Teaching Someone to Fly by Osmosis Doesn’t Work

The learner was looking for an independent flight instructor. He said it had been years since he flew, and this summer he was determined to finish his private pilot certificate.

He had his own airplane, a hangar to keep it in, a student pilot certificate issued some 10 years ago, and a lapsed medical certificate.

His flight training had been sporadic at best. He started out at a busy flight school, where the availability of instructors and airplanes limited lessons to twice a week. This drove him to buy his own aircraft.

• READ MORE: Restoring Right Stuff Can Build Student Pilot Confidence
• READ MORE: Beyond the Practice Area: Mastering That First Dual Cross-Country

At the time the airlines were taking anyone with 1,500 hours and a pulse, so the independent CFIs he hired didn’t stay around for long, and each new instructor made him repeat the previous training to some extent. He would get a few hours here or there, then life got in the way. This cycle was repeated over several years.

You hear this story—or a variation of it—a lot as a flight instructor. What made it different this time is that this learner was adamant that he didn’t want to do any ground instruction—not even a preflight briefing. He wanted the flight instructor “just to sit in the right seat so the flight was legal” while he “taught himself to fly.”

I waited for the punch line. There wasn’t one.

It was apparent that something had gone horribly wrong during his previous training, something so horrendous that it put him off formal instruction, especially ground instruction.

I understand if he didn’t want to sit through a face-to-face ground school. Some can be tedious, especially when the instructor’s idea of teaching is reading slides off a screen or words out of a book. That’s not teaching, my friends. That’s a crime against education.

I asked a few more questions. He had made it through the first third of private pilot ground school, which he said was all rote memory—the very lowest level of learning. This can be off-putting, especially if the learner is academically or vocationally accomplished and accustomed to learning deeply. It’s important that the instructor explains that rote learning is just the beginning.

Pro tip for instructors: On the first day of class, write the four levels of learning on the whiteboard—rote, understanding, application, and correlation. Let the students know that during the course they will make the journey all the way from rote to correlation as learning takes place.

Interactive Aviation Education

The more active the learning process, the more likely it is that learning takes place. However, an airplane flying through the air is a terrible classroom. They are loud, filled with distractions, and you have to worry about the “classroom” getting hit by another “classroom” or running into something on the ground. For that reason, much of what a pilot needs to know is taught on the ground then practiced in the air.

It can be challenging when you’re trying to teach a three-dimensional concept like flying the airport traffic pattern or using a VOR in flight. If you have the space for it, create a model of them on the floor of the classroom using gaffer or painter’s tape. 

The pattern is basically a rectangle and walking it can give the learners a better understanding of pattern procedures and a chance to practice radio calls.

The VOR takes a little more effort. Put down tape in the shape of a pentagon on the floor to mark “the station,” then add strips of tape for the 360/180, 030/210, 060/240, 090/270, and 120/330 radials. The learners “become airplanes.”

The CFI assigns a radial with a “to” or “from” designation, and the learners figure out where to stand on the floor model. Most learners find the exercise fun and a nice break from lecture and reading. Those that need to “see in 3D to process” get much more out of the lesson than they would a simple lecture.

Instructional Technique

In the air, teaching someone to fly involves demonstrating while explaining the task or procedure then having the learner attempt to recreate what you just did. 

The CFI observes, and perhaps coaches, as the learner performs the task or maneuver.

Therefore, I submit there has to be some instruction, verbal or demonstrative, or else the learner could develop some bad and potentially dangerous habits, such as not performing clearing turns or using the rudder pedals.

Most of the time the CFI will allow some mistakes to be made as long as they are not life threatening, and there is ample time and room to correct them. Most CFIs won’t let you bust airspace, cut off another aircraft, or kill the engine in flight unless there’s a place to land easily within gliding distance.

If we see a potential problem about to happen, we might ask a question to call the learner’s attention to the challenge so they consider their options for correction, and offer suggestions to fix the issue.

This particular learner didn’t even want that. He was adamant that the CFI stay silent during the entire flight. I had no desire to be self-loading ballast, so I demurred, recommending he find another instructor. 

Sadly, he never did finish. No instructor was willing to risk their certificate by flying with him. One of the first things you learn as a CFI is that when you fly with a learner you become responsible for them. If the learner isn’t receptive and won’t listen to you, no learning will be taking place.