Should PADI change Advanced Open Water Diver Standards?

[oly5050user]

The advanced adventurer is the same crap, I was talking about the ssi advanced diver card. That requires 24 logged dives and has two checkout dives per specialty.

24 dives to get the card!
How much to charge for this ,and who is going to pay it?
As an instructor teaching for a facility I would want ,at a minimum,$20. per dive,per student to do this.So looking at $480. per student in pay alone. I would need to charge more money for any classroom /academic sessions so at a rate of $16. PER HR lets say 6 sessions(one per speciality at 3 hrs each thats 18 hr total of $280.Now there may be boat fees,lets say thats now $720,or quarry entry fees..(thats a very low estimate).Books $50.or more..
Rental gear/new gear to do dives-lights/reel/lift bag/etc..rental gear alone you are looking at $600..or more for purchasing own....
So this course can cost someone a minimum of $2,130.thats without the facilities profit put in also ,that could be another $300./$400...-now its up to $2430.
It would be a good measure of experience but very few people would commit the time and money to do it.

 

[Noboundaries]

I live in CA. Since I have a motorcycle license, I have to take the combined auto/motorcycle written test to renew my driver's license. I forgot the motorcycle license is the reason. Not so with automobiles.

 

[Sas]

My SSI AOW course will cost much less than $2430 in AUD (I am guessing you are using USD). For example, I have included my course details:
Night: $195 for 1 theory, 2 shore dives
Navigation: $195 for 1 theory, 3 shore dives
Drift: $275 for 1 theory, 2 boat dives
Deep to 39m: $395 for 2 theory, 1 shore dive, 4 boat dives


This includes all books and some equipment (BC, tanks, regulator, weights and wetsuit). It does not include: 1. basic gear but you will probably have bought these in OW - mask, fins, boots, snorkel 2. Specialty specific gear - SMB, reel, torches, slate + compass. Torches you can hire for about $8-10 and slate and compass you can get cheap. Have not looked into SMB and reel yet.

My SSI OW required 8 dives, so 8 + the AOW dives 12= 20 dives. This means I need to pay for 4 dives on my own to complete the rest of the dive requirement. I can hire equipment for about $70-80 (BC, reg, tanks, weights, add a little bit more for a wetsuit if you need) for a day to do the 4 dives (assuming they are shore dives).

All in all at the one of the cheapest rates it will cost you $1140AUD - and you can do cheaper specialties like Equipment Maintenance instead of Deep. I have not included the gear like torches, slate, reel, compass as you can use that for beyond AOW and many people will buy that gear whether or not they do an AOW course. Feel free to add it into your estimate though, but I am sure people buying the cheapest specialty equipment will not reach $2430.

Anyway, it can be done for a lot cheaper than you have mentioned oly, at least in Australia, and you get a lot more experience than doing a PADI AOW. Which costs about $400-500AUD for 5 dives only where I am from. Whatever floats your boat though... I am certainly happy to pay it, I have the money and I am getting use out of doing each specialty in detail.

 

[ucfdiver]

AOW should be called Intermediate OW. Keep the same Adventure Dive requirements. It is after all designed for experience and exposure, but it is seriously misnamed in its current state and ripe grounds for a lawsuit.

Add ANOTHER course to padi? Ehhh....I'll pass.

How about teaching divers skills in OW rather than taking their money as fast as you can. GUE and NACD earn a lot more respect from me by doing that than NAUI SSI and PADI do. Ultimately when I put my SSI/NAUI/NACD cards on the table, I only feel like the NACD one means anything. I'm sure others will disagree, but we all know there's dive shops under every OW agency that you pay $150, and there's no way on earth you're going to fail (read, GROUP TESTING).

 

[oly5050user]

My SSI AOW course will cost much less than $2430 in AUD (I am guessing you are using USD). For example, I have included my course details:
Night: $195 for 1 theory, 2 shore dives
Navigation: $195 for 1 theory, 3 shore dives
Drift: $275 for 1 theory, 2 boat dives
Deep to 39m: $395 for 2 theory, 1 shore dive, 4 boat dives


This includes all books and some equipment (BC, tanks, regulator, weights and wetsuit). It does not include: 1. basic gear but you will probably have bought these in OW - mask, fins, boots, snorkel 2. Specialty specific gear - SMB, reel, torches, slate + compass. Torches you can hire for about $8-10 and slate and compass you can get cheap. Have not looked into SMB and reel yet.

My SSI OW required 8 dives, so 8 + the AOW dives 12= 20 dives. This means I need to pay for 4 dives on my own to complete the rest of the dive requirement. I can hire equipment for about $70-80 (BC, reg, tanks, weights, add a little bit more for a wetsuit if you need) for a day to do the 4 dives (assuming they are shore dives).

All in all at the one of the cheapest rates it will cost you $1140AUD - and you can do cheaper specialties like Equipment Maintenance instead of Deep. I have not included the gear like torches, slate, reel, compass as you can use that for beyond AOW and many people will buy that gear whether or not they do an AOW course. Feel free to add it into your estimate though, but I am sure people buying the cheapest specialty equipment will not reach $2430.

Anyway, it can be done for a lot cheaper than you have mentioned oly, at least in Australia, and you get a lot more experience than doing a PADI AOW. Which costs about $400-500AUD for 5 dives only where I am from. Whatever floats your boat though... I am certainly happy to pay it, I have the money and I am getting use out of doing each specialty in detail.

My estimate is based on an additional 24 dives AFTER ow..I do not know the exchange rate US $ to Aussie ..Yours is based on 12 dives..standards only allow 3 dive per day,for training purposes usually.The reality is I only do 2 training dives per day ,so rentals at that rate are 12 rental days-$600. rentals alone..We are talking about training cost to actually dive,so a class like equipment maint is not in the mix,and for that particular course i don't know what is inexpensive about it,I charge $200. for a minimum group of 2 to do it and for 1 to 1 I charge $300.Works out to $15. per hr pay doing it 1 to 1.As to people buying gear even if they do not take course,that is not entirely true,if you do not provide a need to purchase they usually do not.The estimate I gave is for everything-training and gear purchases-rentals-access fees to boat/quarry,and as I said I even lowballed it.Your estimate is not too far off if you had double the amount of dives as I estimated and had boat fees added in too.

Diving education should not be cheap and thats where alot of instructors fail and to make up the difference they may cut corners and violate standards.I feel that I am totally worth what I charge and then more.Don't want to pay it,ok tell me what you want and maybe I can work out an alternative program for you that will make you happy,or go elsewhere..
Must work because just this week alone I have 1 ow course with 2 private students,another private course this same week with another 2 students,and I am starting another ow class for the lds I work thru with 7 students.This is also our SLOW season here in NY.(I am very surprised at how busy this is for me, being that I do not do this 40 hrs a week as a full time job)
I also have a group of 9 going with me to Bonaire May 3rd,and completing ow training dives there,along with advance ,nitrox and photo specialties.

 

[stimpy4242]

I am sorry, i think you misunderstood him. The 24 dives are just personal experience dives, not dives that you need to pay for. So just go diving and have fun and when you have logged 24 dives, then you have met the requirement.

 

[tedtim]

Add ANOTHER course to padi? Ehhh....I'll pass.

How about teaching divers skills in OW rather than taking their money as fast as you can. GUE and NACD earn a lot more respect from me by doing that than NAUI SSI and PADI do.

Do you really mean to compare GUE and NACD with AOW instead of OW? AFAIK neither offer OW.

 

[Noboundaries]

Agreed UCFD, but I had to justify my vote somehow.

Seriously though, once the lawsuits start, there will be fewer of us diving. It happened in the general aviation industry (meaning the little guy) in the 70's and 80's. The resulting legislation and liability insurance premiums drove manufacturers out of the market on one end of the scale, and consequently pilots out on the other end. The same thing can easily happen in the diving world. If manufacturers and/or boat owners have to double, triple or quadruple their prices due to liability issues, imagine the consequences and the costs.

As a general rule an educated diver is a safer diver. Safer divers may still push beyond their boundaries and suffer consequences, but those arguments are tougher to win in court by trying to blame the damages on someone else. No one likes paying for education of any kind even when they benefit dramatically from it, but we'll all end up paying even more in the long run if the standards take the path of least resistance and lawsuits flourish.

And you can't wait until someone recognizes a litigation trend to make changes. By then it is too late. The snowball is already rolling down the hill and picking up speed.

 

[oly5050user]

I am sorry, i think you misunderstood him. The 24 dives are just personal experience dives, not dives that you need to pay for. So just go diving and have fun and when you have logged 24 dives, then you have met the requirement.

ooh...ok sorry..so you do 24 dives on your own/with buddy and then do ,what is it,4 specialties? Lets say each specialty is $200.so thats still $800. in course fees.

Rentals(say $400.)/boat fees(go with $400.)/entry fees /new gear purchases all stay the same.Now up to $1600.Most do not want to pay that for an advance card.
Thats without costs of the 24 "experience "dives.

What do you learn during these 24 dives that you do on your own?
Some people do greatly benefit from doing them on an experience level, they may even have a experienced buddy/mentor,but what of those people that have unsafe pratices to begin with,all they are doing is reenforcing the errors 24 times on their own and making it habit.Seems to me that the learning curve can be shortened if a person is shown how to dive safely in a program/course, with an instructor without repeating same errors 24 times.

 

[fisherdvm]

Geez, all of us already know, AOW doesn't mean squat. Changing the requirement will not change how I or other perceive it.

We should work to change OW requirement. Who cares what other cards a person carry.