Shortcomings in flight instruction?

Cessnaflyer

Cessnaflyer

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
What do you think are some shortcomings in most flight instruction?

I feel real soft fields are the least practiced and never have any practical experience before getting their license.
 
I think the whole soft field landing is great to learn & demonstrate for the DPE; especially with the WA State operated sites like Easton & Rimrock.

With fatalities documented at both related to the 50' obstacle; there is still room for take off performance planning & skill improvement. The standard 50' obstacle (aka - large fir tree) has doubled in height around some of these airstrips.

BTW - Weather permitting the T hawk may come to Spokane for my short
visit at a Fire Truck Company out on Trent. (not far from KSFF)
 
Full flap and no flap landings....You'd be surprised how many people can't do them.
 
I always took my students to a grass strip at least once during training, although I never made to one untill I was working on my commercial.

Another thing I always had students do, was get close to a local grass strip and then pull the power. Show me a "real" emergency landing there please.
 
Shortcomings in flight instruction?
My paycheck....who didn't see that coming?
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I'd really say weather flying though.
Ice/Thunderstorms/LOW IFR (you're going to your alternate son)
'Twould be the bees knees if we had hours of the commercial 141 syllabus dedicated to that.
 
Cessnaflyer said:
What do you think are some shortcomings in most flight instruction?
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I'd say real-world actual weather scenarios. Everything from continuous hand-flying in the weather to approaches. While many people focus on doing ILS's to mins not many focus on non-precisions at mins. Most students don't get the opportunity to have to execute a missed approach.
 
Ian J said:
I'd say real-world actual weather scenarios. Everything from continuous hand-flying in the weather to approaches. While many people focus on doing ILS's to mins not many focus on non-precisions at mins. Most students don't get the opportunity to have to execute a missed approach.
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My location in Ohio allows all of that. We have an ILS around that can be at mins then go do a VOR-A that is below mins and come home with ceiling 100ft above mins.

It is somewhat rare to occur but it happens.
 
I'm not an instructor yet, but I felt that during my initial training my instructor didn't do more emergency scenario based training. We just kept plugging along working on the PTS standards. Then again I did almost all my ground work at home on my own so maybe that's where I missed out.
 
Too much focus on the PTS / passing a checkride and too little focus on the skills really needed to be a proficient pilot. That includes all of the things already mentioned...emergencies, grass runway ops, scenario based training, dealing with weather, flying at max gross weight, everything.

Also, I'd like to add, when I say "proficient" I don't mean only "safe." Safety is important of course, but also how to find good FBOs to stop at, fly more efficiently, keep passengers comfortable, be prepared to spend the night somewhere unexpectedly, get checked out in new planes, etc. Essentially, how to go out and *use* a pilot certificate, rather than simply *have* a pilot certificate. It drives me nuts when I see a newly minted pilot who is scared to take a cross country, or simply says, "Ok, I have a license, what now?" A million things, dummy! The whole world opened up to you, except your instructor didn't show you that part of flying!

As a side note, I think a lot of instructors ought to make training more fun, too. Obviously we all know the horror stories of typical "time building" instructors, but even the well-intentioned old guys who teach on the weekends, or seasoned career instructors can inadvertently make training....I don't know...boring. They get so focused on making somebody a safe pilot that they miss the whole reason for why that person is learning to fly...the sense of adventure, challenge, accomplishment, and so on. It's ok to take a little extra time or spend a little extra money if you're doing something that will really get the trainee fired up about how awesome flying is.
 
Oh boy, hope this doesn't start a war, but, just about everything required to be a safe pilot is lacking in some way or another with every student I have seen.

Here is my list, mind you only for private pilot, I cannot comment on instrument/commercial.

Basic knowledge is lacking with core basics*, management**, discipline, weather, systems, aerodynamics.

Instructor presentation I believe is a huge problem. One of my pet peeves is the system we use for delivery. It takes people, on average, 55-90 hours, depending on source, to get their license. Yet we turn around and teach a 35 hour syllabi. Furthermore, we give too many tasks at once, instead of a controlled delivery, allowing students the chance to focus on, and master, one idea. Then they can apply that idea to the bigger picture. For instance, is it really that important that they takeoff in lesson 1/2 before they even can properly taxi, when your likely going to be doing most of the work? IMO its dumb and hinders learning.

*Core basics: Things like, do they coordinate rudders and ailerons in every turn? Does the student keep an active visual scan from takeoff until landings? Can they execute all basic maneuvers, from takeoff until landing, without relying on instruments? Do suffer from fixation, probably the number one killer in aviation and rarely ever focused on with private pilots. Most private pilots suffer from one or more of these deficiencies.

**Management: Are they assertive with the decisions they make? Is there noticeable organization? How is their thought process, especially with emergencies? Do they demonstrate good discipline, specifically as it relates to flight preparation? Again, most students lack one or more of these. General management isn't really a focus of any course, which I find appalling considering a PIC is nothing more than a manager.


This is a list I have been building on and revising since I started writing this course many of you have heard me shouting about on here for months. It is still scheduled to go live in January with a little more info in my signature. I have attempted to include, equally, all of these areas that I believe are lacking in the training environment, and many more, not listed, into this work.
 
Douglas said:
I'd really say weather flying though.
Ice/Thunderstorms/LOW IFR (you're going to your alternate son)
'Twould be the bees knees if we had hours of the commercial 141 syllabus dedicated to that.
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Yeah. I didn't really know anything about that until I had a few hundred hours of CFI-ing under my belt.

Ian J said:
I'd say real-world actual weather scenarios. Everything from continuous hand-flying in the weather to approaches. While many people focus on doing ILS's to mins not many focus on non-precisions at mins. Most students don't get the opportunity to have to execute a missed approach.
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Again, something I never really got to do until I was a CFI. I tried to get my students exposed to it. Some I did better with than others.

jrh said:
Too much focus on the PTS / passing a checkride and too little focus on the skills really needed to be a proficient pilot. That includes all of the things already mentioned...emergencies, grass runway ops, scenario based training, dealing with weather, flying at max gross weight, everything.
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Eeeexactly.
 
I really like the idea of scenario based training. Honestly I've just been teaching the syllabus straight up, but i think I can see all sorts of plusses with basing many of the lessons around a specific scenario.
 
Cessnaflyer said:
I feel real soft fields are the least practiced and never have any practical experience before getting their license.
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My CFI taught me soft-field landing technique and I enjoyed it, although the club planes we flew were not allowed to fly to soft fields. I thought it was kinda silly at the time, but knew it was a requirement.

dc3flyer said:
Another thing I always had students do, was get close to a local grass strip and then pull the power. Show me a "real" emergency landing there please.
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This. My DPE did exactly this to me. I had just taken the hood off on the PPL ride, and she says, "where are we?"

I look around and look at the chart and notice a grass field right below us. "Well, that grass field looks like this here on the chart and there's the highway so I'm pretty sure this is the field we're over."

"Right, very good." She reaches over and pulls the motor. "Land it."

I figured she'd give me back the throttle as we got close, but no. Power off landing into a grass strip.

I had more fun that day...and I was very glad I had learned soft-field.

Once I had a few dozen more hours after my PPL there were things I wish I had learned more about - weather was definitely one of them. I think I might have liked learning more systems stuff, too, although that has more to do with my desire to learn them than meeting the requirements, per se.
 
killbilly said:
I think I might have liked learning more systems stuff, too, although that has more to do with my desire to learn them than meeting the requirements, per se.
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Do a cross country over to CXO. I'll teach you what you'd like to know.
 
poser765 said:
I really like the idea of scenario based training. Honestly I've just been teaching the syllabus straight up, but i think I can see all sorts of plusses with basing many of the lessons around a specific scenario.
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So do I, and so does any CFI worth their salt.

At my previous employer, we used a FITS scenario based syllabus, and all of us hated it. It was an incredibly poor, paperwork heavy, burdensome, and inadequate implementation of the FITS concept.

The core problem I saw with the syllabus (at least the Initial Commercial Multienge stage) was that by using FITS, we had no minimum flight times. This meant that other than a couple of sim flights and the cross countries (of which there were only 3 in the multi-engine portion) essentially the rest of the semester was checkride prep. It was very difficult to fit in good scenarios along with all the basic maneuver stuff that had to be taught for the students to go from Pvt-ASEL-Inst to Comm-AMEL-Inst in a single semester flying about 20 hours. I only started to feel like I knew what I was doing after having taught it 2 or 3 times.

A couple favorite scenarios:
-Flying to KDAL to pick up Chipotle (we didn't have one in the town where I taught).
-Having another instructor in the practice area call up and pretend they were stuck on the ground at another airport with a flat tire, and could we give them a ride back to base? This got a diversion, and because he said he was on the long runway at that airport, we also got to do a short field landing. My student was rather annoyed when she found out that we weren't actually rescuing someone.
-Flying to Mississippi to eat crawfish and gumbo, and taking a cooler full of southern home cooking back with us in the nose baggage compartment.
 
Roger said:
A couple favorite scenarios:
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Thought I would share my favorite scenario, unfortunately I didn't get to experience it. First, you need to know that the Crusader has the fuel shut offs behind the center console.

It was a crew mission, two students and one CFI that brought along another CFI. The students got to the airport and were told they had to fly a pregnant lady to another airport (the other, males CFI) to be driven to a nearby hospital. After 30 minutes to prepare they departed only to have the pregnant CFI act as though they went into labor. He was in the back behind the center console and kicked the fuel shutoff for one of the engines while pretending have contractions.

I thought this was just incredibly creative and certainly taught the "prepare for anything," idea was nailed home with this.
 
Ian J said:
I'd say real-world actual weather scenarios. Everything from continuous hand-flying in the weather to approaches. While many people focus on doing ILS's to mins not many focus on non-precisions at mins. Most students don't get the opportunity to have to execute a missed approach.
Click to expand...

Agree. Was doing an IFR flight with a co-worker, non-precision IAP. On the approach, at MDA, still in the soup. Trucking along at MDA looking inside/outside, nearing the MAP, he spots the runway and in the haste to land begins descending....completely forgetting the VDP is X distance behind him, and circling mins are above us in the soup. A small reminder got us going on the missed, but he freely admitted that he's never truly had to level at MDA and "find" the airport or have it appear last minute......it's always been there or not been there, hence the missed has been clear cut one way or another right as he's gotten to MDA. This time, he got a little tunnel-visioned, and learned a good lesson from it.

On a related note: great thing about helo non-precision approaches......no VDP required.
 
Douglas said:
Shortcomings in flight instruction?
My paycheck....who didn't see that coming?
------

I'd really say weather flying though.
Ice/Thunderstorms/LOW IFR (you're going to your alternate son)
'Twould be the bees knees if we had hours of the commercial 141 syllabus dedicated to that.
Click to expand...

Amen to that.

As for what I feel is usually a short coming: power-out landings. I see plenty of people practice emergency approaches out over fields, but hardly ever at a concrete place where the student can the plane all the down.
 
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