rickair7777

My personal experience as a CFI. 20's usually pick things up rather quickly, especially multi-tasking skills such as radios. After 30, they learn fine, but not quite as quickly. After 40 it's noticeable slower...after 55, watch out.

Exceptions abound of course. People who have military or LE careers tend to do better, and I imagine that any work or recreational experience which requires hand-eye coordination or dynamic, time-sensitive communication (stockbroker, NYC Cabbie?) would also.

Any experienced instructor will have noticed this. The 55+ YO recently retired executives are the worst...they are usually completely removed from dynamic, interactive communication (in their world they talk, and the everybody listens patiently). Everything is on their schedule, at a pace comfortable to them...it's been a long time since they have pressured or challenged by their immediate environment. Their challenges are large in scope and long term.

MD11

Thankfully, my student has been nothing but respectful and courteous.

Ewfflyer

I would leave the A/S uncovered, but the rest of it being covered is fine by me. A/S is the only thing you cannot truly judge by being in the plane.

abelenky

I have two suggestions for helping your student:

First:
If you have a handy setup, I'd suggest this is a situtation for Flight Simulator (either Microsoft Flight Sim X, or X-Plane).

In particular, focus on the "PAUSE" feature. Let him fly to each "next-step", (turn-to-base, turn-to-final, flare, etc,) pause the sim, then talk about it in detail before resuming.

Its very difficult to discuss decisions and correct bad choices while flying along at 65 knots. The beauty of simulators is that you can pause in the middle, review everything, then when you continue, he can make the "proper" decisions.

Do this over and over, until he can do it properly without any pauses.
Then you'll be ready to try in real life again.

Second:
Be sure your student has rigorous, exacting checklists.

For example, I had one instructor who told me:
When you're near to abeam the landing spot, Carb-heat on, slow down, nose down.

The much better instructor taught me:
EXACTLY abeam the landing spot, carb-heat on, throttle to EXACTLY 1500 RPM, nose to EXACTLY 5 degrees down.

The first set of instructions left me a lot of margin, which turned into errors.
The second set told me exactly what to do, and gave me a criteria to judge my own success/failure on.

Then you have to enforce that your student follows the precise steps. If each step isn't done exactly, he can't go on to the next one.

Good luck!

jedinein

This is my target market. The ones I keep don't quibble about the rate. They demand high value from me otherwise they'd be gone immediately, usually without notice. They can afford to learn how to fly and usually can buy their own aircraft and maintain it well.

I disagree on the decreased capacity to learn. The learning is more deliberate in the experienced crowd and their life experience makes them more respectful of the learning and flying environment.

However, I do notice a significant learning difference between those that are between businesses and those that are actively working their business(es). Those that are enjoying the break are not fatigued. They have 100% of their attention focused on learning. They don't have seven more meetings to attend after our 5 PM lesson having started at 6 AM that morning. They can do their homework.

The executive that has an active business and the challenges that go along with it may be flying just for the sheer recreation of it. If it is one lesson a week, I'm fine with that, so long as they can do two lessons, even if on the same day, during the occasional week that needs more attention. Landing is one of those topics that requires more attention. I've usually already advised the student that we're not in a race to solo at "x" hours. If they are, then they'll need to spend more time on flying and less with their business.

So, we'll make a lunch date out of it. We'll fly in the morning. This might start out in the practice area where we'll review rudder control and trim. Move on to slow flight and stalls. We'll run the rudder coordination exercises to refresh the brain and muscle control. This exercise focuses the attention. If there is a wicked crosswind somewhere, we'll fly to it and work landing approaches for a bit, to the crosswind runway. This too focuses attention. (Note: If an excessive wind, we won't land, the exaggerated control use drives home the visual cues and control usage needed, and everyone needs go-around practice.)

After the workout, we'll head somewhere fun and have lunch. I've learned to order a fast-eaten meal, as I'll be conducting groundschool throughout. Knives and spoons become the runways, parts of the pattern, the wind, and so on. Salt and pepper shakers and coffee cups are great for the various landmarks.

Following lunch, we'll head back to home base (unless the closer we get the more distracted the student) and work the pattern for a bit, the goal is "scaring the runway" typically. The previous flight and ground session loosened the rust and now the student can spend some time learning. We may only do three landing approaches, but in terms of learning, this is Grade A+ time. Depending on how things are going, we'll either do full stops and taxi back, my taking the taxi so the student can listen, or I'll take it on the climbout if we're "scaring the runway". If I'm flying, the student can listen.

"Scaring the runway" makes conducting low approaches fun, the goal to get slower and lower each time, until finally, we touch down. I'll take control of the throttle on final while the student works the controls. As we get closer to the roundout, float, and flare, the student's job will be to continue "holding it off," not allowing the aircraft to land. This increases the practice time of the float and flare from about 3-6 seconds per pattern to nearly 30 seconds with a long runway. If the controllers are particularly cranky about little aircraft using their long runway, I'll call ahead and arrange this for a less busy time. If it is really slow, the tower may put their trainee on, so my trainee can mess up their trainee and vice versa. As the student gets better with their coordination, I've have them deliberately move off centerline laterally to fly over the TDZE markers or a distance stripe, then back on to centerline.

If we've done a few patterns and the student seems to have the hang of the roundout, float, and flare, one time I'll simply leave a bit of the power on, we'll touch down, and I'll reduce the power to idle. We end on that success. Having the success to remember for the week until the next lesson increases motivation and makes it far more likely for the student to return and even progress. Success building success is no different from the 6 y/o to the 60 y/o.

BTW, the recently retired guys I fly with aren't retired for long. They're always looking for the next project/business/opportunity.

N9373M

I may have missed this, but what exactly is happening during landing (or not landing)? Not being lined up? Not flaring at the right time?

Two things that stuck with me from my student days were:
"Dance with her". Feet and hands always correcting.
"Look at the far end of the runway". Helped alot when knowing when to flare.

Have the student get some sort of reference as to how "high" they are when the plane is on the ground - that might help with SA near the flare.

HTH

pilot1278

I've actually had quite a few students that were like this.. All were under 20, but all were from other countries and had limited experience with mechanical objects.

Der Meister

I remember when I was working on my PPL. I had a hard time figuring out when and where to do each thing. I had my instructor at the time go over in a ground and then in the aircraft what exactly to do and when. Also I asked if i could fallow on the controls while he talked what he was doing at the time. It helped me tons. I use it today with my students that are having problems.

Some other ideas, try going to an uncontrolled field so that he can not have to worry about traffic and radio calls.

rickair7777

Yes, I've seen that too. ESL doesn't help either.

rickair7777

NOOOOO! This is a very bad idea for the vast majority of students. PC based flight sims are horrible for hands-on, stick-and-rudder skills...you will only develop and reinforce not-quite-realistic-enough muscle skills.

Also, the lack of all-around visibility not allow students to not look where they should be looking, or use their peripheral vision.

Even with a cockpit mockup it's a very bad way to learn to fly initially. Professionals use sims to learn to fly advanced aircraft but that is only because advanced airplanes are very expensive to operate. The pro-pilot's skills and experience allow him to compensate for the significant realism errors present in even a level D sim.

MS Flight sim can be useful to brush up on IFR scan and procedures (holds, etc) for someone who has already mastered those skills, but nothing stick-and-rudder.

This is good advice...specific targets for each phase of a maneuver takes a lot of guesswork out of the equation.