Empowering Students to Think as Pilot In Command From The Start

What if instructors began the process more gradually, helping students more each flight?

Michael Wildes

Monday, December 13, 2021 at 10:00 AM ET

Verified

Empowerment, and understanding how to deploy it can offer all the training leverage in the world. Credit: Adobe Stock

Key Takeaways:

Students often struggle to fully embody the "pilot in command" role due to nervousness, fear, or a perceived power imbalance, leading to a lack of ownership in their training.
Effective flight instructors empower students by treating them as professionals, involving them in training decisions, setting clear expectations, and allowing them to learn from and resolve their own in-flight errors.
The ultimate goal of flight instruction is to cultivate independent decision-makers, which is best achieved by gradually transferring responsibility and fostering a "pilot in command" mindset from the very beginning of training.

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When I was completing my new-hire training to work as an instructor in my flight department, I hit a series of delays that offered me important lessons later on. Finally, I was on the penultimate flight I needed to complete before being officially hired and was flying with an instructor who was widely recognized around the department as the top guy.

Naturally, I was nervous. For one, this being the pre-check-ride flight, I was anxious to get it done. I was finally in a position to earn my first paycheck as a pilot, and I didn’t want to do something wrong and embed in this ace’s mind that I might not be a good pilot, after all.