what is your funniest training story with a student

[PA31 Driver]

I once had a student try and snag a plane because the tire pressure " seemed" low !!

[shitdisturber]

One of the other instructors and a student had been out in the practice area in a 172; unfortunately the upper rudder fairing broke sometime during their flight. When they returned the tail strobe and it's mount were hanging beside the rudder from it's wiring. Just to see if he would notice, we sent the next student booked on the airplane out to do his walkaround; he didn't.

[PA31 Driver]

There was this one student who would take only 1 minute to do a walk around......and everyone knew he didn't look at anything.......This one time I put an old glove into the cowling on top on the oil stick to see if he would notice and you guessed it...............by the time I walked over to the plane ( he was already sitting it ) I opened the cowl took out the glove and when I asked him the oil level he replied " it's just above 4 "

He was always good for a laugh

[pistonbroke]

I once instructed a male student who was about 40,and was gay.Anyway he was scared of spins & stalls.When I demoed a stall he cried to the point he couldn't breath so we went back and landed.To make matters worse he hugged me and said sorry after we landed.The next time he came out he brought his "friend" for support.They were hugging and both crying before the lesson.I asked him to take some time off and decide if he really wanted to be a pilot. I only instructed for another month and never seen the guy again.

[PA31 Driver]

They were hugging and both crying before the lesson..

Now that's F*&King Funny

[Right Seat Captain]

I was teaching a guy his first lesson in stalls in a 172. We had briefed all the procedures, I demoed it, then got him to do a straight forward, power idle stall, no flaps...

Once we stalled, we had the usual nose drop, then this guy pushes the control column ALL THE WAY forward, right to the instrument panel (he was a strong guy). He put in FULL POWER at the same time. So of course I immediately took control, at which point we were pointing straight down to the ground with full power already well into the yellow arc on the airspeed within a second. I instinctively pulled the power back and came out of the dive and all was okay. I looked at the student, and he looked at me and said "I don't think I did that right..."

I then learnt how incredibly fast a 172 can change attitude to nose down when one puts full control input. While we were changing to our nose dive attitude, I was lifted clear out of my seat, being held in place by the seat belts. Our documents are kept in a small pouch under the seat. They came up from under the seat, went to the ceiling, came forward over my head and landed in my lap.

[Shiny Side Up]

One student asks me as we're doing the run up: "What side of the airplane is the right fuel tank on?" He didn't get why I thought it was funny.

Another student was out on their solo cross country trip and took a little longer to get back than expected. So when they did I went to quiz them on what happend. Apparently maps are hard to read after you barf on them.

[ahramin]

Apparently maps are hard to read after you barf on them.

But they still got home. Good on them. Few things are harder to deal with than plain old motion sickness.

[Shiny Side Up]

Yup, what I though was a bad performance ended up being a good performance given the adversities.

Same student was reading a book once and came to me puzzled after finding a particular piece of advice. She says "It says here that there are bold pilots and old pilots but no old bold pilots" I said so what do you think that means, she says " I can't figure it out, what does having no hair have to do with flying airplanes?"

It might be noted that her engrish wasn't very good at the time.

But happy ending - last I heard she was instructing down in Florida.

[Miss Mae]

I had a student once who was very nervous of all unusual type aircraft attitudes. The time came to demo the spin. I placed the aircraft into the spin, at which time he started to scream (very high pitched) and started trying to grab ahold of me. Unfourtantley in his panic he stabbed me in the leg with his pencil. To make matters worse he turned the worst colour green I've ever seen, didn't throw up though....waited till we were on the ground at least!. Good guy though...powered through and got his license.

[Right Seat Captain]

Once had a student who was nervous in any turbulence. He knew it was a problem, and we tried everything we could think of to try to get him over it, since he just couldn't do anything once we got into turbulence, let alone stalls. So finally after some hours, we decided I would show him the worst of it, a spin, and he could make the final decision if flying was for him. He didn't want to quit the lessons without ever doing a spin, so we did.

We made the plan together that we'd take off, go the the practice area, stay in the closest to the airport, do one spin and bee line it back. I was to do all the flying, so he could relax. I did my checks, and put us into a spin. He was grabbing onto the edges of his seat. We were in a C150, and I didn't notice his hands were so close to the seat position leaver on the front corner of the seat. As we entered the spin, he must have gripped harder until he pulled the lever. All I saw in the corner of my eye was him flying backwards in the cockpit. He had short legs, so he went quite far back.

Needless to say, it didn't help his situation. He only did a couple of flights after that, then he quit.

[PA31 Driver]

Oh this one I almost forgot about...............On one of my students dual cross country flights........this one student had is map all folded up on his lap but he folded in up wrong , so I suggested to him that he should unfold the map to the proper area we would be fling in.....I remembered looking down to fill in the takeoff time and when I looked back up ..(lol).... this guy had the map fully opened up across the windscreen right across my face............ I asked him what was wrong with this picture and his reply killed me . He said " I should turn it back around right ? "

[mculshaw]

I had one student and we were doing some of the dual review before his PPL flight test.
We were practicing instrument flying with the hood on. About half way through the turn a voice from under the hood mentions that he doesn't feel well.
Me, having the "a little turbulence never hurt anyone" attitude,
told him to suck it up, finish the exercise and we'll see how you feel than.

Well....
He mentions it again and I take control just to give him some air and to have him relax. Just to be nice, I give him the barf bag...
IMMEDIATELY,
he takes it and puts a donation into it.

Needless to say, I flew the aircraft back and we parked it further away from the flying club house, near the fuel pumps. There is a discrete garbage can there, he appreciated that.

Now the moral of the story, boys and girls...
If the student mentions ANYTHING about not feeling well.
Believe them!

mc

[Northern Skies]

If the student mentions ANYTHING about not feeling well.
Believe them!

That goes for instructors, too. I remember one occasion where I had to rush my instructor back to the airport after a spin.

(well, actually, six spins. I was feeling playful that day.)

[shitdisturber]

Another student was out with his instructor who apparently wasn't paying attention since the student was well advanced by this point. Mistake! Anyhoo, I'm hanging around the office and we get a call on the radio; "can someone come and pull us out of the snowbank?" So I grab the tractor and the tow bar and off I go; when I get there the student says to me "Just pull us out and we'll taxi back." Told him, "sorry, they'll have to look at the airplane to make sure you didn't damage it." So he wanted me instead to at least tow them off to the side so it wouldn't be too noticeable how they were arriving. I just smiled that innocent smile of mine; and towed them back and parked them right in front of the picture window in the office.

[shitdisturber]

I wasn't gonna tell this one but somebody encouraged me to misbehave, and I've got too little moral fibre to resist the urge.

Student goes off on his short cross country. Unbeknownst to him, he gets a stuck mic almost immediately after departure. So the dispatcher and myself got to listen to him navigate all the way through his first leg; he forgot to switch to 126.7, luckily the first airport in his trip had the same frequency we did since our base station can't change frequencies. On departure on his second leg, again having forgotten to change to 126.7 we got to hear......

"Oh @#$!, I'm lost. I can't be fucking lost already!" He eventually sorted himself out and carried on, somewhere along the line getting his mic unstuck to boot, without realizing it had ever been stuck of course.

On landing back home, with a straight face; don't ask me how I managed it, I have no idea, I asked him "So **** did you get fucking lost?" He couldn't figure out how I knew or why the dispatcher and I couldn't stop laughing.

[PHD]

Had 5 flights that day and they were all EMT flights on a zlin 242.......

All students were PGI together that morning then a sepereate pre Briefing was given before their flight......The Lesson plan included some aggrassive spin training climbing turn spin entry, descending turns spin entry, pwr spin entry....and some pretty weird looking spiral dives....overbanked attitdueds of 90 AOB spiral dives and when they got the idea the procedures then we moved on to the 140 AOB spiral dives..

Anyhow my last flight of the day i went up with the student demonstrated the aggraveated stalls again and student practiced, went well..
then moved on to the climbing turn spin entry..again demonstrated conditions leading to, recognitions, and recovery..did it twice.

Then we went up to 6000 ft...for the students first try
as the climing left turn with the pwr at 17 inches MP and the prop was at 2500 rpm..the right wing drops and there it goes...(if you knew the zlin, they get pretty horny and pretty agrassive in the spin )..

So when that happen the student looks at me and starts lauging...and lets the stick go forward of nuetral............................... which then puts the zlin into an accelerated spin........student continues to look at me and smile as i repeated recover........... anyhow at 3800 the zlin was recovered from the spin not by the student by me....
I decided to turn back at that point as the student couldnt get rid of his grin and i wasnt about to sit there and babysit his ass for an ahour..

When we got on the ground for the debrief i asked were you going to at least try to recover.....his response was " I just couldnt stop lauging it was too funny for me to even try to be serious about it"......i said funny huh....anyhow the student never made it throught the programe and washed out 3 weeks latter


that was my story and i'll never forget how he just sat there and smiled..................the shit that we see and put up with amazes me ...
cheers

[KAG]

Years ago as a new instructor I had this 50 ish private student named Charley. He was a great pilot but had a few funny habits. One of them was to verbalize what he was thinking when he did something difficult. Charley had no problems with any lessons save1 – the forced approach. He could glide to a field no problem, he could also tell me the required memory actions, but he could not for the life of him put the 2 together.

So when it came time for me to recommend him for a flight test, we did a few forced approaches. He had a 50/50 success rate. He could nail any field when he was just flying, but get him to talk and do some cause checks, it went to pot quick.
So on his final forced approach, I told him to relax. If things looked like they were going wrong, if all he did were to make the field, he would get a 1, a pass.

So, I decided to recommend him with some advice, “charley, if all you do is make the field you pass, make the fu*king field charley, make the fu*king field!!!”. Understand this fella had a mouth that would turn a sailor red, which had no rime or reason when and where he decided to use it. So to make my students feel comfortable I would talk to them how they talked to me.
Anyway, day of his ride comes and he does great! No problems. But the examiner, a local legend named Stu Fairchild had one funny debriefing point “on the forced approach, other than glide to a field he did nothing else, but looked at me and said - I’m just going to make the fu*king field Stu, just going to make the fu*king field”
He did, he got a 1.

Cheers.

[bus]

I had several indications that my new student was going to be different. The first was when I overheard her tell her boyfriend not to worry "I'm old enough to be the instructors mother". Apparently she had had an affair with a previous instructor.
The second was how she remained close mouthed about her profession.
While on lunch break one day I discovered (much to our mutual discomfort) that she was a striper at a local dive. She never came back for another lesson.

[jimdandy]

KAG that is classic. Is old Stu back on the scene. Last I heard he lost his med or retired.
Bus, that is classy. I actually have a student right now that I am supicious of doing that. We will see what happens
As for the pukers, I had 3 in one day! All on FAM flights, and all Asian women. What great luck.
There was one instructor I heard of asking for a DF steer in the circuit at his home airport. Priceless.
Another, snaged an A/C for entering slow flight on landing. Doesen't that make ya feel good? Same instructor tried to snag an A/C because it wouldn't start. Another instructor turned the gas for them.
C'on folks, get ur ducks in a row.

[TTJJ]

Smart assed, robust student says" I got 450 hrs in these things (C-172), ...Well if you really must check me out.........

Just before engine start he screams with all his might ..."CLEAR" ..........I damn near shat myself.....

But with all the calm I could muster through ringing ears I said " If you really must yell CLEAR, you might want to open your side window so that someone besides me can hear you............he didn't like that one bit.


Fam flight 1983

Big brute of a farmer wants to go in a C-150..........................Me in my infinite 450 hrs. of wisdom decide to let him do the takeoff with me talking him through it.

On rotation, said Brute panics and pulls the yolk back into his gut and freezes with his eyes bugging out.... Me saying "That's ok, let the columm go....I got it" while all the while trimming the plane nose down REAL quick.

Trim...trim...trim..."Hmmm, nice blue sky" ....trim...trim...trim...

Said brute can't hold the yolk back any more because I have applied FULL nose down trim........said brute then lets go of the yolk.

What was once blue sky in the windsheild instantly turned into black runway with me saying "thats ok......it is under control....."

Re-trim...re-trim...retrim..."Hmmm, they should patch those cracks in the runway"...re- trim...re- trim...re-trim...

We went out for our standard 30 minute fam flight.............He didn't sign up...............


shame..........I made $6.00 thought.........

[TTJJ]

I swear on my son’s name that this is a true story.

Way back when at Springbank, we had a student from Nigeria who was going from 0 through commercial. He was the nicest guy in the world. He was also 6’ 4”, jet black and had the squeaky voice of a 10 year old alter boy. (Before anyone calls me a racist, my wife is ½ Negro and ½ South American Indian).

Unfortunately, the lad was also not the sharpest tool in the shed.

After having done 3 dual cross-countries with him, on the same route, we sent him on his way solo. What could go wrong? He only had to go south of Calgary to Lethbridge and then back home. Mountains on the right going down.... mountains on the left coming home....easy.

Our hero made it to Lethbridge ok. On takeoff though he got confused as to what side the mountains should be on.

After a while of flailing around, he spots a farm house near the Montana border with a nice long gravel driveway leading up to it. He lands on the driveway and taxies up to the back yard of the farm house. He couldn’t get closer than about 50 yards to the house due to ruts.

Mrs. little old lady Farmer is sitting alone on her back porch shucking corn for dinner. From out of this itty-bitty C-152 a 6’ 4” Negro man extracts himself with some trouble, scratches his unmentionables, looks around, spies the old lady and proceeds to lope the 50 yards right at her. (in the Southern Alberta Boonies, Negroes are/were a scarce commodity, she told me all about it later by phone)

With her husband out cutting hay, she enlists the help of her good friend Mr. Remmington and meets our hero at the foot of her porch with the loaded 12 gauge that she keeps behind the kitchen door.

Our hero skids to a stop and stammers in his choirboy’s voice. “Which way is Calgary?”

She simply points with one hand while keeping the 12 gauge squarely on our hero.

He thanks her, lopes back to the plane, cranks it up, taxis to the driveway and blasts off into the wild blue yonder.

An hour and a half later he arrives in Springbank after getting radar vectors from Calgary on 121.5. The controllers all knew him by name.

The RCMP finally said that he hadn’t broken any laws and let him go.


P.S. After our hero’s Commercial flight test, the DFTE took me aside and asked me if I was sure that he wouldn’t be flying in Canada and that he was going home to Nigeria. I assured him that it was so.

Only then did he sign off the flight test as having been passed.

[TI-ANB]

TJ... you should be a writer..!!!!

LOL.... your post was great....

Leo

[PA31 Driver]

i also enjoyed that story......that's classic....

[DEL]

A student was taken to a remote airport to do touch and goes as the local airport is to busy for this. The CFI told the student to do two take off and landings and then back to the orignal airport. The CFI watched the student doing what was asked. Once the student was finished off, the CFI watched as the student flew off back to the origanl airport they had taken off from, without him. They had to send another plane to pickup the CFI.
The moral of the story, make sure you tell the student what is required including to pick them up once the exercise is done so he can get back home at the same time, together!