Flight Training - April 2013 - 14

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Lack of landings
Student not accomplishing much in the pattern
Dear Rod:
I am a 30.6-hour student (no solo yet),
having spent the past 15 hours in the traffic pattern with my instructor practicing
full-stop landings. At best I can do four or
five landings (if I’m lucky) in the allotted
lesson time. Is this normal? I’m concerned
about all the money I’m spending.
—Please, No Name
Greetings PNN:
No, it’s not normal in the traditional
sense. I am a very big fan of touch-andgo landings for several reasons, the most
important of which is that they provide
more landing practice. Practice landings
made to a full stop is a relatively newer
trend whose genesis is the notion that
touch and goes are dangerous. Well, they
are risky if there’s a weak instructor on
board with poor stick and rudder skills. In
almost every single instance that I recall
where a CFI and student bent an airplane during a touch and go, the accident
revealed a deficiency in airmanship on the
part of the instructor. There’s absolutely
no reason that a competent flight instructor can’t perform touch and goes safely
with a student—none whatsoever.
What if the runway is too short to do
touch and goes? Fine. Fly to an airport
with a longer runway. What if noise abatement procedures don’t permit touch and
goes? Fine. Fly to an airport that permits
touch and goes. To do four, maybe five
landings during one lesson on landings is
entirely unreasonable. After all, if that
lesson cost you $200 total, then you paid
$50 per landing. Yikes!
Dear Rod:
I’m considering working as a flight
instructor for a local school. I’m a new
instructor (took and passed the checkride
last November), but I face a dilemma. This
flight school requires that all their primary
students achieve practical test standards
before solo. My CFI-prep instructor

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FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG

suggests that this doesn’t comport with
his flight training experience or any that
he’s heard of. Is this a common industry
practice? —J.N.
Greetings J.N.:
This is a recent and unusual trend in aviation, so allow me point out what I believe
to be the reason behind this movement.
Over the past decade, the pedagogical
drift in the flight training community has
led some to use the FAA’s practical test
standards (PTS) as practical training standards. They are absolutely not the same.
The PTS is a guide to be used in preparing someone to demonstrate the behavior
the FAA expects to see on a private pilot
checkride. It is not, nor should it be, the
standard of training you require of your
primary students.
When you begin training a primary
student, your personal training standards
should be defined by the goals you want
to accomplish. The very first goal of flight
training isn’t to prepare a student to
behave as if he or she is being examined
for a pilot certificate. It’s to prepare your
student for solo flight under a very specific
set of conditions (something that has been
done safely by instructors for decades).
This is why the FAA lists two separate sets
of knowledge/experience requirements
in the FARs. One set is for solo flight; the
other for private pilot eligibility—with the
latter being far more comprehensive and
demanding. Said another way, the FAA
neither expects nor requires your student
to have private pilot proficiency and capability in order to solo an airplane.
Soloing students when they’re ready to
do so safely, instead of first training them
to demonstrate “checkride-like” behaviors, offers many benefits. It means that
students typically solo earlier and develop
self-confidence earlier, too. Solo also
communicates that you, the instructor,
trust your students to successfully apply
the skills and knowledge you’ve provided.
http://www.catstest.com http://FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG
Flight Training - April 2013

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