I have just finished reading Flight Training magazine from cover to cover. As a flight instructor, I ask my students to read this magazine when they receive it in the mail, and then call me if they have any questions.
Today, as I read “Spinning 101” by Catherine Cavagnaro, I remembered the time she and I flew together, and discussed the spin. I show her YouTube video in every ground school class that I teach. In “Instructor Report: Today’s Scenario-based Training,” Rod Machado—whom I have never met, but hope to someday—mentions, “We can’t expect students to learn efficiently if we fail to emphasize the basic skills first.”
Teaching is one of my most favorite things I get do, because I get to share the magic of flight with people I don’t even know, but usually become friends with for life.
Dan Winnie
Seattle, Washington
What happened to basic flying skills?
This article raises some important issues that have come to light in recent years concerning the degradation of basic flying skills with the blame typically being administered to increased automation (“Career Pilot,” August 2014 Flight Training). While this article points to the very real problem of ab initio training common in foreign countries as well as accelerated training programs in the United States, I can assure you that this is not limited to these types of individuals.
I recall more than a few instances while flying 737-800s and L1011s in which “very experienced” pilots’ basic flying abilities were substandard. It was not unusual for pilots of both of these aircraft to be fearful of VFR flying scenarios, which should be second nature to any pilot such as flying visual approaches and VFR patterns. Some treated approaches to airports without glideslopes or inoperative VASI to be nothing short of an emergency. VFR traffic patterns were often flown in a sloppy, gyrating manner.
During a flight into St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida, we were cleared for the visual approach. The pilot flying flew an enormous pattern, which took us outside Class B and D airspace, subjecting us to a dense VFR traffic corridor. So distracted by the whole situation, the pilot forgot that he had disconnected the autothrottles, even though he kept the autopilot in charge. We leveled off and airspeed degraded rapidly. Thankfully I had seen this individual do this before, so once the autothrottles came off I watched him like a hawk and cued him to watch his airspeed. At around 1,000 feet agl, if we had stalled, we probably would have been yet another statistic.
We all need to remember the basics and practice them. No airline pilot should be afraid of a visual approach, a pattern entry, and a VFR base to final. No VASI, no problem. Moreover, no pilot should have issue with maintaining proper flying airspeed and how to recover if such is not the case. Unfortunately, both the current airline training environment and the typical air transport operation support the contrary with limited training on these innate skills and their implementation in real life.
We need to take a hard look at training, especially recurrent training. I don’t doubt that every airline pilot out there can fly a V1 engine failure with a landing to ILS minimums, but a stall or a VFR pattern, maybe not so much. Let’s take back some real flying and keep our skills sharp. We don’t need more Air France 447, Asiana 214, and Colgan Air 3407 accidents.
David C. Ison
Portland, Oregon
Happy winner
I’m very excited to be a Flight Training chat winner. Thanks very much! Let me also say that I love Flight Training magazine. I get so much out of it, and it really saw me through a period when I had to interrupt my training. I believe it when you say students who belong to AOPA have a better chance of finishing training. It was certainly so for me.
Nancy Courtney
Pickerington, Ohio
Errata
In the August 2014 issue of Flight Training magazine (“Instructor Report: High-Priced Flight Instruction”) I wrote, “It’s entirely possible (and quite common) for a skilled instructor charging $100 per instructional hour to teach a student to land an airplane in four hours. A less-capable instructor might take eight hours (or more) to accomplish the same objective with the same student.” My intent was to suggest that it takes four hours of dedicated pattern work to teach someone to land (in addition to perhaps the six or eight hours needed to acquire basic pre-solo flying skills). I don’t want anyone to think that a student pilot can acquire solo proficiency in four hours. —Rod Machado
In “Weather: Peeking Into the Future,” (July 2014 Flight Training) reader David L. Schulte pointed out several mistakes: The legend only identifies a few of the symbols. There is not a link to another page with the full symbol set; Figure 3 is the upper right image in the example (not left); The upside down “V” in the image is over Kansas, not Oklahoma; The zig-zag blue line starting in Idaho, southeast to Colorado, north to Montana, then east across South Dakota, Indiana, Kentucky, to Virginia in the image is the freezing level at the surface. Flight Training regrets the errors.
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