(With apologies, in turn, to G. H. Hardy)

Suppose you wanted to learn the piano. And your piano teacher said that they were going to teach you one note per lesson: today, we’ll learn middle C. Tomorrow, maybe an E^♭; the lesson after that will be on an F^♯. And at the end of being taught all 88 notes on the keyboard, you’ll be able to play the piano.

Doesn’t that seem a funny way to learn a musical instrument?

Why then is most flight instruction in Canada structured so that one “air exercise” is presented per lesson, in numerical sequence? Yesterday we “did” slow flight, that’s exercise 11. Tomorrow we’ll do stalls – exercise 12. The next lesson will be “Spins” – exercise 13. By the time we’ve covered all 24 lessons, you’ll be ready for your flight test.

Doesn’t that seem a funny way to learn to fly an airplane? So what’s going on here? Why is flight instruction often presented this way?

How did we get here?

I think we got here with the help of several factors:

Firstly, the Transport Canada Flight Training Manual – the purple book. This is the student bible for teaching in Canada and it presents each of the air exercises in sequence, starting from exercise 1 (“familiarization with flight”) all the way through to exercise 24 (“instrument flight”) and 25 (“night flying”) and beyond. The format is astonishingly linear – one exercise at a time, one after the other.

Secondly, the way flight instructors are trained: tested and checked on each air exercise, one at a time. That’s a perfectly acceptable way to verify someone’s skill at performing all the air exercises, and to check that each exercise can be taught proficiently. But both the Class 1 instructor and the putative instructor-trainee already know how to fly – they themselves already know the rest of the air exercises when it comes time to review each one in turn. To use my piano analogy, testing that someone can play (and teach) a D^♭ in amongst all the other notes that they already know how to play is very different from teaching someone who can’t yet play, to play a D^♭.

Thirdly, there’s the Flight Instructor Guide – the Transport Canada bible for flight instructors. The first fifty pages are on “learning factors” – a subject for other blog posts. The next section – 150 pages of it – is devoted to each air exercise taken in turn. “stalls” come after “slow flight” that comes after “range and endurance”. Very linear. The introduction to this part spells it out: “This section has been written with the aim of providing the experienced or trainee flight instructor with direction for the orderly presentation of flight training to a student.”

Fourthly there’s the Class IV instructor flight test: each instructor candidate has to pass one of these in order to gain the Class IV instructor rating, the lowest rung of the ladder. The examiner typically presents the trainee with a sample student training record, the trainee reads through it and decides which single exercise to teach to the examiner (who is now pretending to be that student.)

The candidate proceeds to brain-dump upon the examiner every piece of information that the candidate has ever learned about the chosen air exercise in what is called “preparatory ground instruction”. If any detail is missed out of the briefing the candidate assumes that the examiner will be displeased, so everything is thrown in – very much a “more-is-more” philosophy.

After 45 minutes or an hour the examiner is either bored or has decided the candidate knows enough, and the test moves on to the next phase. But the candidate hasn’t been encouraged to consider with how much of that information a real student – who would be hearing it for the first time – actually should be presented at that stage.

Fifthly there’s Canadian Aviation Regulation 405.31 which reads:

405.31 No person shall commence a training flight unless the trainee has received from the flight instructor
...
(b) where new flight exercises are to be conducted during the flight, preparatory ground instruction.


This is easily interpreted to mean that, for example, before an instructor teaches a student the exercise of “climbs” and therefore how to put an aircraft into a climb and out of a climb, they are obliged in law to give their full 45 minute ground briefing on climbs. And before they teach a student how to descend in an airplane they have to give their full 45 minute ground briefing on descents. And before teaching a student how to turn an airplane they have to give their full pre-prepared 30 minute briefing on turns. Because they believe that to be what the the law requires. Does it not say so?

Why is this bad?

Now here’s the problem: every single flying lesson in an actual airplane involves at least one climb, at least one turn, and at least one descent. (Try missing one of those elements and see how your flight turns out.) Should the instructor make sure to give the 45 minutes plus 45 minutes plus 30 minutes – a full two hours – of ground briefing before the first flight? And what about ground briefings for all the other exercises whose content by necessity has to be included in the flight? Another 45 minutes on “ancillary controls” before the student is allowed to touch the carburettor heat control?

Alternatively, having avoided teaching a full piece of ground instruction on it in advance should the instructor make the student close their eyes lest they should accidentally learn something about turning or descending, when today’s flight was only to be about (and only briefed about) “climbs”?

Every flight instructor wants to do a good job – the best they can – by their student. And every flight instructor wants to follow the rules. So here is the circle to be squared: you can’t teach a new exercise in the air until you’ve briefed on it, a thorough briefing takes a long time, there are several exercises to teach all at once, at least at the beginning stages of training, and yet we don’t want to bore the student senseless with hours of classroom instruction before those early flights.

What’s the solution?

I think the answer lies in re-interpreting part II of the flight instructor guide – the part where each exercise is treated separately from each of the other exercises. I think we as instructors need to put together preparatory ground instruction for each lesson that takes into account two things: firstly all the exercises that are going to be conducted during this lesson – and secondly – how much knowledge is needed by the student for those exercises during this particular lesson.

That is, if we’re going to spend thirty minutes in the classroom before a flight at the “straight and level” stage, let’s at first instance spend fifteen minutes on straight and level, five minutes on climbs, five minutes on descents, and five minutes on turns.

Then the next lesson let’s spend another ten minutes each on climbs, descents and turns. Let’s introduce the later parts of climbs (Vx, Vy, cruise climbs) in a later lesson than the early parts of climbs (“attitude, power, trim…”).

A student doesn’t need to have a classification of turns as “gentle”, “medium” or “steep” – or a discussion of why roll stability is reduced in a climbing turn but increased in a descending turn – in order to be able to turn the aircraft around to point back towards the airport during their first lessons. They do however need to understand the role of the rudder in maintaining coordination. So let’s teach them that, first time out. Maybe a deeper understanding of the causes of adverse yaw can wait a little?

By way of support for this hypothesis, I’d like to point to the CARs definition of “preparatory ground instruction” and to re-interpret CAR 405.31 in the light of it.

According to CAR 101.01: preparatory ground instruction means classroom-type instruction, generally on a one-to-one basis but not excluding group instruction, that is based on lesson plans contained in or developed from the applicable flight instructor guide; (instruction au sol avant vol)


Lesson Plans

Now the lesson plans contained in the flight instructor guide are in part III of that document. They split flight training up into 31 segments. Each segment contains a bunch of exercises to be taught at the “familiarization” level (i.e. to be shown to the student), a bunch of exercises at the “demonstration and practice” level, a bunch of exercises at the “supervised practice” level, and so on.

As an example, lesson plan 11 is the first solo.

As another example, Lesson Plan 2 is to have exercises on “attitudes and movements”, “straight and level flight”, “gentle and medium turns”, “climbing and descending”, and “climbing and descending turns” at the demonstration and practice level. At last here is some official acknowledgement that these basic building blocks need to be learned together.

To quote from the introduction to part III: “It must be clearly understood that the each Lesson Plan does not necessarily constitute a single flight – the number of flights will vary according to the Lesson Plan content and student ability.” But it is at least in contemplation that this lesson plan could be accomplished in one or two flights – and that is at odds with the often-assumed requirement of one new exercise – and one full preparatory ground instruction – per flight: in this lesson plan I count at least four new exercises.

Incidentally, to the extent that any official teaching guidance from Transport Canada acknowledges that nobody learns anything “one note at a time”, this is it. It consists of just twenty five pages out of 225, it’s part III and not part I (where I think it should be) and I have a secret suspicion that most class IV flight instructors don’t even know it exists. But it is there.

What does the regulation really say?

I want to look again at CAR405.31 again and put it together with the definition of preparatory ground instruction.

If we put the regulation and the definition together, we get: No person shall commence a training flight unless the trainee has received from the flight instructor [where new flight exercises are to be conducted during the flight] ... classroom-type instruction ... based on lesson plans contained in the ... flight instructor guide.

So in fact, ground instruction doesn’t have to be given based on each air exercise; where a new exercise is conducted you are definitively not required to provide complete ground instruction on that exercise. You are required to teach what is need for the exercise at the level at which it is included in the lesson plan. And if we are to do that, we should mix-and-match different exercises in each preparatory ground instruction – according to the level of what is being taught that flight.

Create your own lesson plans? Sure.

Finally I want to point out the following words in the introduction to Part III of the Flight Instructor Guide – the introduction to the Lesson Plans:

While it is recommended that flight instructors carefully follow these lesson plans as outlined, the personal instructional techniques of an individual flight instructor may be cause for modification of this syllabus, in which case it should be committed to writing and followed with care.

In that spirit, here is a summary of my personal training plan for a PPL, committed to writing:

Phase 1: Basic airplane control

• Atttitudes and movements
• Climbs
• Descents
• Turns
• Takeoffs

Phase 2: flying slowly

• Stalls
• Slow flight
• Spin demonstration

Phase 3: pre-solo manoeuvres

• Slips
• Steep turns
• Circuits
• Landing

Milestone: First solo

Phase 4: post-solo practice of airwork

• Flight for range and endurance
• Illusions caused by drift
• Forced and precautionary landings
• Dual and solo practice of previous exercises
• Instrument flight
• Diversions and navigation

Phase 5: finishing up

• Dual and solo cross country flights
• Specialized takeoffs and landings
• Revision of flight test exercises, dual and solo
• Flight test
• Completion of required instrument hours

Milestone: licence!

When we’ve studied the lessons in one phase, I like to loiter a little and review. We don’t move on to the next phase until an adequate level of competence is achieved. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or even good. But it has to be … there. And in later phases there’s plenty of opportunity for review consolidation and improvement of previous phases. The goal has to be efficient use of time and money.

Now, when would you like to get started?