Have you ever feared a student would kill you?

No, but I refused to fly with someone once.
I asked to his Identification and he showed me his driver's license, a gun carry permit, an appointment card for a mental health professional, and his separation papers from his last employer showing "inappropriate behavior" as the cause.:crazy:
 
LucasM said:
If you are letting your student put your aircraft in a situation where your lives/pilot certificate could be compromised, then you aren't doing your job as an INSTRUCTOR.

It's not exactly a confidence builder when you, as an instructor, say that your students are trying to kill you. No matter how funny it may be. We are there to train and educate, not to berate and be disrespectful because of a student's inability.
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:yeahthat:

To me, "my student tried to kill me" implies some intent on the student's part. I have never had a student actively try to kill me. Them screwing up, on the other hand, is just them screwing up - it's part of being a student, and I'm there to teach them how not to do it. That does include taking the controls from time to time for our safety, but that's part of being an instructor as well, and I don't hold it against the student.
 
I also had a cop for a student who once asked me if I was afraid of a student trying to kill me and I said no, that I was able to recover from a stall, spin or other unusual attitude a student might put the plane in.
Then he said, I mean really TRIED to kill you.
You mean suicidal?
yeah, well what would you do?
I said there's probably not much I could do if you tried as hard as you could to crash this plane and there's not a damn thing you could do if I tried to crash this plane and kill us both. Then I looked at him and said I guess we have to trust each other. I thought it was a rather odd conversation to have in an airplane.
 
Old Pete said:
Then I looked at him and said I guess we have to trust each other. I thought it was a rather odd conversation to have in an airplane.
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...followed quickly with "I have the flight controls"


I had one guy put me in a horrible dive and froze then dove some more. The airspeed was redlined and gravity had me standing on the rudders as I pulled on the yoke. My butt wasn't in the chair.
That was one of the few times I have hit a student.

He never finished his PPL.
 
tgrayson said:
Never. If an instructor really thinks that, then he may be letting a student go too far outside the instructor's comfort zone. Rescuing your landings is all in a day's work for an instructor and shouldn't cause more than a high state of alertness. The proper way for an instructor to describe the incident is "the student's landing attempt caught my attention." ;)
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:yeahthat:

To be completely blunt, I think an instructor is a total pansy if they say their student tried to kill them.

The reality is that it's pretty hard to die in an airplane. Bend metal, sure. Get injured, maybe. But straight up *die*...not likely. At least not during an instructional flight.

The handful of times I seriously considered the possibility of dying were 100% my own doing. They usually involved thunderstorms, continued VFR in to IMC, high density altitude mountain flying, icing, and/or some combination of those things. I've used terrible judgment on a few occasions.

The closest I've ever come to having a very bad ending to an instructional flight was when I went off roading with a student in his tailwheel airplane. That's right, we were fully off the runway and having a wild ride. I think it's the only time I've used an expletive in the plane. The plane came out of it with nothing more than a small dent in the landing gear skin, thankfully. I'm not going to talk about it on the internet beyond that.
 
jrh said:
To be completely blunt, I think an instructor is a total pansy if they say their student tried to kill them.

The reality is that it's pretty hard to die in an airplane. Bend metal, sure. Get injured, maybe. But straight up *die*...not likely. At least not during an instructional flight.
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I helped pull two friends out this year, you're wrong.
 
Maurus said:
I think we could safely assume he doesn't know anyone that has died in an airplane accident.
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I read him as alluding that normally-speaking, dying in a plane crash isn't likely. Does it happen? Of course. But when taken as a percentage of the total ops of training flights flown day to day, that percentage of them that turn fatal is small.

At least thats how I read his statement to mean.
 
I've personally never felt like a student put me in a situation that I couldn't either prevent or recover from, at least in the single engine tricycle geared airplanes I've instructed in.

There are two sets of controls.. You need to know how far to let the student take it and that comes naturally but usually you'll be more conservative at first until you find where exactly the threshold is.... My two cents
 
MikeD said:
I read him as alluding that normally-speaking, dying in a plane crash isn't likely. Does it happen? Of course. But when taken as a percentage of the total ops of training flights flown day to day, that percentage of them that turn fatal is small.

At least thats how I read his statement to mean.
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Me too, but from my personal experience going from on the edge to a situation where you can't un-eff yourself happens fairly quickly.
 
esa17 said:
I helped pull two friends out this year, you're wrong.
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From accidents that occurred during instructional flights?

In any case, I'm sorry to hear it.

Maurus said:
I think we could safely assume he doesn't know anyone that has died in an airplane accident.
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You're right, I don't. At least not anyone close to me. Which further proves my point. Instructional flights are pretty darn safe.

MikeD said:
I read him as alluding that normally-speaking, dying in a plane crash isn't likely. Does it happen? Of course. But when taken as a percentage of the total ops of training flights flown day to day, that percentage of them that turn fatal is small.

At least thats how I read his statement to mean.
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That's exactly what I meant.

esa17 said:
Me too, but from my personal experience going from on the edge to a situation where you can't un-eff yourself happens fairly quickly.
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Ok, I guess I just haven't seen it yet in my 5+ years of teaching. During "regular" flying? You bet. But not during instructional flights.

I'm going to un-eff myself from this discussion now.
 
escapepilot said:
When you wheel land a taildragger, just as your mains touch down, you give a little push to keep the tail off the ground. I once had a student attempt that while we were about a foot in the air.
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I had a nasty habit of doing this while learning wheel landings. It happened more than once. In a Citabria with the springy main gear you get a nice bounce, but it was never that big of a deal. Then again I always went around after another lesson learned about pilot-induced oscillation.

But a BIG push, big enough for a prop strike? That would be a different story.
 
I agree with the aforementioned posts stated about "saying students are trying to kill you" is the instructors fault for allowing a situation to escelate out of their control,experience, comfort, etc. Its ironic because right after ground school my student asked the very same question and I responded no. However I changed my answer to the thing that catches my attention the most, is instructing in imc. Granted the student has proven him/herself instrument proficient in the simulator first and built up situational awareness so that the chit chat is at a minimum in the airplane. IFR is all a thinking game, like chess to work steps ahead especially with students at the helm. The fear for the student and/or distracted CFII is not able to see what they're going to hit. Gotta stay ontop and ahead.

With multi instruction I've had students fail to close both throttles on engine fail prior to vmc, I was spring loaded to cut the mixtures. Good thing I always let twr know of a momentary delay for their planning purposes in casw crap like that happens. I've had students stomp on the incorrect rudder during engine fails where I had to close both throttles and gain control again. The students say I'm cool as ice. I guess I just silently brief what can go wrong to myself and prepare before it happens. Always thinking ahead staying sharp, but keeping calm and within limits. The quicker you catch the mistake the smaller the correction. However this may vary based on how much of a point your willing to prove to your student. GOOD STUFF, LIKE THE TOPIC GOODNIGHT! Safe flying.
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There were a few times I, as both an instructor and pilot, exercised bad judgement, and I kissed the ground once rolled to a complete stop (once out of sight of my student, lol). However, I never thought that my life was ever in any life-threatening danger because of a student. I always thought that saying was more of a joke, anyways.
 
Douglas said:
...followed quickly with "I have the flight controls"


I had one guy put me in a horrible dive and froze then dove some more. The airspeed was redlined and gravity had me standing on the rudders as I pulled on the yoke. My butt wasn't in the chair.
That was one of the few times I have hit a student.

He never finished his PPL.
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Dude, I heard you went up for a stage check with a guy and during unusual attitudes something similar to this happened, except you didn't even flinch. You hardass.
 
tedwright said:
That is awesome!! :rotfl:
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Well I do not have nearly the experience that most people here do nor do I know what it must have felt like to be put in that situation. But do you think that the student did what he did on purpose or was he himself in such an advanced state of fear that he did not know what to do.

I am not suggesting that you over-reacted , god only knows what I would do in that situation--- when someone has almost taken my life away from me. Also I do not know this students history but I think that he may have been much more terrified than you were in that situation and panicked.

I guess my only point is that he did a very, very stupid and dangerous thing but (without knowing any facts whatsoever) I don't think , just based on human nature , that he did it on purpose. Flying can be such an intimidating thing at first and serious miscalculations can be made until one just gives up because he or she has lost complete control of the situation.

I am sure that I am grossly understating this as I play monday morning quarterback and again I am not yet even a CFI so perhaps my view on this will change completly after some time. The violence that he did to you could have been deadly , but I don't think it was intentional. Chances are that he has no place in the sky, Its just painful to hear of stories that involve violence from a mentor to a student. Just my very humble and probably uninformed opinion
 
I once had a student in a 152 simultaneously chop the throttle, raise the nose, and retract the flaps on short final, about 50' AGL. You can bet that got my attention.
 
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