of year, and will not have IMC unless something crazy happens.

Let me know of Tucson is decided against, and I'll send you the referral/flight school. They're good people, and he would learn to fly at a fairly busy Class C with plenty of non-busy airspace around as well, with the addition of learning a lot of procedures related to restricted airspace and military routes...in other words, a little bit of everything.
 
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