FAA
"I want to start a flight school that does not care about or teach any rules or FARs," my friend Jeff said as he phlumped down in my favorite chair after taking a bottled water out of my hangar’s fridge.
I looked up from viewing videos of people flying airplanes and having fun (while I'm not) on my phone as I often do when I am bored and gave him a raised eyebrow that said, "What the what?" and "Why are you in my favorite chair?"
He made his un-asked-for remark more explicit: "I spend more time with my pre-solo students teaching them FARs and a ton of other rules than I spend with basic flight maneuvers and safety."
"I spend way too much time briefing them on FAA medicals, FAA airspace, and a host of other FAA-induced claptrap when all they want to do is master turns about a point and taxi without hitting a building."
Jeff had a point. You can't swing a flight bag around your head without hitting at least a dozen rules and regulations when you teach beginners. It is like teaching a toddler to read but starting them on a college-level business law textbook.
Things like clearing turns on the ground and in the air are basic safety maneuvers but having to learn the boundaries of the airspace and how much a light sport can weigh may use up brain cells and attention that might be best used keeping the airplane on the runway's centerline.
I was about to remind him that the FARs are not bad. Most of them make a lot of sense and keep people safe. In my career, I have found that compliance is much better than trying to reinvent the wheel every time I flew. Plus, by complying, I made sure I got that paycheck every two weeks without interruption.
Jeff beat me to it and saved me a little preaching. "I know that the rules are there for safety, but I spend a lot of time with my pre-solo people teaching them 'sky law' and not flying."
My hangar guest was a youngster—at least compared to me. He had been a CFI for a little less than a year, and when he was coming up through training, I bet he had to memorize a ton of stuff that was required on the syllabus of the big flight school he attended before he got to solo.
"Have you read the rule about the pre-solo exam recently?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Ahem," I started. "All that FAR Part 61.87(b) says is that you have to come up with a written exam that includes things pertinent to the solo operation your student is about to do."
"You teach under the rules of Part 61 in an Aeronca Champ with no radio from this small, uncontrolled general aviation field, right?"
Jeff nodded.
"There you go," I said. "All you students really need to know for your pre-solo written is how the traffic pattern works, how to read a windsock and some right-of-way rules, and they are good to go."
"Once your student solos you can then lay all the regs on them you want. Of course, if you think teaching them gradually over the course of their training is the way to go, you are free to do that."
There has always been an argument out there in aviation land that the regulations somehow inhibit training people, but the rules leave huge, wide-open windows for teaching them all they need to know to become great pilots.
For example, the private pilot airman certification standards don't require that your student demonstrate cross-control stalls or slips to a landing, but both are very nice skills for them to have.
I also teach my students how to handle simulated engine outs all the way to landing at various neighborhood grass strips. An aviation education should be about competency and safety, not checkride prep, and in our little provincial world of Part 61 flying, we have an opportunity, within reason, to give our students a much better education than they would find at any pilot mill on the planet.
It was very quiet in my hangar after I finished my sermon. I looked up from the video I was watching while I spoke and realized that the silence wasn't because Jeff was so awed by my wisdom that he was speechless. He had already left—probably halfway through my lecture—and was on his way across the ramp to the Champ and his student.
He showed wisdom in leaving my lecture early, and I sensed that a first solo would happen for somebody today after a very short yet appropriate written quiz.
