OK. I totally made that story up. But I bet it happened to some pilot somewhere, because I see the opposite happening all of the time: new pilots “driving” the airplane the way they drive a car.

What’s up with that? Well, humans are creatures of habit. Once we learn a skill, we tend to do it the same way each and every time. In flight training, we actually count on that. You’ll practice emergency drills over and over so that you’ll develop the proper habits to fall back on during a real emergency. But this human nature can sometimes get in the way when learning a new skill—especially if it resembles a skill already mastered.

In flight training we call this a negative transfer of knowledge.

This is why, when learning to taxi an airplane, your car habits can interfere. After all, right in front of you is a steering wheel. Only we call it a yoke. And despite its appearance, its job on the ground couldn’t be more different from a car’s steering wheel. You can be told that—you can even “know” it on some level—but your brain will still think you’re in a car, and when you try to turn from Taxiway Bravo onto Taxiway Charlie, your hand will turn the yoke while the airplane rolls straight off the pavement and into the grass.

So, how do you overcome your brain’s habits? How can you keep negative transfer of knowledge from tripping you up?

In this case, sit on your hands. Literally. If your hands are under your legs when you first start taxiing, you can’t fall back on your driving muscle memory. Now, the yoke does serve a purpose on the ground—to counteract the effects of wind. So, there’s an argument to be made for proper yoke position from the get-go. But I think there’s enough to learn when starting out, including just keeping the airplane on the centerline, that we can worry about yoke position later.

But don’t sit around on your hands forever—just long enough to break the negative transfer of knowledge.