Right Hand Seat

An instructor is many things to many people. He (or she) is a fountain of aviation knowledge, a good listener, a mentor, an educator, a skilled flyer, a records keeper, a teacher, a flight school general hand, a communicator and above all a time manager.

As an instructor he has to become the master of time management before he can pass those skills across to the student. He has to always be on time for the flight bookings, manage the flight on a time basis and manages the student’s flight training program in order to produce the desired outcome; a student able to meet the requirements of the licence being sought.

The instructor is the person who has to be at the school in time to conduct the lesson. He has to plan the flight such that the aircraft is back in time for the next flight booking. He also has to conduct the flight to ensure that the aircraft is back on the ground with time and fuel to spare.

From the first flight he has to instil in the student that time is endurance and fuel and that the student needs to have fuel in the tanks at the end of the flight. How many times do instructors go out on a flight to find that the student has no idea of what the actual endurance of the aircraft is. Perhaps they are waiting for the instructor to make a we-must-land decision.

He is also the person that needs to get the message across to the student very early in commercial flight training that the airlines have strict departure schedules that say the aircraft leaves on time at a certain time and that the flight crew need to ensure that they have the aircraft depart at that time. That means the crew cannot just roll up ten minutes beforehand to start their preparation. Some students aiming for a commercial licence need to have this driven home to them.

To be a competent instructor one needs to have things done by a certain time. Be at the school on time ready for the briefing or flight. Not exceed flight and duty times. Plan ahead to ensure records are available on time. Know the time of last light. Execute the planned flight in a timely manner. Thinking ahead with time being the key element.

In learning to be a time manager it is like taking a page out of the military planning handbook. The key time is X. From that you work backwards.

X minus the time to prep the aircraft for flight. Before that there is the time required for briefing or flight planning. Then there is the time required to leave home to get to the school. That then becomes the start time that the student needs to commence the prep work for the flight.

The instructor needs to have the student understand that flying and time keeping go together.

Having said that it is surprising the number of times that a student turns up without a watch. Saying that it broke down is like saying that the dog ate their homework. Sometimes there is a lame excuse about keeping track of the time with their mobile phone or some other method. Sorry but it needs to be a readily available time piece that indicates the time in hours minutes and seconds. A wrist watch is best. How one keeps accurate time without a watch is beyond this instructor. For those students who turn up without a watch it can be a case of ‘no watch, no fly’. As an instructor on a nav flight it pays to check before the flight that the student’s and instructor’s watches have the same time. For a working commercial pilot it is a good move to have a second watch at home etc. to use as a back up in case the prime watch goes u/s.

Instructors also need to keep watching the time that a student takes to do the ground study towards the various levels of flight testing. In an ideal world the ground studies will come to a head shortly before the flight skills are obtained. It is to be said that it can be a lot of fun to push throttles but not push the ground studies just as hard.

Probably the best students are the ones who turn up at the booked time, or just a tad early, and have no fixed time to depart after the lesson. They are prepared for the flight and are keen to soak up all the aviation knowledge that they can. These students are the ones that instructors like to spend more time with.

More students like this are welcome.

Contact Dave by email at [email protected]