Afraid of the plane.

desertdog71

desertdog71

Girthy Member
Sunday I did a BFR with a CFI that I had not met before. He has about 3 times as many hours as I do.

The ceiling was 1900 and winds gusting high 20s to low 30s. Fairly typical for Kansas. So took off and climbed to about 1400 AGL and did some maneuvers. Did about 30 mins under the hood. Simulated engine failures and stalls. Then back for some touch and go's.

At one point he says "At least your not afraid of the plane and the wind." He went on to tell me how most people he flies with are real tense and only fly in fair weather and light winds.

In my experience with students I had them all for 200 plus hours. Except a couple ME add ons and a couple PPL.

The add on ME pilots were a little tense but these were 2 day intense add ons. I never noticed other students being afraid of the plane.

So now I have to wonder if others find it common that people are afraid of the plane?

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I've had a few people who were certificated pilots who were afraid of the plane. Most people I've flown with had more of an overconfidence problem than fear of the airplane problem. Well, of those who had an attitude problem.
 
Yes the over confidence and poor decisions were more common among my students. I was one of those students at times myself.

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We every now and then see someone who is afraid of the plane. Most of them come from "mills" that get them from zero to hero in "x" amount of time.
 
Being afraid of the airplane and setting personal limitations due to lack of proficiency are two different things.

If you rarely fly in surface winds above 20 kts, in MVFR, IFR, high DA, in the mountains, heavily loaded, or in and out of "shorter" runways, a smart pilot is naturally going to be apprehensive about operating in these conditions. This type of pilot is willing to learn and capable of adapting. If a pilot is "afraid" they are not open to learning and feel the "safest" thing to do is to just avoid these situations all together.

The line of confidence is a fine one. It takes confidence to perform well, but too much will get you killed. The key is to realize where your confidence comes from. Most pilots I found who were "afraid" of the wind had CFI's who were too. They never went flying in crappy conditions, so the students never learned any useful tactics on how to deal with the wind. Some who did this claimed they didn't want to set a bad example for the student such as flying in MVFR or "scud running", flying in 30-40 kt winds, or exceeding crosswind components. Their excuse was that the margin of error was too thin for their comfort. This is kind of a catch 22. You don't want a spineless, confidence lacking CFI taking a student out in these conditions but at the same time, how is the student supposed to learn through good experience? It's the good experiences that lead to good decision making on the part of the student. If the student never has the experience, then they have nothing to base a decision on, and are more likely to make a bad one and "just go for it".
 
My issue is giving Reviews to pilots who keep rescheduling the review until its clear, calm, and unlimited.
I try to get students to build up tolerances, but the 20hr a year private pilots only want to fly when it's perfect. Not to mention the IPC checks that aren't comfortable in IMC....lol
 
I used to fly with this one lady in her mid 70's. She bought a share in a 7GCBC and wanted to get proficient in it. After she felt comfortable flying solo, she would ONLY call me up on the nastiest, windy, Santa Ana days to go fly. She'd only last about 5-6 landings, but dammit she told that plane what to do. On really windy days when she didn't feel like flying we would still practice taxiing and ground handling in the wind around the airport for .5 or so. Now she goes to McCall, ID every summer and flies the back country in it, solo... She is also one of the safest and most conservative pilots I have ever flown with. A lot of times leaving your comfort zone and mastering adverse conditions is attributed to recklessness. When in reality, it's ignorance that breeds recklessness.

I always told my students there are only two basic rules to remember when it comes to flying the airplane.

1. You TELL the plane what you want it to do. You don't ask it.
2. Don't hit anything.
 
I used to be real nervous anytime I went flying, somewhere along the lines of getting my instrument or commercial I settled down. I don't think I was scared of the plane, but I respected what I was doing. It never kept me on the ground, really, I just needed to build confidence. Today I tell it to my students who are like this in this manner: "You've proven that you're safe to me, you've proven it to the FAA by passing your checkride, now you need to prove it to yourself."

Of course, I don't tell them to depart 002OVC 1/2SM the day after their instrument, or go solo to DFW in a 172 the day after their PPL. The students who are a bit nervous don't make me nervous, those are the ones who play safe. The ones who pass a checkride and feel like they should fly like a freight driver the next morning do.

The first time I went solo IFR, I was a little uneasy about the thought, once I cranked up I was ready. My first few flights with a student I was thinking "Am I really prepared for this?" The answer to that is yes and no. Yes, I had passed my checkride and was certainly licensed to do so, but no I was not as good of an instructor then as I am now. The same applies for when you pass a checkride, once you have that new cert or rating in your pocket, you are legally able to exercise the privileges, but that doesn't mean that you are as good as you will be in X months/years.

The point of every flight, whether you're teaching or taking instruction is to land a better pilot than when you took off.
 
I seem to notice the most nervousness in stalls and landings in challenging conditions. I think it comes from a combination of poor instruction the first time around, and also lack of practice once out of the flight training environment.
 
When I took nine years off of flying, that was it. Stalls, MCA and bad crosswinds would make me nervous. Didn't last long, but I remember a real rough, bumpy night under foggles that had me on edge.

First day of seaplane flying in that Super Cruiser with strong winds above the treeline, new plane that starts to fly at 40 (heck I got a glassy water take off at 25mph once ), and my first time in a stick airplane so I was cross controlling the crap out of it. Almost gave Tom the $900 and said bye at lunch, but it got better in the evening and by the second day I was much more comfortable.

For me in those situations, it wasn't as much fear as it was wanting to stay away from what I perceived as the edge until I was comfortable again.
 
I've had one student who was incredibly and obviously fearful of the airplane/environment. It was a toxic unhealthy level of fear. As we progressed, I have taught him to know his limits while becoming not afraid of the airplane. He still has some work to do, but he did his first solo and nailed it the other week!

It is normal for new students to have a healthy fear for the airplane, but that should go away as time progresses. One thing you need to do as an instructor, is enforce personal minimums, but DO NOT teach your student to be afraid of the airplane! I have seen countless instructors make scared pilots, and it drives me nuts to see a student freak out because the crosswind is 1 knot about their personal mins. I blow a puff of air across my hand, and say "thats more than 1 knot. Lets go fly, and get you some experience. The boss isn't gonna be happy one day when you decide you can't fly his plane because you can't handle a 10 knot crosswind right??"

Now there is a time and a place for a student when he needs to make responsible decisions without an instructor there, but on training flights with me, I encourage the student jump outside their comfort zone a little bit. I have to be careful to gauge whether they are ready to handle "the next step" above where they're at in their training. Too much too soon can sometimes be a bad thing.
 
I dont think it's a big secret that people are usually afraid of what they either dont know or of what they've had bad experiences with in the past. Pilots who haven't practiced in certain realms of flight should naturally start to feel uncomfortable with their skill in those areas. The pilot who has done one imminent stall recovery from the buzzer every two years at their BFR (for the past 10 years) probably is going to be a little nervous working on some more thorough stall/spin training. The pilot who flies 25 hours per year on the occasional calm evening around their local rural strip is probably going to be nervous in high winds, taking a long cross country, or flying into a busy controlled airport...it's just natural. I think as an instructor one of the best things you can do is help people stretch their comfort limits a little bit so that the unknown isn't so scary anymore and fear is replaced with understanding/respect. On a BFR ask them about what they usually do when they fly, ask about things they dont feel comfortable with, ask about things they wish they could do... suggest flying into a smaller grass field or a larger class C airport and see how they react...etc.
 
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