Flight Training - May 2013 - 58

INSTRUCTOR REPORT»

DO YOU NEED CFI INSURANCE?
Protect yourself. CFIs can be held liable for incidents of their students, even
if the CFI was not on board the aircraft at the time. Aviation insurance for
instructors can be confusing. AOPA Insurance Services can answer all your
questions, walk you through the coverage options, and explain how the policy
protects you. There are options for instructor/owner, borrowing or renting aircraft, full time or part time (http://insurance.aopa.org/aviation/cfi-insurance).

because of the cost of flight training.
Students are now paying upwards of
$2 per minute for training, and they
understandably want their learning
time to be as efficient as possible.
Instructors frequently can
dramatically increase time on task
by making small, but important
changes to how they plan lessons.
One is cutting down on lecture time,
and I’m always looking for ways to
deliver information more concisely.
I include only the critical elements
to allow for safe and productive
practice, leaving as much time
as possible for hands-on repetition. Besides trimming verbiage
and omitting superfluous detail, I
find working from a good syllabus
allows me to assign reading to stu-

dents prior to training flights. This
means I have less need to lecture in
the first place.
Another area is minimizing time
spent on what teachers call management. Suppose a gym teacher
is planning a soccer lesson for a
class of 30 kids. How many balls
should be used? How many traffic
cones are needed to divide the area
into stations? Then how will the
teacher distribute the balls, divide
the class, move the kids to and from
the different practice areas, and
retrieve the equipment at the end?
Not thinking through these details
in advance means a lot of wasted
time. For CFIs this can apply to
actual classrooms, the aircraft, and
even airspace. Is the briefing room

ready for use? Is the whiteboard
erased and clean? Computer booted
up with your PowerPoint lesson
loaded? Do you have all the equipment you need in the airplane?
Would a short flight to a nearby airport allow for more circuits in the
pattern because of less traffic? Novice teachers often are weak at this
type of management, and may be
unaware of the tremendous amount
of learning time that is wasted.
Another aspect of management
is transitioning from one activity
to another during a lesson. If they
are not well planned, these changes
can be awkward and eat up a great
deal of instructional time. For CFIs
this can mean giving some thought
to the order of the maneuvers they
will teach on a given flight. As in
aerobatic routines, one can take
advantage of altitude and position
at the end of one maneuver to set
up another. Say my syllabus calls
for work on stalls, ground reference
maneuvers, and an introduction to
emergency landings. I’d probably
choose to do the low maneuvers
first, as soon after takeoff as pos-

GREAT INFLUENCE, GREAT RESPONSIBILITY
We engage in “Monkey see, monkey do” learning

» By Rod Machado

IN HIS BOOK The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
observes that many pilots began mimicking Chuck Yeager’s West Virginia drawl
once he became famous for flying faster
than the speed of sound. Not surprisingly,
people tend to mimic the behavior of
those they respect and admire. Watch any
Little League or Pop Warner game to see
this in action.
This is especially relevant in terms of
how student pilots perceive their instructor’s behavior. Your students can easily
interpret even the most casual remark or
seemingly flippant behavior as something
to mimic rather than ignore.
You occasionally see the results of

58 /

FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG

mimicked behavior in the preflight
actions demonstrated by some student
pilots. For instance, if an instructor
doesn’t feel it’s necessary to make a
visual inspection of the fuel tanks prior
to departure, it’s a good bet his or her
students won’t be eager to do so when
flying alone.
While an instructor’s physical actions
might influence student behavior, verbal
behaviors can be just as influential.
When I obtained my instrument rating
many years ago, I heard an experienced
instructor say, “If you’re picking up ice,
climb to where it’s so cold that ice won’t
form.” Yikes! That’s exactly what I did in

a Cessna 182. I picked up more ice as a
result (until I descended into warmer air,
where it melted). Silly me. That advice
might be useful in a very specific situation, but generally speaking it’s dangerous
advice for small airplanes.
In aviation, we acquire many of our
beliefs and values from our role models.
That means there’s a lot of “monkey
see, monkey do” learning that takes
place in the cockpit (without the monkeys, of course). When you’re in the
presence of students, behave as if every
physical action and every word has the
potential to change their behavior—
because it does.

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Flight Training - May 2013

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