Ask A CFI: Is Your Instructor Actually Teaching You?

When you pay for an hour of flight instruction, what exactly are you paying for? Is it someone to sit in the right seat while you practice maneuvers? Someone to keep you from making a mistake that might damage the airplane or hurt yourself? Someone who can sign your logbook and eventually recommend you for a practical test?

Are you buying a commodity or are you paying for an education?

I spend a considerable amount of time working with flight instructors, both experienced and inexperienced, and one thing I’ve learned is that holding the certificate and being an effective educator are two very different things.

The FAA establishes the minimum qualifications to become a certificated flight instructor. Those are important, but only the beginning. Passing a practical test doesn’t automatically make someone a good teacher any more than passing a private pilot practical test makes someone an expert pilot.

Unfortunately, flight training has developed a culture where the CFI is often viewed as another step toward an airline career rather than the beginning of a career in education. There’s nothing inherently wrong with becoming an instructor to build experience. Some of the best I’ve worked with had every intention of moving on to the airlines. The problem begins when the instructor’s personal objectives become more important than the student’s education.

Teaching Requires Preparation

Every lesson should have a purpose. That doesn’t mean every minute needs to be scripted or that you or your instructor can’t change the plan when an opportunity presents itself. Some of the best learning experiences happen when something unexpected creates an opportunity to teach.

But there should always be a plan.

An instructor should know what the student has accomplished, where they’re struggling, what they’re supposed to learn next, and how that lesson fits into their overall training. A syllabus is an important tool, but it’s not a substitute for instructional judgment. Two students can complete the same lesson with different results, and an effective instructor recognizes that.

If a student is struggling with landings, simply repeating the same approach and landing ten more times without changing anything isn’t instruction—it’s repetition. Repetition can reinforce good habits, but it can just as easily reinforce bad ones. The instructor needs to identify what the student doesn’t understand, determine why they’re struggling, and develop a way to address it.

Sometimes that means demonstrating a maneuver. Sometimes it means explaining the aerodynamics differently. Sometimes it means going back to a fundamental skill that should have been mastered earlier. Sometimes it means recognizing that the instructor’s approach isn’t working. That’s an important distinction. When a student isn’t learning, the first question shouldn’t always be what’s wrong with the student. It should also be whether the instructor is actually teaching effectively.

Your Instructor Should Be Paying Attention

I’ve seen discussions from students describing instructors who spend lessons looking at their phones, talking about unrelated subjects, or providing little feedback unless specifically asked.

That’s unacceptable.

A student is paying for the instructor’s professional attention and expertise. That doesn’t mean an instructor should constantly talk or interfere with everything the student does. In fact, knowing when to remain quiet is an important skill.

Sometimes students need to work through problems independently. Allowing a student to recognize and correct a mistake can be far more valuable than immediately telling them what to do. There’s a substantial difference between deliberately allowing a student to exercise judgment and simply not paying attention. An effective instructor is constantly evaluating the student’s performance, situational awareness, workload management, decision-making, and understanding of what’s happening around them.

That evaluation doesn’t stop just because the airplane is flying straight and level.

The Most Important Skill We Teach

If I had to identify the single most important skill a student should develop during flight training, it wouldn’t be landing an airplane, navigating across the country, or performing a maneuver to practical test standards.

It would be the ability to objectively evaluate their own performance.

Think about what happens when a student earns a private pilot certificate. For the first time, they can operate an airplane without an instructor sitting beside them. Nobody is there to identify every mistake, question every decision, or tell them when their performance isn’t acceptable. They have to recognize those things themselves.

A pilot who cannot accurately evaluate their own abilities, limitations, and knowledge is going to have a difficult time making good decisions.

This is why I believe one of the most important parts of a flight lesson happens after the engine is shut down. Before I tell a student what I thought of the flight, I want to know what they thought. What went well? What didn’t? What would they do differently? Were there situations where they felt uncomfortable or didn’t fully understand what was happening? I’m not looking for a student to simply tell me the flight was good or bad. I want to know whether their assessment matches what actually happened.

A student who makes several mistakes but can accurately identify them, explain why they happened, and describe how to correct them may be developing better judgment than someone who performs well but has no idea why. The objective isn’t to create pilots who never make mistakes. That’s impossible. The objective is to develop pilots who recognize their mistakes, understand their limitations, and know when they need additional knowledge or training. That requires instructors who are willing to evaluate their own performance with the same honesty they expect from their students.

You Don’t Know Everything, and Neither Do I

I’ve been flying professionally and teaching people to fly for many years. I’ve instructed in more than a hundred different makes and models of aircraft and accumulated thousands of hours of flight instruction.

And there is still an enormous amount about aviation that I don’t know.

I don’t consider that a weakness. I consider recognizing it one of the most important parts of being a professional pilot and educator. Aviation is far too complex for anyone to know everything. Aircraft systems, aerodynamics, regulations, weather, human factors, and operational procedures represent an extraordinary amount of information. Even after decades of experience, there’s always something to learn.

An instructor who acts as though they have all the answers is doing their students a disservice. One of the most valuable things an instructor can tell a student is, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” It teaches the student how to recognize a gap in their knowledge and take responsibility for correcting it.

Unfortunately, aviation is also an unforgiving environment in which what you don’t know can kill you and what someone else doesn’t know can kill you, too. That second point is especially important in flight instruction. Students depend on their instructors to provide accurate information, demonstrate safe procedures, and recognize dangerous situations. An instructor who doesn’t understand something but confidently teaches it anyway can pass along misconceptions that follow a student for the rest of their career.

Those misconceptions may not cause a problem immediately. They might not cause a problem for years. But eventually, the wrong circumstances can turn a misunderstanding into an accident. This is why instructors must continue learning long after receiving their certificates. We should be reading, attending training, asking questions, seeking out more experienced pilots, and challenging our own assumptions.

Experience is valuable, but only when we’re willing to learn from it.

Honest Feedback Is Not Optional

One of the more difficult responsibilities of being an instructor is telling someone something they don’t want to hear.

Nobody enjoys being told they’re struggling, particularly when they’re investing significant amounts of time and money into something they’re passionate about. Avoiding those conversations doesn’t help anyone.

If a student is consistently making poor decisions, demonstrating weak aircraft control, or failing to understand important concepts, the instructor has an obligation to address those deficiencies. That doesn’t mean humiliating students or making them feel incapable. There is no educational value in treating someone poorly. It means providing specific, constructive feedback that explains what needs improvement and how to accomplish it.

Telling someone their landing was terrible isn’t particularly useful. Explaining that they allowed the airplane to drift off centerline, failed to recognize the developing drift, and didn’t make the appropriate correction gives them something they can actually work on.

Equally important, instructors shouldn’t tell students they’re doing well when they aren’t. Encouragement is valuable, but false reassurance can be dangerous. Students need an accurate understanding of their abilities, even when that assessment is uncomfortable. The goal is not to make students feel good about every lesson. It’s to help them become better pilots.

Flight Schools Have Responsibilities Too

Instructor accountability shouldn’t depend entirely on students recognizing that something is wrong.

Flight schools have a responsibility to establish instructional standards, provide mentorship, evaluate their instructors, and monitor student progress. A new CFI shouldn’t be expected to know everything about teaching simply because they passed a practical test. They need opportunities to observe experienced instructors, discuss difficult training situations, and receive feedback on their own instructional performance. They also need to know that management will support them when they make appropriate decisions about student safety and proficiency.

At the same time, flight schools cannot ignore poor instructional practices simply because an instructor is popular, has a full schedule, or generates revenue. The quality of the education being provided must matter more than the number of hours being billed.

How Do You Know Whether Your Instructor Is Effective?

Students should be able to answer some basic questions about their training.

Do you understand what you’re supposed to be learning during each lesson? Can your instructor explain why you’re performing a particular maneuver and what standard you’re expected to meet? Do you receive specific feedback about your performance? Do you know what you need to improve before the next lesson? Most importantly, are you becoming better at recognizing your own strengths, weaknesses, and limitations?

A good instructor shouldn’t make you permanently dependent on their judgment. They should be teaching you how to develop your own. That doesn’t mean you should agree with every evaluation or that every lesson will go exactly as planned. Learning to fly is challenging, and progress isn’t always consistent. But you should understand where you stand and why. If you don’t, that’s a conversation worth having with your instructor.

The Responsibility of the Right Seat

The responsibility of a flight instructor extends well beyond teaching someone to manipulate the controls or preparing them to pass a practical test.

We’re helping develop people who will eventually make decisions without us, often while carrying passengers who trust them with their lives. That responsibility deserves to be taken seriously.

A good instructor doesn’t need to know everything, but they need to recognize what they don’t know. They don’t need to produce perfect students, but they need to teach students how to recognize and correct their imperfections.

Most importantly, they need to understand that the objective isn’t to create pilots who can pass a test under supervision. It’s to develop pilots who can accurately evaluate themselves and continue learning when nobody else is watching.

Because in aviation, the consequences of not knowing something don’t necessarily end with the person who lacks the knowledge.

In Part Two, we’ll examine the other side of the relationship. An instructor can provide excellent education, but that doesn’t mean a student is taking responsibility for learning.

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