What is exact outcome of AOW courses?

[Landau]

The outcome is that you get 4 or 5 additional dives, with the introduction of a few new skills, under the supervision of an instructor

@ofg-1 beat me to it. The course is 5 more dives with an instructor to help you out on all sorts of skills and knowledge that might or might not completely match the title of the 5 dives.

All the instructors I see locally choose Peak Performance Bouyancy as one of the elective dives. Almost every student can use some bouyancy work after only 4 ocean dive during their open water certification. They will also work on propulsion - specifically frog kick. The students are given much more responsibility in planning and leading the dives. I usually start the dive by having a student make sure everyone is ready to descend, then leading the group to a nearby underwater landmark (I tell them how to find it) then I take over and we do the dive skills. Perfect world: Each student gets to do this on one of dives.

I firmly believe that new divers will improve faster with an instructor in AOW than simply diving on their own.

 

[rick00001967]

this topic gets brought up a lot. and it can always be confusing for new divers.

it is my opinion that the padi aow course is a waste of time and money. so unless you are determined to only train through padi, and the specialties of interest require you to have the aow cert, then why bother?

i say this as someone who did the padi aow course. but in my case, when i did it, i compared the cost of the number of dives in the course to the cost of buying that number of boat dives and it cost me almost nothing extra. so doing it made sense.
if that is your situation, then go for it. never hurts to get extra training in the water and learn some new theory.

we always hear people concerned about a dive op not allowing them to dive certain sites without padi aow. and this may very well be true in some cases. this may simply be a dive shop policy, or an insurance requirement, or a rip off to try and sell a course.

in my personal experience, i have never been turned away from doing any dives. i found that at most, the shop may want to see you in the water before they decide to take you to certain sites. then they base that decision on your actual skills, not on a cert card.

so my opinion (for what it's worth) is if you believe you will need it to dive somewhere, then do it.
if you need it to continue your dive education with padi, then do it.
but if you are looking for a better option to actually learn more, i would look into the specialties you mentioned and do the full courses.

nav may not be required by any shops, but i think nav was one of the best skills to learn. especially if you ever start diving on your own without a guide.
buoyancy should be a divers number one skill to try and excel at, so if you need help with that, take a good course.
deep is also a good course if you have a good instructor who can help with in water skills and theory. i would hope most shops would accept a deep cert instead of insisting on an aow, but it is up to the shop. i would suggest if they dont, they are just looking to sell the aow course.
nitrox is a course many divers take. there is a lot of good theory to learn and it will be required for many advanced level specialties if you think you may want to go down that road eventually. and yes, it allows you to purchase nitrox. but if you never plan on using it......

 

[pelagic_one]

Is it divers' experiences that if they want to dive to 30m/100ft to see a wreck, the dive boat operator will deny access unless presented with an AOW card? So the AOC card is a necessary gateway to these dives? Beyond that, it is more supervised dives and learn some skills but still require specific training to obtain specific cards?

I got the OW card so I can buy compressed air.

I got the Nitrox card so I can buy nitrox.

I'm getting an AOW card to get on a boat to see deeper dive sites.

All of these certs involve a third party (dive shop, dive boat).

I have discussed this with my local dive shop operator and can't seem to get a straight answer about how far the AOW card goes. I appreciate more input such as that above.

Now that I asked the opening question I see Similar Threads below.

 

[Lorenzoid]

The outcome is that you get 4 or 5 additional dives, with the introduction of a few new skills, under the supervision of an instructor, along with a shiny new certification card.
That's what you get. If you are looking for something else, you will be back here on SB bad mouthing the AOW class.

The ancillary benefits are that you may meet more people in your area that are more serious about diving than the average OW student, and may decide what specialties interest you.

I'm getting an AOW card to get on a boat to see deeper dive sites.

Yes, in addition to what ofg-1 said, I believe that is the real ancillary benefit: some dive operators (not all) use the AOW card as a requirement for taking you out on deeper or what they otherwise consider more challenging dives. You probably can't get a straight answer because it's up to the whims of the dive op. A dive op might name a couple of wrecks they regularly visit as requiring AOW, not in terms of a depth limit.

 

[34109411]

Hi all, I'm about to take the PADI AOW course. The outcomes of the individual parts are not clear to me. It seems there are specialties which have little effect on the safety of diving, like photography, search and recovery, marine life identification, perhaps buoyancy, which boat operators never ask about or deny passage without. Navigation is helpful but they don't ask about that. Deep dive is their concern so they ask for an AOW certification for deeper dives. Good to 100 feet? But there is also a dedicated Deep Dive course that explains and rehearses much more than AOW covers? So I need to pursue that course, too? Nitrox is another specialty but does it result in a nitrox certification allowing the purchase of nitrox? The wreck specialty allows you to look at a wreck but not enter? That's another separate course? Thanks for your input and clarification.

In the first place what are the goal you wish to achieve as a diver ?

 

[lowwall]

I just wanted to note that underwater nav is one of the two required dives for the PADI AOW card. The other is deep. If you want to maximize the skill learning potential from the course, you should find a shop that includes Search & Recovery and Peak Performance Buoyancy. Night is also great if you haven't already done a night dive.

As others have said, there's no requirement to get AOW to do anything to the limits of your OW certification, which for agencies following the WRSTC standards is no deco, 40m and direct access to the surface (note that direct doesn't mean straight up, just that it doesn't require navigation),

The reasons to get it anyway is that it's cheap supervised training and many operators place limits on divers who don't have it.

 

[MonkeyBubbles]

The basic outcome is you will get a card that says you are PADI AOW certified. Some dive operators require AOW to take you out for some dives. You should make sure you also get Nitrox certified because a lot of those same dives require both.

Beyond that, I think it is what you make of it. The AOW course will expose you to more information for different types of diving beyond the basic OW, which mostly focuses on basic techniques. Choosing different specialty dives will give you different exposure. If I were to state an over-arching them of the AOW course, it is encouraging you to "think like a diver." It exposes you to different types of diving so you can find what interests you. The real learning occurs outside of the course, once you start finding things that interest you and start pursuing them, which the AOW card enables you to do.

 

[Blackcrusader]

Is it divers' experiences that if they want to dive to 30m/100ft to see a wreck, the dive boat operator will deny access unless presented with an AOW card?

My son went to Hawaii on his honeymoon. He has OW only certified in 2015. Dive op tried to claim he could not join dives as they claimed PADI limits divers. He challenged them on this and said to show him where a certified diver is limited to 18m with OW. They asked what does he know, he simply replied he is an attorney who knows the law and challenged them to show any law they were claiming on depth limits. Of course no such laws exist in the USA. He show them his DAN insurance basic level covers OW certified to the recreational depth limit of 130 ft . 40m.

He also challenged the dive op to prove the guides had the Deep Dive certification... ( of course they did not lol ) Then they told him well OW not experienced enough... he shows them his DC with over 400 dives ... many dives deeper than 120 ft. Oh well.. OK you can do a dive under supervision first... then they said OK you can join any dive. IT had nothing to do with the dive ops insurance policy. Just the usual BS selling point you need AOW to do some dives. PADI cannot control how deep any certified diver dives.

A dive op can. My son does dives based on his OW cert and experience. He does have Nitrox Cert.
OW cert and proof of dives and experience... sure maybe a check out dive before doing a deeper than 100ft dive.

After my son got his OW cert we did another 5 days of diving 3 dives a day. 15 dives and he was fine doing dives to 100ft by the last day. Doing the AOW is always a good thing. Saves getting into a lot of discussions over your experience and cert level. Even a lot of DM's and instructors do not have the Deep Certificate.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I have discussed this with my local dive shop operator and can't seem to get a straight answer about how far the AOW card goes. I appreciate more input such as that above.

Dive ops can have any policy they like. They can say even with AOW and 200 dives they will limit you to 15m max depth if they want. Or you cannot do some sites because you do not have experience in extreme currents. Or you don't have a DSMB. You don't need a special certificate for night diving but try turning up without a dive torch.

AOW goes to 130 ft. So does OW. So does the Deep Certificate. They only differ in training depths.
Training and experience are important that is why dive ops want to see that you have done the training.
I've seen OW divers who are far better divers than those who do OW then AOW ten dives later. Some dive ops offer the OW then AOW and Nitrox in a short time. Does not mean these AOW are experience but hey, they have the cert lol

 

[mcohen1021]

The outcomes of the individual parts are not clear to me

Really easy.

You'll be able to tell everyone you're the bestest diver ever in the whole world; and you'll be able to wear one of these bad boys to show off your now superior skills over the other divers you come across.

I just don't see how you could go wrong.