I'd argue that aircraft handling is not the most of what flight training should be about: decision making, airmanship, procedures, knowing what is important and what is not, and emergency handling are the most difficult to teach and without experience to rely on, it's almost impossible.

AuxBatOn wrote:I'd argue that aircraft handling is not the most of what flight training should be about: decision making, airmanship, procedures, knowing what is important and what is not, and emergency handling are the most difficult to teach and without experience to rely on, it's almost impossible.

Let me explain what I mean by aircraft handling. I'll use a relevant example that I saw when I was a supervising instructor. I took a student pilot up for a supervisory ride. This SP had ~ 12hrs. I noticed that he had a tendency to come in short on the first two landings, requiring me to intervene. I asked him where his aim point was. He told me it was the grass just in front of the threshold. I asked him why he was aiming there. He explained that his instructor taught him to do that because it allows you to touch down right on the numbers.

The instructor in question was a fairly experienced bush pilot, but very new to instructing. Aim for the grass is what he, (and a lot of experienced bush pilots), did while flying operationally. It is an excellent technique for an experienced pilot, (by experienced I mean a pilot who has reduced their error box to near microscopic size). It is a really bad technique for a pre-solo student pilot.

What a lot of highly experienced, non-instructor, pilots don't seem to realize is that it took them years reach their current level of skill. Trying to impart it all at once to a student is just going to distract them from getting the basics right.

Among other things, the kinds of weather-related decisions a seasoned pilot makes aren't appropriate for a new PPL.

My experience instructing has been very rewarding and taught me a great deal about myself as a pilot and generally how someone learns to fly. I have a few points to offer:

You need to be quite proficient yourself at flying so that you can demonstrate to the student properly how something is flown. They need to see it properly the first time. This means being honest with yourself about what your weaknesses are and putting an effort in to learn and develop yourself continuously. Keep your prof up. Set an example of striving for the ideal. Don't ever be lazy, sloppy or procedurally incorrect in front of the student. Set a tone of professionalism and conscientiousness. When the student observes you make a mistake, be up front and own it.

The student needs to be motivated and a good instructor can generate some excitement and interest in flying. It's key to explain the level of work that is required to be good at flying, like anything. I have explained to students how much study and chair flying I put forth as a student, and how I personally learn and try to integrate knowledge in a functional way before I go and try to fly. Flying is a unique discipline that requires a high degree of nerdy book learning - but then requires a student to functionally apply that knowledge in a practical way using hands and feet. To do this well and not waste expensive time in the plane getting frustrated, it requires a great deal of time on the ground preparing and practising. Most students under estimate this and don't appreciate the level of commitment and obsessive like focus on pre-study, memorization and chair flying. An instructor should show concern and interest in a student's learning, share in their successes, and let the student know they're making an effort to facilitate their successes.

You should never allow emotion to enter the cockpit. You student needs to be in the right psychological zone to learn and generally as an instructor, in a position of power and knowledge, your expressing frustration or sarcasm toward the student will shut down their learning. You should assume the student is trying their best and give all you can to succeed. If they don't, don't take it personally. If there is some tough love to dole out, it's usually best done in the debrief and not in the air. Keep it professional and supportive. This, of course, is assuming the student is actually putting the work in on the ground and in the cockpit.

The brief is critical. It should be a thoughtful, efficient, concise, well delivered and organized plan for delivering specific training. The brief should emphasize key points that are, in your view as the instructor doing the teaching, the critical aspects of successfully flying a maneuver. This challenges you to think about and explain in abstract concept how you understand a maneuver and how you fly it. Being introspective here may surprise you. Be sure you fly it and explain it right. Time spent in the brief clarifying, explaining, generating interest and developmentally teaching is a huge investment in your student's and your own success. Breaking a maneuver down into stages or components, each with one key area of focus, is a great method of building understanding and allowing them to focus in the cockpit on improvement. Confirm with the student the key points before you walk to the plane to reinforce what he/she is about to do. Technique and procedure are important to differentiate between, but good techniques are the "how to" tools you should be providing to allow the student to gain a methodology to make the plane do what they want.


It's important to debrief the student on what was flown well to re-enforce good technique, and leave them with some confidence. The points to improve must have an associated "how to" that is tailored to an individual student's learning style, conceptions, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses etc. Always leave the student with a positive aspect that keeps them motivated.

Each maneuver needs a goal for the student to achieve, basically the point of doing it, and by this goal you can measure the success of the maneuver. That aim may change as the student progresses to emphasize different aspects of the maneuver. They should know why it's important to fly a maneuver - how it could save their life etc. Trying to connect it to other maneuvers they already know - in the world of aviation or outside (like driving a car, playing sports etc) allows them to draw on skill sets they may already possess and simply apply them to the aircraft. Context is very important - generally an example of how some skill or maneuver saved (or cost) lives or will allow them to be more effective, professional etc. going forward in aviation provides credibility to the conventions being taught as ideal and builds on the importance of doing it correctly.

On each trip, I would pick one or maybe two aspects of each maneuver that you want to work on. These should normally be the "low hanging fruit" that are the major areas for improvement, or the root cause of a student's other errors. Those areas become the focus in the brief. In the plane, with very concise and direct language you want to provide guidance at the right moment to achieve the goal pre-selected for each maneuver. Debrief to the aspect you're working on. Keep the instruction focused. Don't try to fix everything they do wrong all at the same time. This means putting some areas for improvement on hold for another flight. The student needs to build on each experience, setting down a foundation. You don't want them overwhelmed and feeling like a perpetual failure because you have 1000 hot tips for everything they do. Setting a goal for each maneuver and achieving it allows success and a lock-step development of increasingly advanced handling.

The guidance you provide in the cockpit is really where you earn your worth as an instructor. There's many ways to look at the types of guidance but generally, there's guidance where you tell them specifically what and how - very explicitly; and guidance where you make a statement that is a suggestion or directs attention but allows the student to decide for themselves what they specifically need to do to "fix" whatever needs to be changed. In early instruction, most of your guidance is very explicit but later on you want to transition it to being inferential, suggestive, hinting, to force the student to think and make their own mind up about what needs to happen and by how much. You're slowly reducing the detail of the verbal assistance you give, until you only have to clear your throat, and then eventually you say nothing at all, so that the student transitions from monkey who does what they're told to an independent thinker and decision maker. The guidance in the cockpit, building on what was thoroughly briefed on the ground, should be super concise. Often this is only one or two words that should trigger a concept that you've taught previously. You need to have an arsenal of "silver bullet" words to use as guidance (depending on the error and how to fix it, and the level of explicitness you want your guidance to have) on the tip of your tongue. This comes with experience.

Knowing what guidance to give, both in the cockpit, and your points in the brief, depends on your ability to diagnose the root cause of error. This is really vitally important and will force you to think again carefully about how you fly a maneuver, your personal mental "script" of events and decision making flow, and then think why or how or when the student's errors form. It may surprise you where the chain of events starts or how deep you need to dig into a student's psyche to grasp how they (mis)understand something and then "fix" them.

Much of what I learned instructing I got from other experienced instructors on bad weather days. We'd talk about our challenges teaching students specific things and other instructors would share their personal techniques, guidance, method of explaining, how they break a maneuver down into component parts, etc.

That's a huge rant, but those things really helped me. Good luck, have fun. It's very rewarding and will make you a better pilot.

Another random piece of advice: don't rush the student and don't try to give too much "helpful advice" during the flight. It always ticked me off as a student when a flight instructor treated me like an auto pilot and told me what to do all_the_time. Those flights usually ended with a "nice flying today". I'm sure he was referring to himself, as I didn't to anything.

Gannet167 wrote:My experience instructing has been very rewarding and taught me a great deal about myself as a pilot and generally how someone learns to fly. I have a few points to offer:

You need to be quite proficient yourself at flying so that you can demonstrate to the student properly how something is flown. They need to see it properly the first time. This means being honest with yourself about what your weaknesses are and putting an effort in to learn and develop yourself continuously. Keep your prof up. Set an example of striving for the ideal. Don't ever be lazy, sloppy or procedurally incorrect in front of the student. Set a tone of professionalism and conscientiousness. When the student observes you make a mistake, be up front and own it.

The student needs to be motivated and a good instructor can generate some excitement and interest in flying. It's key to explain the level of work that is required to be good at flying, like anything. I have explained to students how much study and chair flying I put forth as a student, and how I personally learn and try to integrate knowledge in a functional way before I go and try to fly. Flying is a unique discipline that requires a high degree of nerdy book learning - but then requires a student to functionally apply that knowledge in a practical way using hands and feet. To do this well and not waste expensive time in the plane getting frustrated, it requires a great deal of time on the ground preparing and practising. Most students under estimate this and don't appreciate the level of commitment and obsessive like focus on pre-study, memorization and chair flying. An instructor should show concern and interest in a student's learning, share in their successes, and let the student know they're making an effort to facilitate their successes.

You should never allow emotion to enter the cockpit. You student needs to be in the right psychological zone to learn and generally as an instructor, in a position of power and knowledge, your expressing frustration or sarcasm toward the student will shut down their learning. You should assume the student is trying their best and give all you can to succeed. If they don't, don't take it personally. If there is some tough love to dole out, it's usually best done in the debrief and not in the air. Keep it professional and supportive. This, of course, is assuming the student is actually putting the work in on the ground and in the cockpit.

The brief is critical. It should be a thoughtful, efficient, concise, well delivered and organized plan for delivering specific training. The brief should emphasize key points that are, in your view as the instructor doing the teaching, the critical aspects of successfully flying a maneuver. This challenges you to think about and explain in abstract concept how you understand a maneuver and how you fly it. Being introspective here may surprise you. Be sure you fly it and explain it right. Time spent in the brief clarifying, explaining, generating interest and developmentally teaching is a huge investment in your student's and your own success. Breaking a maneuver down into stages or components, each with one key area of focus, is a great method of building understanding and allowing them to focus in the cockpit on improvement. Confirm with the student the key points before you walk to the plane to reinforce what he/she is about to do. Technique and procedure are important to differentiate between, but good techniques are the "how to" tools you should be providing to allow the student to gain a methodology to make the plane do what they want.


It's important to debrief the student on what was flown well to re-enforce good technique, and leave them with some confidence. The points to improve must have an associated "how to" that is tailored to an individual student's learning style, conceptions, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses etc. Always leave the student with a positive aspect that keeps them motivated.

Each maneuver needs a goal for the student to achieve, basically the point of doing it, and by this goal you can measure the success of the maneuver. That aim may change as the student progresses to emphasize different aspects of the maneuver. They should know why it's important to fly a maneuver - how it could save their life etc. Trying to connect it to other maneuvers they already know - in the world of aviation or outside (like driving a car, playing sports etc) allows them to draw on skill sets they may already possess and simply apply them to the aircraft. Context is very important - generally an example of how some skill or maneuver saved (or cost) lives or will allow them to be more effective, professional etc. going forward in aviation provides credibility to the conventions being taught as ideal and builds on the importance of doing it correctly.

On each trip, I would pick one or maybe two aspects of each maneuver that you want to work on. These should normally be the "low hanging fruit" that are the major areas for improvement, or the root cause of a student's other errors. Those areas become the focus in the brief. In the plane, with very concise and direct language you want to provide guidance at the right moment to achieve the goal pre-selected for each maneuver. Debrief to the aspect you're working on. Keep the instruction focused. Don't try to fix everything they do wrong all at the same time. This means putting some areas for improvement on hold for another flight. The student needs to build on each experience, setting down a foundation. You don't want them overwhelmed and feeling like a perpetual failure because you have 1000 hot tips for everything they do. Setting a goal for each maneuver and achieving it allows success and a lock-step development of increasingly advanced handling.

The guidance you provide in the cockpit is really where you earn your worth as an instructor. There's many ways to look at the types of guidance but generally, there's guidance where you tell them specifically what and how - very explicitly; and guidance where you make a statement that is a suggestion or directs attention but allows the student to decide for themselves what they specifically need to do to "fix" whatever needs to be changed. In early instruction, most of your guidance is very explicit but later on you want to transition it to being inferential, suggestive, hinting, to force the student to think and make their own mind up about what needs to happen and by how much. You're slowly reducing the detail of the verbal assistance you give, until you only have to clear your throat, and then eventually you say nothing at all, so that the student transitions from monkey who does what they're told to an independent thinker and decision maker. The guidance in the cockpit, building on what was thoroughly briefed on the ground, should be super concise. Often this is only one or two words that should trigger a concept that you've taught previously. You need to have an arsenal of "silver bullet" words to use as guidance (depending on the error and how to fix it, and the level of explicitness you want your guidance to have) on the tip of your tongue. This comes with experience.

Knowing what guidance to give, both in the cockpit, and your points in the brief, depends on your ability to diagnose the root cause of error. This is really vitally important and will force you to think again carefully about how you fly a maneuver, your personal mental "script" of events and decision making flow, and then think why or how or when the student's errors form. It may surprise you where the chain of events starts or how deep you need to dig into a student's psyche to grasp how they (mis)understand something and then "fix" them.

Much of what I learned instructing I got from other experienced instructors on bad weather days. We'd talk about our challenges teaching students specific things and other instructors would share their personal techniques, guidance, method of explaining, how they break a maneuver down into component parts, etc.

That's a huge rant, but those things really helped me. Good luck, have fun. It's very rewarding and will make you a better pilot.

I think this is one of the best posts ever on the training forum. For those starting your instructor training and for new instructors read and heed.

Gannet167 wrote:My experience instructing has been very rewarding and taught me a great deal about myself as a pilot and generally how someone learns to fly. I have a few points to offer...

Thanks very much Gannet! I cannot even express how appreciative of the time you put into your post! I will definitely try to keep each of your points in mind as I go forward in my training.

I have a book where I keep notes on what I learn flying. I think I will write your advice in there so I remember it.

Thank you again for giving me a serious answer and some sound advice!

KDewald wrote: I have a book where I keep notes on what I learn flying.

When you begin instructing, keep notes on each flight and on each student. Documentation can, and will save your ass if anything were to occur - either during training (or solo, etc.), or afterwards when a student is licensed.

7ECA wrote:

KDewald wrote: I have a book where I keep notes on what I learn flying.

When you begin instructing, keep notes on each flight and on each student. Documentation can, and will save your ass if anything were to occur - either during training (or solo, etc.), or afterwards when a student is licensed.

Ideally keep those notes in the comment section of the PTR.

Depending on where you teach, you may not even have a physical PTR (there are plenty of places going to computerized records - much too easy for a school to sanitize comments), but yes put notes in the PTR. Just remember that once the PTR leaves your hands, you can't be sure how it will be treated.

Keep your own set of notes, get a note book and write down any piece of information that can be useful not just as a learning aid but also in the event something happens. By maintaining your own notes, you can be sure that they will be accessible if needed, and by writing them by hand there is a larger degree of legal validity.

She's weeks away from meeting her first student and you're giving her advice about the forthcoming litigation, already?

7ECA wrote:Documentation can, and will save your ass if anything were to occur - either during training (or solo, etc.), or afterwards when a student is licensed.

Are you actually aware of any instructor whose ass needed to be saved by their copious note-keeping, or are you just trying to scare people?

photofly wrote:which of the exercises "do not use common sense" btw?

I'd say the ones like soft-field take-off and landing where the school doesn't actually let the student experience a soft field. Or some ways the precautionary is taught (complete with a high level inspection). A short field take-off in a normally aspirated engine (standing on the brakes with full-power doesn't really shorten your take off roll).

I think it would be good if more instructors had more real life experience and more airline instructors had more instructing experience.

Great attitude to the OP BTW.

photofly wrote:She's weeks away from meeting her first student and you're giving her advice about the forthcoming litigation, already?

7ECA wrote:Documentation can, and will save your ass if anything were to occur - either during training (or solo, etc.), or afterwards when a student is licensed.

Are you actually aware of any instructor whose ass needed to be saved by their copious note-keeping, or are you just trying to scare people?

Not necessarily litigation, but rather the he said she said game that students can try and play when things do not go their way during training. Or, say an aircraft is damaged during a solo flight, or a former student (now licensed) damages an aircraft, etc, etc.

And yes, I am aware of a variety of different instances in which note keeping - even a more minimal approach, has helped to cover an instructor's ass. One was a student who ended up nearly writing off an aircraft, and told the school's owner that they used a technique taught to them by their former instructor. Another was a more serious incident in which a fatality occurred years after training, and the TSB was investigating the pilot - the instructor was able to shed a light on decision making and attitude.

And finally, have you ever taught international students? These nice folks, will throw instructors under the literal bus to try and save face.

7ECA wrote: And finally, have you ever taught international students? These nice folks, will throw instructors under the literal bus to try and save face.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally

Gannet167 post is very insightful and addresses the many aspects of being an instructor.

As a new class 4 myself, I'd like to share a few things I was taught and some I've learned along the way.

1. A class 4 rating doesn't entail you know it all.
* You will learn more about flying being an instructor than any other time in your training.

*This isn't an excuse to show up unprepared however; don't BS if you are unsure about something. Get the student the answer before they leave the building.

* Review the lesson(s) to be flown the following day and anticipate possible questions.

2. Admit when you are wrong
* students will pick up on your mistakes so be up front and acknowledge and correct them. They might not call you out on it due to them being polite, but don't think they are unaware(point #1)

3. Be extremely vigilant in the a/c and monitor everything closely.
* keeping a good lookout for traffic, a/c temperature & pressure (I personally check these two every few minutes), make all required radio calls, carb heat check, FUEL etc. Keep in mind your student will eventually have to do all of this when they go solo so get them involved early and often.

4. Avoid excessively long drawn out explanations
* be precise and get your point across. Question the student to confirm they get it.

5. Take pride in what you are doing but also remember the student isn't paying for you to fly the a/c. Most of the time the student will be in control.

6. Don't be too quick to take control( as long as safety isn't being or about to be compromised). Think back to your own training.

7. It's perfectly fine to have ambitions but don't get carried away on what you want to fly next(pardon the pun). Focus on being an excellent trainer.

Some other notable things are:

-ensure your briefing room/area is clean and you have working markers
-using a model helps with visualization
-a good flight starts with a solid PGI and Pre flight so work hard to perfect them. The Flight Instructor Guide will help with these including the post flight brief.
-Canadian Flight Notes is an awesome aid
-provide student with any material you feel will aid in their training. For example, talking on the radio is a common problem so why not direct them to the Nav Canada phraseology document online. I've made up tons of extra stuff to help out my students such as:

POH questions (gets them going through their POH), Documents questions, a "quick reference" aid for diversion ( they simply calculate and fill in req. data), performance data such as V speeds for normal and performance T/O for the particular a/c(they have to fill in the speeds and I verify)

My employer didn't ask this of me however I figured it is a great way to enchance learning.

Best of luck on your rating.