No find, no fix, no fly

The student responds with silence and on the second ask responds by saying ’I don’t know’.

I guess that if I had asked him how to do something with his smart phone he would do that in a flash.

Such is the way with a lot of new-breed flight students. They simply do not know much about the aircraft, what the various components of the machine are and what they do.

Most people know what the basic parts of a car are but an aircraft is different. If a pilot gets a mechanical problem, commonly called a defect or snag, he needs to be able to describe the part so that an engineer or LAME can assist with the issue. If away from a maintenance shop the description may have to be passed over the phone.

I recall having a snag with an aircraft in the outback of Western Australia. With limited communications I had to pass the details of the problem. I was able to describe in detail the components by name and what the issue was. At great expense an engineer was flown to my location and given my report he brought just the hardware and tools needed to fix the problem.

Most pilots will have chuckled when they hear that old expression that some pilot once wrote on a maintenance release. ‘Engine missing’. To that the engineer replied ‘Engine found, reinstalled and now runs OK’. Good for a laugh but the fact is that can and does happen more times than you want to know about. I am quite sure that there are other classic maintenance release write-ups like the one above.

In the flight training game the aim of the instructor is to turn a zero time person into a licenced pilot capable of safely flying an aircraft. With a lot of younger

New-starts there is also an unsaid expectation by the parents that the instructor will not only turn their offspring into a pilot but also teach him to be become an adult. As instructors we have qualifications for the flight training aspect but little or no qualifications for the latter.

A pilot must know what the parts of an aircraft are.

In commenting on the aspect of pilots showing a lack of knowledge about their aircraft this becomes apparent with not only new-start low time pilots but sometimes commercial pilots and on occasion flight instructors. Heaven only knows what the employer of a first commercial flying job pilot thinks of this lack of knowledge.

On more than one occasion I have walked a PPL or CPL around an aircraft. I have pointed to a part of the machine and asked what it is called and what it does. I am often astounded at the lack of knowledge that the student has. To me this indicates that the student’s earlier instructor has not ensured that the student has been given an education on the what-is-it side of flight training, the aircraft itself, as well as the hands-on flying operation of the machine. That education is vital for a student to be able to read a Pilots Operating Handbook, a theory of flight reference book or write up a defect on a maintenance release. With the maintenance release you might say that the engineer can just talk with the pilot to clarify what he was on about. Good in theory but not always possible in practise.

‘I am often astounded at the lack of knowledge that the student has.’

When an engineer wants to talk with a pilot, who has written up a possible snag, that is the time when the pilots signature is unreadable, his phone number has to be sought, the pilot is not answering his phone or he has even gone back home overseas. This delay in finding out what the story is wastes time and in the aviation game time is money. No find, no fix, no fly.

For a pilot to really be a pilot he should have a notebook and a pen with him at all times. That is why pilot shirts have a pen slot in the left pocket. Then he carries a working pen. Why? To be able to have the hardware to write up a snag on an MR or a more detailed write up in the notebook if so required. Simple but a fact of life. Instructors reading this will recall students who had no pen, no paper and the expectation that ‘someone else’ will do the written side of the operation be it recording the flight time figures or simply signing the MR before the first flight.

An instructor needs to teach a student not only how to fly an aircraft but also to know the name and function of the components of an aircraft. Vital.
Contact Dave by email: [email protected]