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 Each week, we run a sampling of the letters received to our editorial inbox here in AVmail. One letter that’s particularly relevant, informative, or otherwise compelling will headline this section as our "Letter of the Week," and we’ll send the author an official AVweb baseball cap as a "thank you" for interacting with us (and the rest of our readership). Send us your comments and questions using this form. Please include your mailing address in your e-mail (just in case your letter is our "Letter of the Week"); by the same token, please let us know if your message is not intended for publication. Letter of the Week: Internet Ground School a MistakeYour remember yours. I remember mine. Every pilot remembers ground school. Mine was in a dingy and dark corner of the low-rent district of our Florida airport. The three-classroom facility smelled like stale coffee and mildew. The air conditioning worked fine; at least when the owner the Part 141 pilot school felt like turning it on. There is nothing like sweating over a whiz wheel. This familiar scene could, however, become a thing of the past. The FAA is considering requests by several “on-line” universities. They want to offer Internet-based flight training. Students would satisfy the ground school requirement by logging into their computers, grabbing a beverage, and “attending” on-line classes. As an aviation attorney and college professor, I do not buy into the hype surrounding Internet education. I never have. Online education is not effective. It is unsupervised. It lacks the give and take among students and instructors that makes a classroom environment successful. Also absent from online classes is confrontation. A classroom environment should put students on the spot. They must be required to defend their positions, the facts they believe, and their views on issues. Instructors should be able to engage them, to question them, and to confront them when appropriate. The flight deck is not a passive, docile, and forgiving place. Nor should be the classroom. Kent Grayson, CFII, ATP, and the dean of Morton Aeronautical University agrees. Despite the excellent revenue potential of online flight training, Mr. Grayson said his institution will not consideri it. “Flight training needs personal interaction between the student pilot and instructor,” he says. “Our purpose is not just to impart facts and figures. The job of the institution is to build a student pilot’s confidence and character. This is not an easy job and we are not willing to entrust it to impersonal and unsupervised online classes,” Mr. Grayson said. Dean Grayson specifically mentioned lessons relating to flight planning, critical thinking, aviation weather, emergency procedures, and go-no-go decision-making. “These do not lend themselves to an online format. These areas deserve narrative, discussion, personal context from the instructor, and a hands-on approach.” Indeed, if your flight training experience was anything like mine, you probably learned as much from your CFI’s war stories and bull sessions as during formal study. Internet-based ground school students will miss a lot of that. As a college professor myself (I teach contract law at Holmes College), I am very sour on Internet-based programs and curricula. Online education has not lived up to its billing. Such programs usually attract the lowest quality instructors. And it should therefore be no surprise that they attract the least qualified and least ambitious students; ones not willing to dedicate the necessary amount of time or money to a proper educational experience. The FAA is accepting comments on this proposal until November 30, 2009. You can send the FAA your comments by logging into Regulations.gov. You will need to enter the docket number for the proposal:
J. Christopher Robbins | ||
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Museum a Grassroots Effort
Thanks for the article publicizing our new Take Flight exhibit at the Iowa Children’s Museum in Iowa City, Iowa.
What the article fails to mention is that the genesis of this exhibit was truly a grassroots effort by local pilots to find a way to save general aviation from extinction. Were it not for the efforts of local pilots and enthusiasts (all members of the local airport advocacy group, “Friends of Iowa City Airport”) to put on an airport event called “The Big Kids Toy Show” in 2006, at which the “seed money” was raised and the Take Flight concept devised, there would be no exhibit today.
The development of this world-class exhibit is truly an example of what local pilots can do to help save GA when they put their minds to it. You should play up this aspect, as an inspiration for pilots everywhere to get involved.
Jay Honeck
Permission to Enter, Please
The Dept. of Homeland security now requires citizens traveling in private aircraft to obtain permissionto leave or enter the U.S. Aircraft leaving or entering have always been required to file a flight plan with the FAA, and notify Customs and Border Protection with the number of citizens and non citizens onboard and land at designated airports for paper work and inspection. Now, they must also file an electronic Advance Passenger Information System (eAPIS).
EAPIS is not about just filing a report! It is about asking permission from the government to travel. It is a constitutional violation for the government to require a citizen to obtain permission to leave or enter the U.S.
It was decided in the 1950s by the Supreme Court that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment for the government to require it’s citizens to obtain permission to travel to or from the USA. It is a question of freedom of movement.
Remember the wall in Berlin. That was about another regime which required its Citizens to obtain permission to leave their country.
We are not slowly letting our freedom slip away. It’s disappearing quickly!
Tom Nimsic
Customer Service
The airlines aren’t going to be customers with the FAA? In the flight school/air taxi world that’s not news. We’ve never been treated like customers! Welcome to our world!
Jim Hackman
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