How to Stay Ahead of the Airplane

Acronyms, flows, or both can help.

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, June 17, 2025 at 04:58 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Ryan Ewing

Staying ahead of the airplane is key [Adobe Stock/Firefly]

Key Takeaways:

A pre-solo learner pilot struggled with fundamental flying tasks and checklist usage, leading to dangerous unstabilized approaches, initially due to either excessive heads-down time or neglecting vital checks.
Initial instructional attempts to use mnemonics like GUMPS were ineffective, as the learner merely verbalized without performing actions, partly due to conceptual misunderstandings and a fear of mid-air collisions that made him avoid in-flight checklists.
A revised approach included extensive ground sessions to address conceptual gaps, teaching GUMPS as a simultaneous verbalization, action, and verification, and introducing efficient "flow checks" to manage tasks without excessive heads-down time.
Through targeted coaching, focused practice drills simulating pattern work at altitude, and consistent reinforcement of procedures, the learner developed improved division of attention and significantly enhanced his flying performance.

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The pre-solo learner was having a difficult time staying ahead of the airplane. According to his CFI, at first the learner spent a lot of time heads down in the checklist when he should have been looking outside, such as when they were on downwind coming in for landing. He looked at the checklist but didn’t perform the tasks required, such as power reduction, deploying flaps, etc.

He developed a habit of coming in fast and yanking the power to idle and dumping the flaps in when the aircraft was on short final. This had happened more than once, with more than one CFI, who often found themselves yelling “My plane!” and grabbing the controls to avoid bending metal.