Never Let Them See You Sweat as a CFI

Learning to manage risk appropriately is a critical component to being a flight instructor.

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, February 27, 2024 at 07:21 PM ET

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Part of a CFI's job is taking care not to alarm their learner. [StockSnap/Pixabay]

Key Takeaways:

A key duty of a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) is to maintain composure and appear fearless in the cockpit, even during challenging or emergency situations, to ensure the student's safety and learning.
The author illustrates this with a personal anecdote where she expertly managed a sudden nosewheel failure during a landing with a commercial pilot candidate, taking control and handling the crisis without alarming the student.
Years later, the former student, now a CFI himself, understood the true gravity of the "nonevent," underscoring how instructors skillfully manage risks and critical situations, often shielding learners from potential dangers to foster their confidence and development.

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Rod Machado, aviation author, educator, and humorist, had a cartoon in one of his books that depicted a CFI only sweating on the right side of their face. That’s the side the learner, who sits in the left seat, can’t easily see in a side-by-side airplane. The point of the cartoon is that the CFI should never show fear in the cockpit.

I thought about this when I saw Machado over the weekend in Puyallup, Washington, at the Northwest Aviation Conference, where he was the keynote speaker. Known locally as the NWAC, the event is always held in February and is filled with seminars covering everything from earning a seaplane rating or getting an airline job to specialized flying like tailwheel, etc. There are always seminars on safety-related topics such as weather, flying specialty aircraft, and risk management, along with courses for aviation maintenance technicians (AMTs) to enhance their knowledge.