The Colonel hits it on the head, its all about focus. Occasionally you can do this with students, but you'll find it a pretty slippery slope. In most cases the training aspect rapidly ceases to be the focus of the flight. What do you think is going to happen when they get over their house? "Hey you fly for a bit I want to take some pictures! Can you circle back? I think I see the wife in the yard. Hey I get to count all this time right?" What do you think the student takes away from this flight? What's worse is that you'll have trouble saying no to the student in the future. "I know we're supposed to go out and practice stalls but could we do it over to my parent's place to drop something off?" Again, where do you think they'll be focused on? This very obviously impacts people's ability to retain and learn stuff when there's competition for their attention.digits_ wrote: You might be describing me here. Why is this wrong ? If I had planned to fly to airport X, but the student wants to fly to airport Y because his parents live nearby, why is that wrong ?
If the student needs to prepare a navigation flight and he asks to fly over his house instead of a water tower, why is that wrong ? It makes him more motivated and he prepares the flight more precise because he really wants to find his house.
Love to hear your point of view!
Something that very often needs to be curbed with students is their assumption that they need to show up and build the hours. Because there's instructors who participate, its another contributing factor to the high times to completion we see.
Another thing to think about is when students are supposed to be practicing items solo, if up to that point there's been a lot of sightseeing and convenience trips done, do you think they're going to be all business?