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I was a professional flight instructor for almost 7 years.Definitely in that time I ran into 2 or 3 students that I personally recommended they give up flying. They did not have the aptitude to be successful.I taught mostly advanced students to get instrument ratings or multi-engine ratings. One day a guy parked his beautiful Mooney 231 in front of our operation. He was my next appointment. First lesson for instrument training.I was intimately familiar with the 231 and had close to 100 hours in the bird. At the time I held an ATP, MEL, SEL, Seaplane, rotorcraft with close 2500 hours under my belt. This was a brand new richer than hell private pilot with 75 hours. He was close to 65 years old.Things didn’t start well. I wanted to do a basic IFR intro flight. We talked for 15 minutes about that the plan was. We would pre-flight the aircraft, take off and go to our practice area. I would have him do basic maneuvers for me so I could judge his skill level. Then I’d put him under the hood and let him fly some straight and level and some turns. Then we’d had back to the airport.He was angry with me instantly that we were not gonna start shooting ILS approaches right way. He then informed me that he needed his IFR ticket in a month as he was going on a trip across the country in his new plane. Red Flag Number 1 had just gone up for me. This guy was less interested in learning and just wanted the ticket.I went with him to my chief pilot to resolve the issue. Unfortunately my chief was motivated by money and this guy had a lot of it. So my chief had my schedule cleared and put this idiot down for 4 hours a day of training. I complained bitterly but I needed my job too.Now there are some people that can get 4 hours of IFR training a day and probably their their IFR ticket in a few weeks. But this guy was not one of them.We went out the airplane. With new students I ALWAYS go with them to observe their pre-flight. Now this guys pre-flight consisted of kick the tires and lets go. I asked if he’d flown the airplane before our lesson. He said no, he’d just brought it over from this hanger and everything was good.I asked for his fuel bottle to check the fuel. He didn’t have one. So I got one from our FBO. I had him get out of the airplane and we did a pre-flight together. I could tell he was pissed. But we found the right wing take to have significant water settled to the the fuel drain. We also found his engine oil was close to quart low.Once I was satisfied the airplane should be good we hopped in. I was still getting my seat belt on when this guy called “CLEAR” and micro-seconds later cranked the engine. As soon as it fired I pulled the mixture and shut it down. He screamed at me asking what the hell I was doing.I politely explained that I expected him to do a checklist. I also told him that when you finally decide to start the engine, especially in a busy area like where he was parked, you need to call CLEAR, look around, and give people time to get out of the way. I told him I expected him to complete the checklist and when ready to start the engine, check with me to see that I am ready, call CLEAR, wait at least 10 seconds while you look around out side then crank the engine.He then informed me he did not have a checklist and didn’t need one. I unbuckled my belt and got out. He asked where I was going and I said, inside. Come and get me when you’ve located your checklists and you are really to follow them.I went back in and poured some coffee. 15 seconds later this guy storms in right past me and barges into my chief pilots office who was giving an oral exam and demands to talk to him right away.I figured I was about to go job hunting. But this time my chief backed me up.So the guy went away for about an hour and came back. Once again he parked his plane right in front of our entrance as if he owned the place. He totally ignored our line person trying to direct him to a parking spot. Getting out the airplane he said he’d only be a moment.He came in and found me and said, Ok we got off to a bad start. Can we try this again? I have my checklists and I am ready to go.I said sure! He was a different man. He asked if we needed to redo the preflight and I said, no a walk around is probably ok since you have taxied to make sure nothing was hit. So we did that and he seemed to be actually looking.Inside the plane he began to follow his start checklist and things were going reasonably well. I reminded him our plan was some basic maneuvers and then some hook work. He said ok.His taxi and takeoff were ok however I observed he was what I would call a “twitchy pilot” There was no smoothness to him at all. When told by the tower to turn right it was like a fighter bank and I hit my head on the Mooney glass.We climbed to 5500 feet and I noted and reminded him he had after takeoff and climb checklists. He did them quickly missing items. Already he was falling apart a little from the almost ok pilot on takeoff.At 5500 feet he had the 231 going almost 200 mph. I asked him to slow the aircraft down to 120 knots. We were not going anywhere and zooming around at 200 mph was senseless. So he pulled the power back about an inch. That did almost nothing. We went from 200 mph to about 188. He said what next?I asked him what is your power setting and prop setting you use to slow down to about 120 knots? He couldn’t tell me. He said I just pull the power back until I can go down then I add flaps and land.I said, well in IFR work you need to fly approaches at known speeds. So lets first figure out what power settings you need to set to get this airplane to 120 knots IAS.I knew what they would be. But he had no clue. So told him to set my suggested settings (It’s been quite a few years so I don’t remember the numbers now). But he set those values and within a few moments the IAS settled down to very close to 120. He said that is amazing… how did you know that would work?I said, this is what you must learn. You will need to learn the various settings and configurations for your aircraft to attain various speeds. You will need to know these values both for level flight and decent.I explained to him that sometimes you were given a hold. You should fly holding patterns at a slower than cruise speed. For example 120 knots or maybe 140 is good as you can quickly slow down from there when cleared for an approach.I explained that when doing approaches you might enjoy the approach at 120 knots but then be asked by tower to fly it at 100 or maybe 130. You need to know how to configure your aircraft for those speeds.He said, well I’ll just fly the speed I want. To hell with what the tower wants. Well yes as PIC you have that right but you are likely not gonna be very popular when you force the 737 on final behind you to go around because you did the approach too slow.So getting away from this rapidly deteriorating discussion I asked him to show me the basic pilot training maneuvers: steep turn left and right 360 degrees, take off and departure stall and recovery, approach to landing stall and recovery.Basically he was a disaster waiting to happen. His steep turns turned into graveyard spirals where he would suddenly realize he was losing altitude and pull really hard on the yoke to recover. He couldn’t even remember how to setup for the stalls. When he finally did managed to stall the aircraft he almost spun it and lost a ton of altitude. He didn’t even add power on recovery.So I took the airplane from him. I demonstrated a 360 left and right steep turn. I showed him how to add in elevator as the bank increased and managed to get both turns done and stay within 50 feet.I had him follow me through the turns again. He said, I think I got it. So I gave him the airplane and soon the death spiral reappeared.We fought with this for about 30 minutes. I decided I wanted to see if he could even fly under he hood at all. Supposedly he was supposed to have had some hood training even for his private.So I reviewed with him what instruments did what. With the hood off I showed him how he could use the horizon, turn and band, vertical speed, and airspeed to keep the airplane where he wanted.He put the hood on and I said, just maintain heading 300 and altitude of 5500 feet. It didn’t last more than 30 seconds before he was pitching and diving and rolling left and right and jabbing at the rudder to get the heading back to 300. He was twitchy as he poked at the controls abruptly to try and get the changes he wanted. It made for a very uncomfortable flight.I took the airplane from him and leveled and trimmed it on heading 300 at 5500 feet. I explained to him that he didn’t need to “fly” the airplane, it was flying itself. All he had to do was make little corrections to keep things where he wanted.It went a little better. We made it to 45 seconds before we were porpoising and doing mini lazy 8s all over the place. He was also bitching the airplane out saying things like “you damned mother…… come on!”We’d been out here about 1.5 hours so I said we should head back. He said lets do the approach. I said, no, you are not ready for the approach. He said, I think I am but we will do it your way this time.He flew back VFR and I saw more of his poor skills and aircraft management. He entered the downwind at close to 200 mph. When he got a beam the numbers to land he yanked the power back put on full flaps, dropped the gear. We ballooned almost 500 feet up above pattern altitude then he nosed over and dove at the runway at almost maximum flap extension speed.As he got close to the runway on final we were so fast there was almost no way he was gonna get this thing down on the 5000 feet we had.So I picked up the mic and told the tower we were going around. I pushed the power in and he said, what are you doing angrily? I said, “My aircraft! HANDS AND FEET OFF!”He complied but told me he’d be talking to my chief pilot about this, that I had no right to take the aircraft from him. I said no problem. I’ll go talk to him with you.I brought the airplane around on downwind at 100 knots. I dropped the power to a descent power and put in the first batch of flaps. Gear came down and we began a nice descent. Base turn got the second batch of flaps. Final flaps on short final.Power was never increased, only reduced. We touched down probably 75 feet past the main hash mark. We required virtually no braking to coast off the high speed and head to our FBO.I parked the aircraft in the designed parking area as directed by our ramp person. Again this guy complained that he preferred to put it in front. I said that the front is reserved parking for charter aircraft.Inside I asked him if he wanted to talk to the chief pilot and I guess he’d cooled down and said no. We we sat in my little office and I told him how I saw it.I laid out that his basic skills were not sufficient to undertake instrument training. Until he could handle his aircraft at the standards required for a private pilot rating in all private pilot maneuvers he could not begin instrument training.I told him that if he was interested I would first work on those basics with him then we would transition to instrument training when he was ready. The anger reappeared and he said, “no way… I have a trip to take in less than a month so we will start instrument training right now or I find someone else”.So I thanked him. I did not tell him it was a pleasure to fly with him because it was not. I said, I will have you removed from my schedule and you are free to find another instructor.He screamed at me: You are an idiot and stormed out of my office.Later that afternoon the chief pilot came and said I’d made quite a mess of things and asked me to reconsider. I said, I will reconsider if you fly with him on the next flight and you tell me that we should continue to instrument train him. I stated that I didn’t even think he was a safe visual flight rules private pilot and I was very close to recommending that he give up flying!My CP agreed. A couple days later he came and said, “Wow you were right… that guy is a real piece of work!” My CP told him that our operation would not be training him and that our recommendation was strongly that he seek to gain basic private pilot skills before he continued to fly his aircraft.My CP wrote a letter to our local FSDO about his pilot as well. Unfortunately the FSDO and GADO generally were too busy to do much unless there was some kind of incident.Over the next month I saw his aircraft depart and return to the airport a number of times. I could tell he was flying just by how the aircraft was flown.Then the fateful day came. It must have been his cross-country trip. Anyway our airport was IFR. We had a 400 foot ceiling, multiple layers up to 20,000 and rain. Not a great day for student training at all unless you were training IFR students.I was sitting the right seat of a Beech Baron as my student was going over the pre-start checklist when the Mooney taxied in front of us. It was LOADED with people! I could see the guy at the controls.I flipped on the master and listened to ground control reading the IFR clearance to the Mooney as he parked for runup. I flipped to our service freq and frantically called my CP. When he got on the line I let him know that our dreaded Mooney pilot was about to launch IFR with people on board!My CP called the tower. I listened on Ground as the ground controller asked the Mooney pilot if he was rated for IFR. “Yes” came the reply. We knew for a fact he was not rated.The ground controller asked the Mooney pilot to taxi to the base of the tower and shutdown and come to the tower. Over the radio the Mooney pilot bitched out the ground controller saying he didn’t have the time for a meet and greet and needed to go. The ground controller told him he would not receive a takeoff clearance until he visited the tower.As it turns out a FSDO guy was there and asked the pilot to present his ticket which did not have an instrument rating on it. They busted the guy right then and there.I did not hear the Mooney go out that day and on each flight I did I saw it sitting near the base of the tower. I felt like my CP and I might have saved 4 people lives that day.However the next day was not so pleasant when this guy burst into our operation screaming at the top of his lungs how much trouble and money we’d caused him. My CP had to get the police to escort him from our building.Over the years I instructed I saw the Mooney fly at times and I wasn’t sure if it was still his or if he was breaking the law again. I reported it to my CP several times but never heard anything as a result.Unfortunately about 3 years later I did hear this guy had managed to kill himself and a passenger. My understanding is that he’d purchased a twin and managed to lose an engine on take off and spun it in.I was sad to hear that. Taking your own life is one thing but his passenger didn’t deserve his arrogance.So yes, sorry for the long story but yes yes! There are people that simply should not fly.

Being an airline pilot is the best job in the world.If you love to fly, the job is heaven on earth. You are trusted to command a multimillion dollar piece of machinery flying eight miles a minute six miles in the air, carrying more than a hundred folks thousands of miles in all types of weather to places they are flying to for hundreds of reasons. It satisfies all sorts of needs and wants.Both luck and timing play a huge role in your career. Poor management decisions, a busted medical exam, getting hired at the end of an airline's expansion cycle all can immediately derail your career or sentence you to remain at the bottom of the airline's seniority (and pay) list.That said, there are thousands of pilots who would do nothing else.Generally the lifestyle of a commercial pilot in india :After five weeks of ground school, 32 hours in the simulator, a check ride and another 50 hours of line flying instruction, Newhires are assigned to a pilot base as reserve First Officer (on call) with 10 days off for the month.As pilots gain seniority in the base, they begin to be able to bid for regularly scheduled trips with more hours and more days off.Their trips are either AMs (5-6ish AM to 2-3ish PM) or PMs (noonish to 10ish PM). Schedules are built to have one kind or the other (bad idea to mix AM and PM trips on the same schedule). We fly only day trips (no overnights except for charter flights).They check in for their trip (0500 show time this trip), meet the Captain and Flight Attendants, the Captain does a short preflight briefing - airplane, maintenance status, departure, enroute and arrival weather, passenger loads, other items affecting the flight.They go to the airplane about 50 min before departure and get the ATC clearance, airport weather information (ATIS), do the performance calculations and preflight checklists. The passengers board, they finish the weight and balance, and call for pushback or taxi clearance.Finally the flying (fun) begins. Pilots and the Captain alternate flying legs. If it's a pilot leg, he fly the airplane and the Captain does the checklists and communication. Three hours later they land at their destination, do the preflight duties and return to their base. This time they're handling the communications and checklists.Back at their base, they turn the airplane over to the next crew, turn in the flight paperwork and go home. A great normal day at work!!Now, lets toss in delays due to mechanical problems, weather, ATC, gate availability, passenger service, taking over a late arriving aircraft, and add avoiding thunderstorms, shooting approaches to minimums in blowing snow, missing the approach and diverting to the alternate, dealing with icing in flight and on the ground, passenger illness, required paperwork not being available, keeping track of flight and duty times during abnormal operations to remain legal, annual recurrent ground school, annual or semi annual (for Captains) simulator proficiency checks, annual or semiannual (for Captains) medical exams by an FAA medical examiner, and they have some of the "rest of the story"...Hard work? yes.Fun? Absolutely.If you gotta fly, you gotta fly!

I think there is a 50% chance that A380 production will end by 2021, if not sooner, unless the Middle Eastern Airlines continue to reorder new ones that will replace A380’s that are scheduled to be intentionally retired from their airline service between 2022 and 2030. And that crystal ball is very unpredictable given the political tensions and difficulties that continue to plague the region.216 have been built as of December 2017 with approximately 100 more on ‘order’. At the current production run of approximately 1 a month, 24 to 30 more are very likely to be completed. Of the 13 airlines that operate the A380, none have publicly published their profitability has been with the aircraft. If production remains 1 per month, by 2021, Emirates Airlines will have fulfilled all its firm commitments that exist today with Airbus. But this is seriously in doubt with the airline delaying the delivery of 12 aircraft to beyond 2019. See more below. (addition; see article link at bottom for possible changes in production rates)The International Hub to Hub model only works on very popular high density routes that demand high passenger loads. Depending on the operator, those routes are not as in demand or popular as many predicted and thus limits their long term viability during poor economic times or where costs have increased.The other problem is revenue. On long haul flights, this class of aircraft does not financially compete compared to wide body twin engine aircraft relative to the capital and opex costs per flight when only 1.75 flights per day can be completed in a 24 hour period, despite improved turn around times that can prepare an arriving aircraft the size of an A380 to depart within 90 minutes.The operational costs to operate an A380 are beginning to unfold. This airplane is not an inexpensive one to fix or inspect. The airframe still goes through numerous inspections and are required to go through an extensive checklist that verifies no parts or components are fatigued or have signs of corrosion. There are thousands of parts that are not made of alloys but instead composites that still require extensive time to inspect and re-certify or replace. Most of the A380’s in service have had their wings modified during a maintenance cycle as per an Airbus update to replace components that were cracking. These overhaul cycles are also time consuming, taking just under three weeks to complete a major MRO inspection. That’s millions of dollars in lost revenues when an aircraft is out of service. Imagine having 148 of these in your fleet by 2021. As it is today, the A380 represents 102 of 248 aircraft currently in service at Emirate’s Airlines. Scheduling major overhauls that take an aircraft out of service for 3 weeks is a logistical nightmare.Emirates claims to have an 84.5% load factor average across its network, which is below the industries benchmark of 87 - 90%. That 15 to 16% loss of revenue potential on a 3 class cabin configured A380 is telling and likely a key reason all 2016 / 2017 models are being reconfigured with a higher economy / business class mix and older ones are being refit during overhaul.It is also telling that the airline has just over 100 B-777’s in operation today with 13 more coming and another 140 B-787 series on order, scheduled for delivery to begin in 2020/22. This is the business plan of many international airlines going forward. Two wide body aircraft for medium and long haul routes that can accommodate 250 to 375 passengers in a two / three class layout and either have an subsidiary or partner that operates a single model narrow body for its shorthaul feeder or secondary route network of less than 4,500 nautical miles.Engine maintenance, repair and overhauls (MRO’s) are frighteningly expensive in this class of aircraft. Initial maintenance services cost the airlines a combined 170M USD in 2015 and is estimated to skyrocket to more than 600M USD in by the end of this year and expected to rise to 2.1 billion by 2019 as the engines are then required to be completely torn down and overhauled. The reason the costs are so high is because there are a limited number of these engines in use (low production volume) and there are 4 engines per aircraft, doubling MRO costs. Some MRO facilities estimate this is 30% of the total aircraft overhaul cost. The numbers are steadily rising as more aircraft reach the same duty / flight cycles as they enter service and age.MRO’s checks are so complex that British Airways, which operates 12 A380’s doesn’t even carry out the major overhauls on its A380’s like it does for its B-747–400’s. They simply do not have the required hanger size and contracted Singapore Airlines instead. These costs are beginning to escalate to the point that operating them is becoming difficult given the limited amount of resources an airline has in today’s current economic environment.Converting these aircraft to freighters is going to be difficult and damned expensive. The main bulkheads and decks are not the same ones as the original Airbus A380F freighter that wound up being cancelled. In fact, it’s doubtful given the costs for an independent engineering firm would have to invest in developing a conversion and installation kit that any A380’s will be converted to freighters because the outsourcing of maintenance that would be required upon entering service would be astronomical compared to traditional B-747–400 / 8i models. There is talk of a combi (passenger / freighter) retrofit kit being designed by Airbus and would require fewer components to be replaced and reinforced. Combi models make sense on some high value routes between Africa and Europe which B-747–400 Combi’s now fly. I seriously doubt a Combi conversion kit will be announced or have buyers.Malaysia Airlines attempted to re-lease or sell outright its 6 A380’s with not a single airline interested. As a result, Malaysia plans to convert them into high density passenger configurations for charter / low cost use as they leave mainline service. Even so, there’s doubt the airline will be able to afford the conversion, fill the seats and make a profit.In the end, I think you will see new A380’s being built until at least 2021. They will build more if the Middle Eastern Airlines still think it makes sense compared to their A350 / B777 profit margins. If it doesn’t, say good bye to the A380 ahead of it’s scheduled production run (as of December 2017) of 317. Emirates, the single largest operator of A380’s has delayed taking a dozen new A380’s for two years for reasons many believe are financial and not landing slot restricted due to lack of space as they have announced. Emirates is the only airline with outstanding new deliveries that are firm commitments of more than 40 aircraft. The rest are highly suspect of becoming firm orders that enter into production. As it is, Airbus lost it shirt on one private sale VIP A380 that was built and never delivered. It’s scheduled to be placed in a museum without engines (that were never mounted).The A380’s currently on lease for Emirates and Singapore Airlines are on 12 year contracts which will be fully paid off and will not affect the leasing company’s bottom line. The aircraft, including engines will be resalable or available for a new lessor. The question is, will any airline want one. The market value of these airplanes are depreciating at higher than straight line evaluations and as a result, they will possibly be sold or leased at lower rates than originally estimated. Even so, the cost to operate and maintain one of these aircraft is absolutely enormous compared to looking at leasing a brand new B-777 / B-787 / A350. Evidence that this is the case is the number of used B-747–400’s now available for lease or outright sale exceeds 75 aircraft and not one has been leased or sold at bargain prices.Those that are still in service will be flown as long as the MRO cycle is deemed economical to do so and the manufacturer’s airframe cycle lifespan limits can be maximized. Some airlines that financed the purchase of the A380 will probably fly them until they are no longer serviceable - if oil prices do not skyrocket past 75 USD / bbl (Texas Sweet / Brent Oil). Oil as of December 2017, is hovering around 63 - 65 USD / bbl. If oil went back to sustained pricing between 85 - 95 USD / bbl or more, then I think the A380 would be parked in the desert in a hurry.Singapore Airlines has retired one A380 and Korean Airlines has plans to park all of theirs in the New Mexico desert by the beginning in the second half of 2018. The Singapore A380 is only 10 years old and left front line service before its lease was actually due to expire.The airliner has been the worst commercial investment made by an aircraft manufacturer in history. It that cost the company over 30 billion euros that will never be recovered by A380 sales. It’s still questionable if they are recovering costs to manufacture each one. Brexit alone could sink future production of the A380 if tariff are applied to the wings built in the UK by Airbus at the former BAE plant at Broughton.Ultimately the aircraft will be retired or sold for parts for those that remain flying. That date will probably not occur until the 2027 - 2030 time frame - if oil prices remain stable.Have a nice flight!Addendum December 27, 2017: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal - sources?