Flight Training

While learning how to fly is a great experience, there is always something that could have been done differently when looking back with more experience under your belt. Moreover, flying has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades and hence, today’s would-be pilots have more options to choose from compared with those learning how to fly just a few years ago.

Hence, Vincent has recently posted a great entry on Plastic Pilot with some tips that anyone who is considering flight training now or in the near future needs to consider. These tips can best summarized by asking yourself whether you should learn how to fly:

1. At a controlled airport or an uncontrolled airport?
2. In a general aviation aircraft or a light sport aircraft (LSA)?
3. In an airplane with classical instrumentation or a computerized glass-cockpit?
4. In Europe or in the USA?

Keeping the above points in mind, we would like to ask our readers: If you had to learn how to fly again, what would you do the same or differently? Moreover, what advice would you give to those thinking of learning how to fly now or in the near future?

Given the amount of time and money that flight training can take, it is important for would-be pilots to stay on track and to know whether or not they are on track. Hence, a short post by Jason Schappert is well worth reading.

According to Jason, there are three ways to know if your flight training is on track:

1. Transfer of Responsibility: At first, the instructor will solely be responsible for the safety of the flight. Eventually though, the instructor will start to transfer responsibility over to you the student pilot and during each flight, you should notice a steady gain in responsibility.
2. Types of Questions Asked: If you aren’t studying, your flight training will not stay on track. Hence, your flight instructor will be asking you questions to see if you are keeping up with your studies when you are not with him or her in the cockpit.
3. The Post Flight: Upon completion of a flight training session, you should at least be walking away feeling like you learned something. In fact, Jason even pointed out that “if your not walking away feeling that you could have done something better you’re not learning enough!”

Jason ends his post stating that you should never be afraid to ask your flight instructor a question (in a nice way of course!). After all, some day you will be all alone in that cockpit!

The Phoenix East Aviation blog has recently posted two posts concerning what makes a great pilot and the quotes from these posts are well worth repeating. In the first post, Barry Valentine who served as acting FAA Administrator during President Bill Clinton’s administration and who also earned the US Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary flying, was quoted as saying:

There is an old saying that a superior pilot is one who uses his superior judgment so as not to have to use his superior skill…What makes a ‘pilot’s pilot’? Attitude and judgment. Recognizing that a pilot’s license is simply a license to learn………..and all flights are proficiency flights on which something can be learned, and skills cab be honed. That is the right attitude. But the best of skills must be coupled with judgment. Experience is, of course, important in flying as in virtually all endeavors. In aviation we generally equate experience with hours logged. This can, however, be deceptive. Does 10,000 hours in a logbook mean that the pilot has 10,000 hours of experience or one hour of experience 10,000 times? Approximately three-quarters of accidents contain an element of pilot error. So the right attitude and good judgment coupled with the right experience and skill are all necessary for safe flying.

In the second post, the Phoenix East Aviation blog mentioned an article by Jane G. Birch who quoted a master flight instructor as saying:

Thinking about what makes an expert pilot, I believe the first trait is one’s ability to maintain beginner’s mind.  Beginner’s mind is having an open mind to life experiences and the ability to recognize and use these experiences in the future. You may know someone who seems to know all there is to know about aviation.  However, if they do not possess beginner’s mind, then to me they are knowledgeable, but not an expert….besides being knowledgeable, the best pilots observe the environment around them…The expert will say this or that is going to happen, and it usually does further along the flight. When their prediction becomes realilty you think, ‘how did they know that was going to happen’?’

Apparently, the flight instructor goes on to say that great pilots share one thing in common: They are able to apply their aviation abilities to their environment.

Hence and its worth asking our readers: What do you think makes a great pilot or a “pilot’s pilot”? Feel free to post your comments below!