President's Perspective

Decades ago when I learned to fly, nearly all training airplanes were very modestly equipped. Eighty-eight-Foxtrot, my trusty Cessna 150 trainer, had the usual array of dials and gadgets: airspeed, artificial horizon, altimeter, turn and bank, directional gyro, and vertical speed indicator. Plus, of course, gauges for fuel, oil pressure, oil temperature, a compass, a tachometer, and a few other things.

A single, rather ancient navigation and communications radio (navcom) adorned the center of the panel, and there was no transponder. As incredible as it seems now, those were all that one needed for flight training before alphabet airspace.

That instrumentation seems almost laughably basic now. But the moment I first sat in the left seat of that little airplane, I was overwhelmed. All I recognized on the panel were the clock and the compass.

But my instructor, strangely enough, sounded like he didn't want me to spend much time studying the instruments. "You'll get used to them fairly quickly," he assured me, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "The important thing is to keep your eyes outside the cockpit, to watch for other airplanes." My home base also was the air carrier airport for the city.

If you've already started your flight training or are already a pilot, you know the importance of the "see-and-be-seen" principle of VFR flight for avoiding midair collisions. And although there are good ATC services like VFR traffic advisories to help with avoiding midair collisions, you also no doubt remember that the V in VFR stands for visual, not vectors. And the R stands for rules, not radio.

If you're about to begin training - or even just thinking about it - you may wonder if you'll fixate on the instruments, too. Well, an AOPA survey of certificated flight instructors (CFIs) conducted in late May says, "yes, you will...but don't worry about it. You'll learn not to."

We surveyed flight instructors who called the AOPA Pilot Assistance Hotline for answers to various flight training-related questions, asking them about beginning student pilot abilities to watch for other traffic. (The toll-free hotline, 800/USA-AOPA or 800/872-2672, is available to all AOPA members. More than a dozen highly experienced pilots and CFIs provide free expert help on virtually any aviation-related question through more than 75,000 calls, e-mails, and faxes annually. A surprising number of calls are from CFIs seeking answers to complex questions posed by their students.)

By a 3-to-1 margin, CFIs from across the country agreed that beginning primary flight students tend to fixate on the instruments, preventing an effective watch for other aircraft. The majority also said that they go to work immediately to correct that scan problem, and they reported that most students learn within three to five hours of instruction the necessity for a heads-up scan.

About 38 percent of those surveyed reported holding a flight instructor certificate for between zero and five years, while almost 35 percent have been instructors for more than 15 years. More than 40 percent of this group had given more than 1,000 hours of instruction.

Instructor methods for convincing new student pilots of the need to keep their eyes outside the cockpit ranged from "constant reminders" and "continual use of prominent landmarks" to the more extreme "cover the instrument panel with a beach towel," and "cover instruments with Post-it notes."

If you'd like to explore the subject of midair collision avoidance, there are several resources available from both AOPA and the AOPA Air Safety Foundation. One good place to start is the free ASF Nall Report, a comprehensive first look at the previous year's general aviation accident causes and statistics. The current report for accidents in 2000 ( www.aopa.org/asf/publications.html ) showed that midair collisions, while statistically a small cause of accidents, nearly always share a common cause: failure to see and be seen. This magazine recently devoted a feature article to the subject ("Beyond See and Avoid," March AOPA Flight Training).

Cockpit instrumentation will be changing in the near future, becoming ever more helpful and pilot-friendly. The revolution is now under way; today, it's not uncommon to see training airplanes with moving-map GPS displays. But there's much more coming, including more electronic help. AOPA has been helping to test new display systems that can map terrain ahead and warn you of obstructions, "see" other aircraft that are getting uncomfortably close, and even show weather conditions ahead. In the next few years, you can expect to see these systems start to show up in the airplanes that you fly, even in some basic training airplanes.

In the meantime, keep your head up and eyes outside. AOPA's Air Safety Foundation has a vast array of other aviation safety resources for pilots who are always learning ( www.aopa.org/asf ). Remember, a good pilot is always learning.