Does the Single Seat Training Method Increase the Instructor's Liability?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Flyfalcons
I wouldn't want any part of the liability in that.
The single seat training method creates less instructor liability compared to the amount of liability an ultralight instructor had when 2-seat training ultralights were available under the exemption.
The first reason that is the case is because of a legal term called "line of causality". When there is an accident in a 2-seat trainer, the ultralight instructor is in the direct line of causality. The instructor is always PIC while in the airplane. The PIC has all the liability for the crash because they are directly in the line of causality [or prevention].
In the case of the single seat method, the instructor is not in the line of causality. The student was PIC, not them. The instructor never had direct control of the aircraft. Nor did the student ever start training with the belief that the instructor could exercise control of the aircraft.
One could argue that improper training lead to the crash and, therefore, the instructor was liable. I.e. giving instruction put them in the line of causality and improper instruction caused the crash.
This is barred under the education-malpractice doctrine. The existence of that doctrine is why you can't go back and sue your driver's ed instructor because you had an accident. It's also why the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently overturned a jury that found against Cirrus because the plaintiff's family said the crash was the result of improper education. [See "Aftermath" in the September issue of AOPA Magazine for a review of the case.]
No ski school in America would be able to afford to give instruction if you could claim "education" malpractice when you got hurt during a ski lesson. If you break your leg during a ski lesson, you can't sue the ski school if the instructor never had physical control over your skis.
Anyone that ever instructed using the 2-seat method had a lot more liability than any instructor has using the single place training method. For anyone concerned about their liability while giving instruction, it is a great deal less under the single place method. Under the education-malpractice doctrine it is probably non-existence if you have the student sign the usual disclosures and assumption of risk documents.
-Buzz
The Single Seat Training Method & The AOPA Study
The AOPA commissioned a research study in 2010 to find out why only 20% of people that start flight training ever finish it.
One could surmise it's the expense. But that's not the main reason. After all, who starts learning to fly without knowing what the license generally costs to get or without knowing they can afford it.
What the AOPA said was the most surprising finding is that one of the main reason people stop flying lessons is a "lack of community". It's a lonely process. One goes and spends an hour a week with the instructor and has very little interaction with other trainees. [I had zero at a reasonably busy FBO where I trained.]
The chance to build a sense of "community" around the training process is pretty hard under the 2-seat method. Everyone has to be taught one at a time and with very little chance to observe and learn from their peers. I can't observe and learn from watching another student and hearing the instructors instructions the early stages of the training process if the instructor is taking the student up to 1500 and out to a practice area where they learn straight and level flight and turns.
The single seat training method lends itself very well to training large groups of trainees together. In the 2-seat training the initial training sequence is 1000+ off the ground. In the single seat training there is lots of ground penguin time. Then when the first air work is occurs 2 feet off the ground with a flight of 75ft typically [when the prior instruction has been correctly done]. Other students can easily watch and observe all the control inputs. They can hear all the feedback given to the other student. Then they swap out and another student applies the instructions and does their application of the instruction. There is lot of opportunity for socializing and interchange between the students doing their training sessions.
2-seat training can't be done in "classes". It's all 1-on-1 because there has to be an instructor in each aircraft. In the single seat method one can have an instructor taking a "class" through the early training steps because it is all ground work or ground proximity flying. In fact, the class size an instructor can teach is primarily limited by the number of training aircraft available to the class.
It's because they use "the single seat method" that Kitty Hawk Kites has been able to put those 300,000 people through hang gliding since '74. They can teach hang gliding in "classes".
Who knows how the AOPA and GA will figure out how to get past the "lack of community" in dual method of instruction. The dual method doesn't provide for much contact between students at the early training stages where the high drop out happens. The social element is not their natural and needs to be artificially built in somehow.
But if one were to build a social organization around ultralight training [as I propose should be done for teens], the very best way to do that would be to use the single place training methodology. It's what will inject the most amount of socialization and community into the early stages of training where it is needed most to create a high "sticking factor". Colleges get this. It's why they put so much into their "Freshman Orientations" and often require 1st and 2nd year students to live in the dorms together. [At least they did in the large college I went to.]
My thoughts.
-Buzz
P.S. Here's a radical-outside-the-box-premise.
Maybe the 2-seat ultralight exemption actually REDUCED the number of people that got ultralight training if it caused instructors to abandon the single seat training methodology.
Here's the logic. If the SSTM provided more opportunity to teach groups of people and the AOPA found that the amount of community and socializing was a key factor in keeping people in flight training, maybe more people would have been attracted to ultralight flying through training if the single place method had remained dominant.
Just think about the concentration of ultralight activity for the public to watch when there is a class of people learning and there are 3-4 single place trainers being used.
Think about someone fascinated with the activity and walking up to that group of newbies and asking "Whatcha doing?" and getting the response, "We're learning to fly ultralights." and they look and see a class of 8 people all learning together and appearing to have fun together. Exposing an interested party to an excited group of people all learning to fly in a class would have been the best marketing the ultralight industry could have had.
If the industry could have provided a greater volume of ultralight instruction [or cheaper] via the single place method because of the opportunity to do it more efficiently in classes [as Kitty Hawk Kites numbers prove] and the instruction would have been more enjoyable for the student [according to the AOPA study] and therefore more attractive to the average student, then could it be time that we stop dismissing the single seat instruction method and really examine its efficacy. Could single seat training not be the pathway to a more robust ultralight industry. Maybe a lot more robust than it was BEFORE the end of the exemption??
One final thought on training economics. If I was an ultralight instructor, I'd much rather be teaching people in classes of 8 than one at a time. I can charge 1 guy x/hr for dual instruction. I'd rather be making 8x/hr. teaching 8 people at one time because I can with the single seat method.