g2,
Your instructor should be the "qualified examiner". So if you're going to make regulations, they should be to insure that the instructor is properly qualified to examine the students, not create a whole new agency.
This is unreasonable. You agree that there should be a distinction between 'instructors' and 'instructor trainers,' right? The people teaching flight lessons are instructors (CFI); the people doing checkrides are instructor trainers (CFII). It is unreasonable, uneconomical, and unnecessary to make every flight instructor a CFII. In an ideal diving world, yes, every instructor will be a living God of diving. In the real world, though, this will not happen, and a tiered system solves the problem with minimal fuss. If your dive instructor misses something, your dive examiner will catch it.
Using your FAA example, the flight instructor has to meet very rigid requirments before they can teach students. The FAA is huge, and enforces extreme regulations on everyone -- for good reason. Do you want this when you go diving?
Wrong. Becoming a CFI is not significantly more challenging than becoming an OW diving instructor. Becoming a CFII is much more challenging. The FAA regulations are not extreme, are not painful to anyone, and promote good aviation. Yes, I would LOVE to see such a system applied to diving. It would save many lives, with little negative consequence.
Flying is extremely regulated because a mistake can kill lots of other people rather easily. In diving, you may hurt yourself -- at most, your buddy.
Wrong again. Look at the statistics. General aviation airplanes are not a threat to anyone except those flying them. The Cessna aircraft I used to train weighed just over 2000 lbs, and had a maximum speed of 110 knots. You'd be hard-pressed to find any situation where a single-engine Cessna is a threat to "lots of other people." Flight instruction is in place to keep pilots, not bystanders, safe. If you're flying 747s, of course, the rules are quite different, but I'm comparing the
private pilot certification process to the
open-water certification process.
All I'd like to see is a system that requires new divers be examined by someone more qualified than the standard Joe Schmoe instructor before being let loose with a tank and reg. It doesn't have to be complicated, painful, or "extreme." One dive, a little test, and some conversation would suffice quite well as an examination. Everything else stays the same -- Joe Schmoe can still teach, he can still use his own materials, he can still instruct in his own personal style -- but now there's one final check that makes sure Joe Schmoe didn't do something wrong. I fail to see any drawbacks, other than a minimal (say $30-$60) cost increase to pay for the examiner's services. We all agree (I think) that diving classes are dirt cheap now anyway. It even does away with some of the liability gremlins, because when Mr. Gov't Examiner says you're good to dive, he's absolved Joe Schmoe of any liability concerning the quality of his instruction.
- Warren
