Who’s in charge here?

These are some of the hair-raising moments that happen in primary instruction, but they pale in comparison to what some instructors see in advanced instruction.

If the instructor is on the ball and the school has the right culture, safety is drilled into the primary training course from the first day. That’s both to make sure each flight is safe, and also to give the student a foundation of good decision making and risk management. Maybe because it’s assumed the pilot already has these skills, but most advanced training completely ignores these concepts. Although it’s fair to say that instrument training has a decent focus on risk management, the commercial course, multiengine training, and especially aircraft checkouts and flight reviews barely touch on it. Twice I’ve said little prayers after ill-advised go-arounds during advanced training. The first was when the instructor called for a single-engine go-around in a multiengine training airplane that barely has the guts to climb on one engine, and that assumes perfect technique. The second was during an aircraft checkout when the mentor (not an instructor) had me perform a downwind emergency approach with rising terrain on the far side of the runway. I only have myself to blame as I was landing long and made the decision to go around.

My experiences aren’t unusual. No one knows for sure how much primary training is flown versus advanced, but it’s a safe bet that we do a lot more of the former than the later. Yet two-thirds of all fatal training accidents occur during advanced training. And 94 percent of those are with an instructor on board. It speaks to the largely unacknowledged and potentially risky environment of advanced instruction.

Two-thirds of all fatal training accidents occur during advanced training. and 94 percent of those are with an instructor on board.An accident in July 2019 in Florida is a perfect example. A commercial-rated pilot was flying from the right seat receiving training for his flight instructor certificate. The instructor in the left seat demonstrated an emergency descent and approach, and then asked the student in the right seat to try it. At about 200 feet and while approaching a field the student noticed they were too fast and took action to slow down the airplane. According to the instructor he corrected too much and got too slow, at which point the instructor told the student to recover. According to the instructor’s statement he told the student to recover two more times, and nothing happened. The instructor said he took control of the airplane at 100 feet, but it was too late, and they were too slow and couldn’t arrest the sink rate enough to avoid an accident.

Interestingly the student’s accident statement differs in a few key places. He said he called for a go-around at 200 feet when he was too fast to make the field, and was about to add full power, but that the instructor told him to make the simulated landing site by whatever means necessary. At around 100 feet he agreed that the instruction took the controls, but that he maneuvered too aggressively and stalled a few feet above the ground.

The confusion that took place in the last few seconds before the accident illuminates the risks of advanced instruction. The instructor assumed the student knew how to fly, and generally knew the limits. They had briefed that it would be a low approach, and the instructor believed the student still had the time and altitude to be able to make the field. But the student claimed he was unhappy with the low-altitude maneuvers even before it was demonstrated, yet he deferred to the instructor, who knew the examiner’s apparent requirement that an applicant make the emergency descent to 50 feet.

This environment of assumptions of abilities and deferring to the other pilot happens routinely in advanced training. It’s especially prevalent when an instructor is performing a flight review in an airplane the pilot owns. In most cases the owner knows the airplane better than the instructor, but that doesn’t mean the instructor must always defer to the owner.

Defining strict altitude limits, avoiding unusual maneuvers, and making clear exactly who is pilot in command and why will go a long way toward ensuring a safer environment.

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