What Every Flight Instructor Should Know About Student Pilots

Proppellerhead is the autobiography of a guy who went into ultralight flying to impress the girls but ended up falling in love with aviation. In the chapters describing his flight training, the author talks about his difficulties in learning how to land the ultralight. He wasn’t allowed to solo purely because his landings weren’t satisfactory. One day, he went to a different flight school and ended up flying with a new instructor. The instructor, with a few wise words, seemed to magically fix the author’s landings.


Does this mean that his previous instructor was a bad teacher? I highly doubt it. However, sometimes flight instructors need to better understand students and their needs. So here are four things I wish my flight instructors had known about student pilots.


I Don’t Get It

Sometimes a student simply does not understand an explanation. What I have experienced is a lot of instructors simply reiterate their original explanation over and over again using slightly different wording or speaking more slowly. Unfortunately, that’s not going to help. It also makes the student feel like an idiot. This is where creativity comes into play. As a student, if I don’t get something, I want the instructor to come at it from a completely different angle. Use different visual aids, go back to the basics, demonstrate concepts and use examples.

Nerve-racking

For some reason or another, students can sometimes be really, really nervous. You’ll be able to tell as a flight instructor by their behaviour. This would happen to me when I had problems in my daily life, or when I felt like I hadn’t properly prepared for a lesson. When a student doesn’t fly as well as they want to, they’ll also become nervous and even irritable. Getting criticism during this period can have a really negative effect on the student, especially as they’re probably already kicking themselves internally. The student is more likely to develop tunnel vision and make even more mistakes, which results in a vicious cycle. When an instructor senses that, they should avoid any sort of criticism and go back to something they know the student is good at. It helps reduce that tension. Return to the stuff that they messed up after you feel like they’ve calmed down a bit.


Teach us where to look

As a student, I always found the whole system daunting. There’s so much to know. There are hundreds of different manuals and air law texts. As a student, you’re struggling to learn to navigate, or nail those short field landings. Sometimes we just need to know where to look up the answers to questions we may have. For example, one day I asked my instructor what the VFR minimums were. He just said, “in uncontrolled airspace it’s clear of clouds and 5km visibility.” If the day comes where I become a flight instructor and a student asks me that, I’ll say, “well you can find that in the SERA. I’ll show you where it is and we can have a look together.”


I’m here for fun

Flight instructors are usually people who trained from the beginning to become professional pilots. I include myself in that mix. However, many people go into flight training purely for the pleasure of flight. They don’t want to learn airline-like SOPs and standardised professional departure and approach briefings. Teach them the essentials. They want to have fun in a safe manner. If you teach them in a fun way, they’ll soon come back for more, looking to fly more professionally.