I always find it disingenuous when instructors from other agencies bash PADI when they do the exact same things. That is what I find humorous about the PADI-bashing by instructors from SSI, SDI, NAUI, etc, etc. Pot calling the kettle black.
I was diving in San Carlos, Mexico, and it was a long boat ride out to our island destination. I was the only one on the boat who was not part of a group from an IDEA shop, consisting of a Course Director, an instructor, and two divers, including a student who was getting whatever their equivalent of AOW was. On the trip out, I had an extended conversation with the Course Director, who told me (in a nicer tone than this sounds) how far superior IDEA was to PADI because of its higher standards.
We did the first dive as one big group, and I did not pay a lot of attention to them, other than to stay near them. Before long, the CD asked me on a slate to stay with the AOW student because the rest of them had to go up. I wondered what the emergency was. I stayed with her until she was appropriately low on air. She had trouble holding the safety stop, and I held her at depth. When we surfaced, I learned that the rest of them had surfaced because they were low on air. I had 1700 PSI left in my AL 80.
We did the second dive together again, but this time I paid a little more attention to them. At one point I saw the instructor standing upright on the rocky bottom. As I watched, he lost his balance and fell over on his back. Once again, the dive ended with me and the AOW student. She was getting buoyant, and I saw that her BCD had no air at all. I was wearing a back inflate BCD with trim pockets (SP Nighthawk), and I was intentionally overweighted so that my trim would be good. I gave her one of my weight pockets (4 pounds), and she was able to finish the dive without help. When we got on the boat, I told her to add 4 pounds to her weighting. I asked her if she had done a weight check, and she asked me what a weight check was. I explained what it was and how to do it.
For the third dive, the CD was feeling sick, and the other two did not feel like diving, so it was just me and the AOW student. We talked through a dive plan and had a nice dive.