How Student Pilots Can Overcome Navigation Anxiety

There are ways for CFIs to help learners break the digital habit and master pilotage and dead reckoning.

Meg Godlewski

Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at 02:00 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

CFIs need to adopt best practices for teaching navigation by pilotage and dead reckoning so the clients don’t become lazy or slaves to the magenta line. [Credit: Derek Eckenroth]

Key Takeaways:

To combat a student's fear of getting lost and over-reliance on GPS, instructors should teach traditional pilotage and dead reckoning using paper sectionals and real-world landmarks.
Encourage students to actively identify and memorize visual landmarks (e.g., lakes, specific buildings, other airports) both on the ground with a sectional and during flight.
To improve a student's situational awareness in the traffic pattern, try flying it 1,000 feet above the standard traffic pattern altitude to provide a better, broader view of the airport and surroundings.

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Question: I am a low-time CFI, and I have just inherited a student who has a major fear of getting lost while flying to and from the practice area. He’s about six hours into the training, and he gets lost in the pattern. He is often glued to ForeFlight or the panel-mounted GPS in the airplane. How do I get him to look out the window?

Answer: A learner who becomes lost on a VFR day concerns me too. I have seen this once or twice because the learner was distracted by the instrument panel, or chose the wrong time to multitask and got behind the airplane.