Why do i need an instructor

[Nev25]

Might sound like a silly question but think about it

 

My questioning is unrelated to aviation but similar

 

Why does one need to engage a pilot with instructor rating to teach one to fly to obtain a licence or certificate

 

Why can't one just get a local pilot with x amount of hours to instruct one

 

At the end of the day you do not need a professional driving instructor to teach you to drive a motor vehicle your parents or an experience driver can teach you

 

Thoughts please

 

 

[facthunter]

Perhaps teaching skills mean nothing to some. I'm not one of them, being a ex teacher who witnessed attempts by the Dept of Education to bring in graduates who had no training at teaching as a skill. None I know stayed long or were effective. It is one thing to have knowledge and a separate thing to be able to pass knowledge on to others. Nev

 

 

[turboplanner]

Primarily so they can save your life when you get the aircraft into a spin and don't know what to do next.

 

FH they should teach in Chipmunks and get this lesson over with first, showing the student a 90 deg AOB turn at 3000' and asking him/her to repeat it.

 

This would be a good foundation to ensure very careful study from that point on.

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

Primarily so they can save your life when you get the aircraft into a spin and don't know what to do next.FH they should teach in Chipmunks and get this lesson over with first, showing the student a 90 deg AOB turn at 3000' and asking him/her to repeat it.

 

This would be a good foundation to ensure very careful study from that point on.

I quite appreciate what you're driving at tp but I think it would be more likely to ensure the student never returned for the second and subsequent lessons ...

 

 

[turboplanner]

That would probably be about equal to the steady few who are taken out by a barely current pilot who may have done the bare minimum to keep his licence for the last 15 years (I'm including GA here). The ones who take fright get to go home to their families so there's a bit of an evener there.

 

 

[kgwilson]

If you are learning to drive with another licensed driver & you stuff up like stop suddenly or rabbit hop when you drop the clutch etc you can just stop, get out or have another try without doing too much damage. If you are up in the air you can't do this & so you crash. Well obviously not always but there are many good pilots who may not be able to react quickly enough to take control if the student does something silly or worse stuffs up & freezes solid on the controls. The risk is just far too great to allow anyone to train a person to fly, which is why the system of certified qualified instructors has evolved.

 

A lot of people know how to fly but there are not many who know how to train others well. There are some exceptional instructors in Aviation but unfortunately the law of averages also dictates that there are also some poor instructors & everything in between. All though have been through the qualification process and all should be considerably better at training others than any person who has a Pilot Certificate or Licence without ever having gone through that process.

 

 

[metalman]

Might sound like a silly question but think about itMy questioning is unrelated to aviation but similar

Why does one need to engage a pilot with instructor rating to teach one to fly to obtain a licence or certificate

 

Why can't one just get a local pilot with x amount of hours to instruct one

 

At the end of the day you do not need a professional driving instructor to teach you to drive a motor vehicle your parents or an experience driver can teach you

 

Thoughts please

Yep, your right ,,,it does sound like a silly question

 

 

[Camel]

Just to fly well from the right seat takes a lot of practice, I have met instructors that have difficulty flying from the left seat. I would like to think that the common standard is attained, I also have flown with many that are scary and don't want to see that passed on.

 

 

[ahlocks]

..Thoughts please

Never, ever, think outside of the box for risk of being smote by tales of death, destruction and strict liability.

 

 

[Nev25]

Yep, your right ,,,it does sound like a silly question

But is it???

 

Care to share your thoughts

 

 

[metalman]

But is it???Care to share your thoughts

Mmmm,

good instructor =good pilot

 

Good teacher=good student

 

Average instructor =average pilot

 

Average teacher=average student

 

Bad instructor=bad pilot

 

Bad teacher= bad student

 

No teacher= lack of knowledge and skills,,,,,,,non fatal

 

No instructor= lack of knowledge and skills ,,,,,,usually fatal

 

It was discovered very early in aviation that for a survival rate better than a housefly it would be prudent to have certain people with various abilities to teach others how to not get killed in a flying machine, this has evolved over the decades to the point where flying could be considered a fairly safe past time, on par with skydiving, motor cycling, rock fishing and plenty of other pursuits with a degree of thrill, but it has also been discovered that not all posses the relevant skills to pass on the required knowledge to make great pilots , so we have a scale of sorts from barely able to survive a flight to freakin legend, we all fall in there at some point ( hopefully progressing up the scale) .

 

I have had some very good pointers from some who I would place within cooee of the freakin legend status,,I've also learned some lessons from the barely survivable types, it does seem pretty common the the former are or have been flying instructors, the lesson from the latter generally involve a quick kiss for mother earth when back on it! For me if I'm learning a skill that can give me great pleasure or put me in a box for eternity, I'd like to know the persons been recognised as being competent to teach

 

Matty

 

 

[facthunter]

Well If we take the example of a child being taught by the Parent would one suggest that that really is the way things should go? Is the average driver really that good? The students have to log experience in their books but where is a standard maintained there? When they fail the test they usually do a couple of hours with a regular school, but by then a lot of bad habits may well have been adopted.

 

I don't think the current aviation system is good enough to just accept it now, as there are some instructors who should not be doing it, but there are always more who are doing a good job and have accumulated experience which stands them in good stead to pass these "GEMS" on. They are constantly keeping current and are checked routinely. Less experienced instructors only work under a supervised model where they are under their CFI's supervision for quite a while. People running a flying school in GA must have done a PMI course which was no pushover when I did it and the RAAus have something similar but not quite so demanding. Renewing you qualifications is not something that can be taken for granted because there is a STANDARD that has to be met. Where would this standard be if any pilot can do training. When the U/L scene first got going there was no way to do dual training, as there were no dualseaters. People who indulged were very keen and involved but today anyone who walks in to a school expects a service that will have a reasonable standard as an outcome and often they are straight off the street and will purchase a complete plane and want to fly it safely with no previous experience at all. They could be a 16 year old or an older farmer or a retired airline pilot, aerochute, glider pilot etc. A Mr Fixit Spannerman or a complete nerd who reads a lot of flying comics. (Use your imagination here) The instructor has to "process" each and everyone to a satisfactory standard. The system demands that. CASA , everyone who hates planes and builds near airports, the insurance industry. Other pilots who share the airspace with you. People who fly U/L's have their hours counted for higher licences, if they go that way. Without a standard none of that happens

 

Anyhow flying is not a pastime that is forgiving of ignorance and inattention or foolhardiness. You will become a statistic if you don't get the art of flying somewhere near right. The better you do it the more luck you seem to have. Nev

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

Nev, I can see where you are coming from. Experienced pilot teaching a relative to fly, with some kind of licence test at the end.

 

 

 

We certainly came across students who had learned their flying skills from Dad or older brother off the farm strip (this is back in the 1990's) by flying with them since knee high to a grasshopper. We heard stories that said son had been flying & mustering and Dad said, next load of cattle we sell and you're off to properly get your licence. Son would arrive, cashed up, to do the requisite hours. We would tidy them up, teach them legislation, airmanship, fly into unfamiliar strips and get them tested for the PPL. In those days the requisite hours had to be flown off, regardless of skill level. Now, I guess these lads get their licence quickly as they can demonstrate their knowledge & competency. Not kosher, but it happens.

 

 

 

I assume you are not advocating people teach strangers and mates from the pub, or as a business.

 

 

 

Sue

 

 

[M61A1]

Might sound like a silly question but think about itMy questioning is unrelated to aviation but similar

Why does one need to engage a pilot with instructor rating to teach one to fly to obtain a licence or certificate

 

Why can't one just get a local pilot with x amount of hours to instruct one

 

At the end of the day you do not need a professional driving instructor to teach you to drive a motor vehicle your parents or an experience driver can teach you

 

Thoughts please

I'm probably going to cop it for this but, along the same lines a Vizsla, you don't "need" an instructor, it's a legal requirement. Just as there are crappy instructors in the driving industry, so are there crappy instructors in the flying industry. I'm almost willing to bet that SOME of the home taught mustering students were probably better pilots than SOME instructors I've flown with.

I put it to you that it is quite plausible to be taught by any reasonable pilot, just not legal. In fact, if you took the time to educate yourself as much as possible, I reckon you could even teach yourself to fly. There is a big difference between "can't" and "not allowed".

 

Now, I'm not suggesting that it is a wise thing to do, but it is certainly possible, and has been done many times before. Having a good instructor, severely reduces the odds of killing yourself while trying.

 

If Orville and Wilbur had to deal with legislation like we have today, the cops would have been around and arrested them for participating in an "unregulated high risk activity".

 

It would seem also that it is some sort of unwritten requirement (with a couple of exceptions), that to be an instructor, you must have some kind of "god complex".

 

I can't speak for other people that have learned to fly in the last 20 years, but for myself, it does not make me think highly of them.

 

Lastly...

 

 

 

[68volksy]

Might sound like a silly question but think about itMy questioning is unrelated to aviation but similar

Why does one need to engage a pilot with instructor rating to teach one to fly to obtain a licence or certificate

 

Why can't one just get a local pilot with x amount of hours to instruct one

 

At the end of the day you do not need a professional driving instructor to teach you to drive a motor vehicle your parents or an experience driver can teach you

 

Thoughts please

Looks like people's opinion of what makes an instructor is a long, long way from the truth!

 

RA-Aus Instructors only need 75 hours and to have passed a simple instructors course in order to instruct. That's probably a lot less than most people would consider "experienced". Any kid of 18 with 75 hours flying time can instruct RA-Aus.

 

GA is a bit different as they need their 150-200 hours and a CPL prior to getting the instructors rating.

 

What you mention is actually what is occurring in RA-Aus.

 

 

[motzartmerv]

Volsky. What rubbish!!!! I like how you forgot to mention that an RAA instructor candidate needs not only 75 hours of command time, but they also have had plenty of dual aswel, and also need to do the 20 hours flying Instructor training. So the hour difference between them and GA pimple face is not much different, Have you completed an RAA instructor course? If not then your comments about how easy it is to obtain are not worth a pinch of Sh1t and are more then a little insulting. If your going to quote numbers then have some facts first. How many command hours do we need for a CPL Volksy? After you google the answer please post it here for clarity and to quantify your knowledgeable post above.

 

Im bemused by this whole thread. Why do yo9u need any professional to do anything ?? Why do you need a doctor if you have cancer? Why not just go to your local hippie shop and buy some snake potion. Why would you need a Lawyer if your in the Sh!t with the law? Just go home and watch CSI or Law and order and represent yourself.

 

Let me share some inside info with you all. Some RAA instructors are quite professional, and devote their lives to teaching you blokes the skills and "attitudes' that will keep you alive. Why do we need instructors? Look at the statistics for fatals over the last few years and then ask that question again.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

In the GA world a significant percentage of instructors are newly minted CPL's building hours on their relative few gained in training themselves.

 

The equivalent within medicine would see the universities lecturers as newly completed interns.. Of course that would be insane.....but yet...here we are

 

Andy

 

P.S....I said significant percentage which of course is a lot but not 100%....and in any event those significant percentage still operate under a CFI who is not new...ever!

 

P.P.S....while I don't like this and made sure the instructors who taught me had experience both air and life...the reality is that newly minted CPL's teach for money that is embarrassingly small per hour and with no guarantee of assured amounts of hours. If this is not what people want then they have to pay more.....and yet here we are....clearly paying more isn't a choice that most can or will make

 

 

[motzartmerv]

Let me shed some light for you Volksy.

 

Here is the requirement for CPL (150 hours)

 

• 70 hours total as pilot-in-command (PIC)
   
   
  
• 20 hours cross-country PIC
   
   
  
• 10 hours instrument flight (5 hours may be in a simulator)
   
   
  

 

 

So.. How do the 'facts' relate to your 'informed' post above?? This isnt the first look down your nose at RAA post you have made, but lets make it your last hey? At least arm yourself with some facts before you start sprooking how easy it is to be an Instructor. Or come down to the coast and do an RAA instructor course, ill soon change that attitude of yours.

 

 

[facthunter]

There are not 100's of Bob Hoovers and times have changed. In the teens ( up to say 1920, Veteran vehicles), most car drivers knew about engines etc or they were Chauffered by people who did. Today they don't have to know much of the entrails. The mechanicals look after themselves.(sort of till a light comes on or smoke and noises, happen).

 

It is a fact that most instructors do it for reasons other than money because there is little of it . They do it to get experience, be motived to keep current in everything , they love flying , they like instructing.

 

It's also a fact that many of them commence with the bare minimum hours, but they have had to meet a standard and maintain it. They are extensively supervised in the early stages and can authorise very little on their own. How good they are would depend a lot on how seriously the CFI took his responsibilities in that area, as a lot rests with him.

 

I reckon most of them are pretty dedicated or they wouldn't do it. I have had plenty of seasoned U/L pilots tell me they simply would not have the patience to do it. That has never been a consideration with me when teaching or instructing. If someone doesn't put any effort in ( why would that happen when you are learning to fly and it's YOUR money involved? ) of course it would be wasting your time and the students. For the piddling cost most are paying for their instruction it would have to be good value. It's your choice who you have. Nev

 

 

[Bandit12]

Might sound like a silly question but think about itMy questioning is unrelated to aviation but similar

Why does one need to engage a pilot with instructor rating to teach one to fly to obtain a licence or certificate

 

Why can't one just get a local pilot with x amount of hours to instruct one

 

At the end of the day you do not need a professional driving instructor to teach you to drive a motor vehicle your parents or an experience driver can teach you

 

Thoughts please

It's not a silly question, and is fair for an internet debate. It might be the case that there is an even better argument for the use of professional driver trainers rather than parents when learning to drive, and if you asked most driving instructors, they would probably agree.

 

Learning is a fascinating thing. We learn by watching, doing, and thinking. For most of us, we have learned a lot about driving before we ever get behind the wheel. Watching what is happening, implicit learning is teaching us something, although it may also be teaching us the wrong things at times too. When we learned to walk, we watched, tried, and eventually succeeded, helped along by a little bit of evolutionary development with some of the predispositions to learning to walk built into us.

 

So going back to the car, we have picked up a lot of what is going on implicitly, but we are not prepared evolutionarily to cope with it. Anyone who has tried to teach their teenage son/daughter about braking distance quickly realises that brains are only hardwired for speeds up to about 20km/h, and that learning to judge speed and distance required to stop takes a lot more training.

 

Step into an aircraft, and most of us have not had the benefit of a decade of implicit learning, and most of our evolutionary processes start working against us. Speed, height, complex depth perception, moving in 3 dimensions, even multitasking is more than a little foreign. Some may have even grown up reading Biggles books or playing flight sims and have a lot of implicit learning which actually has already set some bad habits in place in terms of expectations. I had a friend who was a driving instructor, and remember him commenting on teaching people to drive. It wasn't that difficult, he said, except when you were tasked with teaching someone who had recently immigrated to this country and had not grown up around vehicles. The act of learning to turn a steering wheel and equating that to changing direction was just one thing that they didn't "get" straight away, let alone all of the other concepts.

 

So the question of whether we need an instructor or not is very relative to the amount of implicit learning you have, and in the real world, greatly related to the potential consequences of getting it wrong. As I said, there is a really good argument for using a driving instructor rather than teaching our kids ourselves, and this is reflected (in Victoria at least) by the fact that a learner needs 120 hours in the logbook, but 10 hours with a driving school can be counted as 30 hours in the total. Without being a flying instructor, I suspect that a lot of what they are taught is how to cope with unexpected situations and to provide an environment where a student can have the opportunity to break down complex, unnatural tasks into discrete, manageable ones so that the student has the opportunity to get the learning bit done with much lower risk of it all going wrong.

 

 

[johnm]

Good subject Nev25 - a top of the morning to all instructurs

 

Any scrutiny of what an instrcutor is / does is good ............ its a facet of aviation non instructors could learn from (diregarding bias, rock throwing etc etc)

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Ok a serious look at the alternate.

 

We all have to do a Biennial review, if we could all teach newcomers then the biennial review would be a pointless waste of time wouldn't it?

 

To the instructors here, how many of those that you review get through with you thinking they were great, no remedial training was required in any way?

 

I suspect that those that needed some revisit of concepts would be the majority?

 

Andy

 

 

[facthunter]

You will always find something, but perhaps the bfr should be approached as an opportunity to straighten out things that you are not sure of. This gives it more of a training flavour. That way you, ( the one being assessed) get more out of it.

 

When you renew your instructor rating there wouldn't want to be too many holes in your knowledge /performance, especially if you are the CFI, for obvious reasons. Nev

 

 

[poteroo]

Ok a serious look at the alternate.We all have to do a Biennial review, if we could all teach newcomers then the biennial review would be a pointless waste of time wouldn't it?

 

To the instructors here, how many of those that you review get through with you thinking they were great, no remedial training was required in any way?

 

I suspect that those that needed some revisit of concepts would be the majority?

 

Andy

Have watched this thread with interest, as we're soon to see the first GA instructors who hold a PPL rather than a CPL. There won't be many of them because they have to complete and pass the same instructor rating as the CPL's - and that's PMI + 50 hrs + test with CASA FOI. Their entry into the marketplace shouldn't alter the safety stats one iota and that's because the PPL who attempts this will almost certainly be quite experienced, and doing it for the purpose of providing a service to a group such as SAAA, or to fill a niche in the local market, eg tailwheel, formation, aerobatic endos.

 

My opinion is that instructors, GA or RAAus, should actually have more total experience than the bare minimums as specified. This is because it takes many, many hours to be very familiar with your aircraft. You need to acquire this 'feel', for the single reason that you need to be watching your student and offering small pointers to their handling - without worrying about the actual flying of the aircraft. In the UK I believe you need 500TTIC before 'commercial' instructing - not sure about their PPL limits tho'. For this reason, instructors need to be allowed flying time to improve their skills by really concentrating on the fine handling skills by themselves. Before people begin an instructors course - obtain a critical assessment of your skills to do various manoeuvres from the RHS. The result may be a bit demoralising - but then you know what the bar really is - and don't stuff up your instructing course before you can meet skill standards. What it comes back to is that you have to be able to demonstrate everything to a standard far above the average, and that, while being attentive to your students learning. From my perspective, current instructors are emerging strong on procedure but down on skills - the wrong way round?

 

In respect of BFR's - well, there's a range of capabilities that I see coming through both the GA and RAA schools. We get CPL's, PPL's, RPC's, and I also do Part 137 ag renewals. I think we'd do 40-50 BFR's per year between both CFI's. I always try to make the BFR a learning exercise, so if it's with someone who isn't happy with IF - we'll include 20+ mins of that. If it's low speed handling - then 20+ mins on that. Could be crosswind handling - focus on that for much of the BFR. Apprehension as we get below 500agl - then out to our low level training area and do some time on handling in rough air for events such as a precautionary search and landing. Can I sit back and relax? With some of the pilots I've checked - it's an emphatic yes, because they are composed, explain their intentions, fly smoothly and always in balance - tick,tick,tick,tick. Generally - it's the high time professionals who fit this - but I've flown with some really polished PPL's who I'd put my grandmother in with. Only just starting with RAAus renewals so can't comment.

 

My biggest concern is with the (often older) low time pilots who have been unable to fly many hours due finances or medicals or family - and who don't intend to fly very much in the future either. This is high risk group. They are often a high risk to themselves, and everybody else, because they have pretty much 'lost it' and it will require some hours to regain the skills. This calls for a very honest heart-to-heart discussion. A small number have decided to call it quits. Most accept that they need to sharpen up, and the only way is to fly more hours until they do reach renewal skill levels. Unfortunately, I think this also results in 'avoidance' by many pilots who go instructor shopping just as people doctor shop for their medicals.

 

So - to answer the initial question of why you need an instructor. Let's be very brutal here - it's because we can generally fly the aircraft more skilfully than you. And so we should! It's because most of us can identify your fears, weaknesses and other learning blocks - and help you to overcome them. So we should - we've been trained to and have learned from experience. We can also make the 'right' decisions on when you can solo, when you can cross country solo, and when you can fly a special type, or formate etc. We can spot weaknesses at your BFR - and offer remedial training to suit. I think I'm correct in saying that training accident stats are much lower than for 'private' and 'business' flying.

 

In conclusion - we use instructors because the RAF and RAAF determined it was the best way to train pilots - in WW1 1914-18. It's worked for every airforce around the world since. Tell me if anything has changed!

 

happy days,

 

 

[fly_tornado]