How far do you go?

[skelly2005]

Afternoon All,
So I am wondering as a newly qualified flight instructor how far you allow your students to go before you intervene.
Let’s say for example if you had a student who was quite advanced and was doing a navigation exercise and they couldn’t find their turning point, now assuming that the student is doing this as a practice nav before he/she goes and does it solo next time, when would you intervene.
Would you only intervene at a point you thought was getting dangerous or the exercise becoming counter productive or would you continue to let them fly around until they used their previous training to identify where they were and then learn from their mistakes when debriefed.
Lets also say that a student had been on a navigation exercise with you and was on final on a relatively brisk day and they got very slow even after several prompts, how far would you let this escalate?
As an instructor who is still learning which I am sure everybody still is, it would be good to know where others stand on this. I also understand that your tolerances may be more or less than I am willing to tolerate but feel that nursing somebody through the training will not always work, remember I wont always be sat at their side.

[Tmbstory]

skelly 2005:

In my experience, as an instructor, I found that you should operate the aircraft to the Student's ability and not to your own, before taking over.

Your ability should be far greater than your student's.

Tmb

[skelly2005]

Agreed, however is the student going to advance if you always operate to their current ability? Suerly learning by your mistakes and pushing that boundary a little further, albeit to a safe manner is the way forward?

I know from a personal point of view if my instructor when I was learning had nursed me I would not be half the pilot I am today.

[Whopity]

a student who was quite advanced and was doing a navigation exercise and they couldn’t find their turning pointSo the student is either directly over the turning point, or they are not using the correct heading or time. As the instructor, you should know where their error lies and it is your job to teach them how to avoid such errors. It may be necessary to relieve their work load by taking control and then getting to student to work out where they are, where the turning point is relative to their position, and then give back control so that they can fly to it. A good student will always turn on time even if they can't see the turning point.

You can let the student go as far as you like so long as the solution is within your capabilities.

Students learn from their mistakes, but there is little point allowing a student to struggle on when a demonstration and some teaching from the instructor will put the student back on the correct course.

[blagger]

Every case is different - if it is early nav teach, then I would say you need to intervene relatively quickly to make the teaching point and develop the student - letting him/her struggle is pointless. However, if this is a later dual to solo nav teach then you might want to try and get the student to show you how he would deal with the situation solo, but some instructors persist beyond what is reasonable and the result is a stressed and hacked off student who isn't learning anything.

If the student isn't reacting to prompts near the ground there is only one answer - take control (and properly - one person is in control, no riding the controls or other crap that gets talked about).

[foxmoth]

if it is early nav teach, then I would say you need to intervene relatively quickly to make the teaching point and develop the student - letting him/her struggle is pointless. However, if this is a later dual to solo nav teach then you might want to try and get the student to show you how he would deal with the situation solo
I would agree here to an extent, but it is also how you intervene, you can start off subtle "how long to the next waypoint blogs" is a fair question if you have just past a waypoint with no reaction, or you can dive in with "you are lost you stupid XXX" (Not my technique!), how long before you step in will vary on where you are (heading straight into LHR Zone or the middle of nowhere) and the students awareness of WIHIH.

[172_driver]

To take your navigation flight as an example, the first flight I would nurse them quite closely so they get the idea of how it should be done. Of course, if it's a good student and they get it right from the beginning I keep quiet. From ensuing flights I want to interfere less and less, keeping in mind they will soon sit here themselves without an instructor. As long as consistent with safety, let them do mistakes. But only up to the point where any more deviation just becomes time wasting. Sometime it could be a good experience to let them get lost, to know the feeling and how to regain situational awareness. Just like it could be a good idea to take them into a real cloud sometime practicing instrument flying, with a proper IFR clearance of course. It's important to de-brief them on their mistakes and how to avoid them in the future. But most students also appreciate to be allowed to make mistakes, and they always say "they learnt a lesson today".

[P.Pilcher]

My first ever dual lesson was "circuits and bumps" in which the student had not yet managed to land the aircraft successfully. All around that circuit I wondered about the question of the thread "at what point should I take control". Eventually the student got himself on final approach and I watched carefully. We got to about 10' and I waited for the roundout. It didn't come and without thinking about it, my hands automatically grabbed the control column, pulled back and I applied power. Mainwheels hit the runway, student was handed back control for the climbout and debriefed as to what he did wrong. I never worried after that.
The same sort of thing happened 20 years later when I was in the RHS of a friend's aircraft which he was flying back from a long XC. It was getting dark, he had no night rating but he was still perfectly legal. On approach, he slipped below the glide and when the trees got quite close, I had to pole grab again and sort it out. It is the old problem that "the instructor is always in command" even though I wasn't but because I was sitting there with ATPL, instructor rating and all the bit, my friend over relaxed and didn't realise things were going wrong. He would have been fine in my absence. Shortly after that, I did his night rating for him.
So, unless a student is very inexperienced in XC flying, I would let them cock it up so long as I always knew where they were and then they could practice the procedures for getting themselves out of trouble which they should know by this stage. It can also be useful - as has been stated above to reduce the pressure by doing the flying while the student concentrates on his map reading until he has located his position.
Map reading is so easy when you haven't got an aircraft to fly as well!

P.P.

[FlyingForFun]

Some good replies so far.

There are two considerations:

a) Is it safe?
b) What is the student going to gain from it?

As far as safety is concerned, it's simple - know your own limits, and always sort it out before it gets to your limits.

But the real skill is in knowing what the student is going to gain, and this depends on the exercise, on the individual student's personality, on how advanced the student is... there's certainly no black-and-white answer.

With most students, once things go wrong they very often snowball. If this starts happening, it will dent the student's confidence and they won't learn anything, but one thing I try to do is recognise the point just before this starts to happen, and intervene there. It's not appropriate for every student, nor in every scenario, but it's about as close as I can come to a rule of thumb.

FFF
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[JUST-local]

Some leave it longer than they should :ugh:

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Cessna%20152,%20G-BOKY%2006-11.pdf