Quote:
Originally Posted by tiredofshoveling  RAL all the way, IWA is a stressed out nitemare. And not relaxed at all. |
That is so sad to hear.
I'm going to get on my old timer's soapbox here for a second.
Back in the day (2004-2005) all of the locations except for JAX pretty much ran themselves. Sure, Vegas had Frank The Tank keeping an eye on things, but even there, the instructors were pretty much free to what needed to be done. Some times that didn't work out so well and from time to time there were wholesale house clearing events at some locations, but for the most part it was up to the local instructors (and normally the senior guy) to make sure it all came together.
I instructed out of Willie for just about a year. During that time period we would send in our monthly reports to HQ and they would send out the next month's GPS data cards. We talked to the pit operators from time to time to try to clarify stuff, and every once in a while, when we had problem students, or what not, Jim got involved. In the time I was there the Jet made one stop at IWA, and only Derrick came inside. He looked around, used the bathroom, put a Benjamin on the counter and said "nice job fellows, dinner is on me" and walked back out to the plane and left. That was the only actual hands on oversight we had. Now, I'm sure if stuff had gotten bad we would have been seeing a whole lot more of management.
But what that meant was that as long as we got stuff done, we were free to do what ever we wanted. We worked around our student's scheduling needs. We covered for each other as needed. We took river tubing trips if it was a slow day and nothing had to get done. Sure, there was always the stress of "I've got to fly 8 hours today and it's 120 degrees out" or "my student really sucks but he's out of time so I guess I have to sign him off just to retrain him after he busts", but those were all internal pressures. With the very rare exception there was nobody looking over our shoulders to make stuff happen.
I guess that's all changed now. It makes sense to some extent. I think the private pilot program really changed that. The amount of structure needed to get a brand new pilot through pretty much dictated that there would need to be more infrastructure in place. I took my ATP written out at IWA about a year ago and was shocked to see how much the place had changed.
Oh well.
And yes, we had to walk up hill, 6 miles to the ramp back then too.
</soap box>
As far a IWA or RAL. I didn't know the RAL area as well. There is some really good flying to be had out of IWA, although I don't know how much fun stuff (Sedona, Page, Winslow, Havause and then VFR down the Colorado River to Blythe and home) they let you do any more. As far as actual airports to fly out of... we'll you'll get spoiled with a nice big runway (X3) at IWA. Not so much as RAL.