Paying attention whilst instructing
An interesting thing happened to me today, and I thought I'd run it by this forum and get some opinions.
The apron was wet - large patches of standing water. My student pre-flighted the aircraft, and I walked out and climbed in next to her. As I walked out, I noticed that an aircraft which was parked in front of mine (a safe distance in front of mine) had its engine running, but didn't think anything of it. Between me and the other aircraft was a large puddle of water.
My student started doing the internal checks, and pointed out some spots of moisture on the windscreen. She was hoping that I would declare that it was raining and we should scrap the flight - she was a little nervous about her ability to fly in what she perceived as bad weather. But I could not see any further sign of rain, so I told her it was likely that the aircraft in front had increased the power a little and blown some water from the puddle that stood between us. The water was not sufficient to obscure our vision, so we started up, taxied out and had a very successful flight. (She was still convinced that the weather was below her capabilities, despite flying some very good circuits, but that's not the point.)
After the flight, I was approached by the pilot of the aircraft in front of us. It turned out that, as we were in the process of starting up, he'd suffered a ruptured oil line, and lost 8 quarts of oil. The "moisture" on our windscreen was not rain, nor was it water from the puddle - it was oil from the aircraft in front. The oil had only very recently been changed, and hence was very light in colour, which explains why both me and my student mistook it for water.
The pilot of the other aircraft was surprised that I had not stopped to wipe the oil off our windscreen. He was even more surprised that I hadn't noticed a large puddle of oil under his aircraft and informed ATC that he had a problem. (He told me that he was listening on frequency, but not transmitting as he was, understandably, more concerned with shutting his engine down.)
Having thought over the events, I don't believe that I would have noticed anything was amiss even if I was by myself, contrary to the other pilot's opinion. But I can't help wondering whether I was a little distracted because most of my attention was focussed on my student, ensuring that she completed the start-up checks correctly. Fortunately in this case the whole incident passed without any injury or damage other than to the affected engine... but if it had been a more serious incident, would my ability to provide assistance (even if it was just a radio call to alert ATC) have been impaired by my attention being focused on my student?
I'm just curious how the rest of you read this situation. Does your ability to pay attention to everything else whilst still supervising your student improve with experience? Is this just something which comes with the territory of instructing? Is there anything which I (or, more generally, we) can do to improve our general airmanship whilst supervising students?
FFF
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