Your most boneheaded mistake as a CFI

[Lead Sled]

Twenty something years ago I was giving some instrument dual in a Cessna 172. Some severe unforecast "lake effect" weather (low ceilings, visibilities, and icing conditions) developed along the route of our combination night, instrument "round-robin" XC flight. The "out" part of the trip was uneventful - the weather was as forecast 4,000' ceilings with good visibility beneath, perfect conditions to allow an instrument student to get his first bit of actual.

The "back" part of the trip was another story. An unforecast winter squall developed and moved across our home airport and every possible alternate for about 200 miles. Ceilings and visibilities were running around 400' and 1/2 to 1 mile in blowing snow. Additionally, there was light to moderate icing.

Initially, I wasn't too concerned, it would be a good experience for the student to see just how quickly things can go "south" on you inspite of all the planning you do. (Sometimes Mother Nature just flat refuses to read the weather forecasts.) By the time we got to our home airport, the weather had dropped below the minimums for the VOR approach so we decided to go to our alternate which had an ILS. We were starting to pick up a bit of ice, but it was only about 15 minutes to the alternate so I wasn't too concerned. Again, I felt that this could turn out to be some very good experience for the student.

As we diverted to the alternate the vacuum failure light on the instrument panel illuminated. That was not a good thing! That was precisely not the time that I wanted to have deal with a vacuum failure. The student did a good job of partial panel flying, but after several minutes he started to get vertigo and he began to lose it. At that point, I took the airplane back and was flying "cross panel" partial panel. The winds started to pick up and the ride went from occasional light chop to light to moderate turbulence. The whiskey compass was all but unusable. At that point, I declared an emergency. What had started out a routine training flight with a couple of easily handled "issues" had turned into something altogether different.

As we weighed our options, it became apparent that the weather was going to get worse before it got better and we didn't have much more than the legally required fuel - waiting out the squall line in a holding pattern wasn't an option, besides we had started to pick up a bit more ice. I decided that it would be better to get on the ground as soon as possible - the weather was at minimums for the ILS. I tried flying the first approach, but with the turbulence and the whiskey compass dancing around I couldn't keep on a heading that allowed me to track the localizer. Basically all I had was the electric turn coordinator. I missed that approach and went around for another attempt. This time we had approach vector us to the inner marker and I descended on the glideslope. Just as I was getting ready to go around the runway lights came into view and we were able to land.

That was probably the closest that I ever came to dieing in an airplane. It was also the last time that I ever flew actual IFR in a single-engine airplane. There was a time when I would fly any well maintained, legally equipped single-engine airplane about anywhere and anytime (within reason). For me, those days are gone forever. As far as single-engine IFR goes, it never used to bother me at all. Now I would never even consider it unless I had a VFR ceiling underneath me the whole time.

LS

 

[VNugget]

Not to hijack the thread, but I have to disagree. When the weather is down to mins, undefined ceilings and rvr's at 1800, you do not need three blazing bright green lights. You might be straining to see outside just enough to keep going past the DA (with the appropriate lights in sight, of course) to get the plane on the ground.

I think it's hilarious that they set up the 3-green dimmer system to protect your night vision from these lights down by your knees (which is then this huge training issue for people) but there's the undimmed yellow transit light right in your face on the glareshield.

 

[unreal]

I don't know if this counts as a mistake or just plain lack of experience. Recently my student and I were doing touch-and-goes in fairly gusty conditions. She hadn't done much pattern work lately (she's an instrument student), but we were out getting her some practice anyway.

At one point during one of the landings she flared about 10 feet too high, which caused us to hit the ground and bounce right back up in the air during a wind gust. I called for a go-around, and she dutifully added power and started going through the go-around procedure. Well, I failed to remember for a quick second that the go-around procedure calls for flaps 20 once positive rate is acheived at Vx. Of course during this period, she reached over to my side, puts her hand on the flap lever, and announced that she was retracting the flaps.

Well, my students can be a bit thick headed at times, and what she didn't realize is that we were, in fact, not climbing. In fact, we were at about 45 KIAS in ground effect. To make matters worse, when she reached for the flap handle she looked away from the runway. Now we're at 45 KIAS, in ground effect, and drifting towards the side of the runway.

I immediately grabbed the flap handle to keep it down and called for my controls. I got the airplane back under control and we made a nice positive climb out of ground effect and retracted the flaps when safe.

While many of you might think it was the student's error (and it was), I also see myself in error. She caught me off guard when she reached for the flaps, which shouldn't have happened. Since then, I've learned the guard the controls much more aggressively to prevent something like this from happening again.

 

[acaTerry]

I made a mistake once... I thought that I had made a mistake. I was wrong.

'Sled

Crook. That's my line.

 

[PURPLEHAZE21]

Mattaxelrod,

It was a joke.........shot an ILS inverted to a landing...Oh yeah, I've also done the backcourse backwards....or was it right with the frontcourse ?

 

[Princedietrich]

About 6 years ago I was a CFI at LUK, and one of my students was this little 17 year old twerp that was getting lessons because his daddy wanted to live vicariously through his kid. Anyways, this kid was bitten by the flying bug eventually but didn't have enough brain power to go through with a career path intelligently (he told me one day that he was going to drop out of high school, commit himself full time to flight training, and then get a GED later). He'd been signed off for solo by another instructor at my school and I'd picked him up later to finish his private cert.

He was scheduled to fly a night cross country with me one evening, and about 4pm or so there was a huge evil looking thunderstorm moving towards LUK. The sky had that nasty greenish tint to it, the kind you see before the mother of all tornadoes comes through and bulldozes your town into toothpicks. I called the contact number for him and got the answering machine, so I left him a message saying that the flight wasn't going to happen that night due to very poor weather conditions and that he should call to reschedule. He was my last student that day, so I decided to call it a night.

In the parking lot on the way to my car, who should I run into but this student. He said in his usual overly-excited tone 'are we going up?" I replied in the resoundingly negative, and he asked why in a very whiney annoyed tone. I pointed at the massive thunderstorm that was 20 minutes away and said "THAT'S why." He then asked if he could go up solo instead, and my reply was "I would advise very strongly against it." He just nodded at me and wandered inside the building, and I got in my car and went home.

About three weeks later I get called into the boss' office and was informed about an inquiry from the tower about an incident with one of my students. THIS student. See, after I'd left and after I'd told him it wouldn't be a good idea to go up solo that night, he went anyway. Not only did he fly solo during what was officially night time WITHOUT a night solo endorsement, not only did he fly during a TORNADO WATCH, and not only did he cut off a Falcon 20 on short final, but he topped it all off by landing on the wrong runway at LUK without a clearance. This was the first I'd heard of any of this, and my expression of suprise seemed to convince the boss that I really did have no idea about these events. I'd flown with this kid twice since this incident, and he never told me about it. I called the control tower to get the details from the controller who was on duty at the time, and after doing several mea culpas I assured him that I did not endorse this behavior and assured him that the student in question was going to get my size 13 shoe planted firmly up his backside.

The kid was scheduled to come in that evening for another night cross country with me, and when he arrived I was sitting at the front desk with my hands in a Mr Burns pose and a very annoyed look on my face. He said, in his usual tone, "are we going up?" I replied that we weren't going anywhere until he explained to me why he'd gotten in severe trouble with the control tower and didn't bother to tell me, and until he explained why he blatantly disregarded my advice not to fly that night. He got a deer-in-the-headlights look and just stared at me, because obviously there was no good explanation other than being a total idiot. I asked him to hand me his logbook, which he did, and I quickly turned to his solo endorsement and signed it off as being invalid (not sure if it was an FAA legal thing to do, but at least I felt confident that it got the point across). I then told him to get his butt out of my office and never come back.

Two days later, guess who's voice I hear over the radio of a trainer plane at the school down the street. And yes, he was solo.

Anyway, the moral of the story and the bonehead mistake that I made as CFI was not to be very specificly clear that "No, you are NOT flying solo tonight. Go home." By leaving it somewhat open-ended by "advising stongly against it," it allowed him an option to do something stupid. Now, who is to say that he wouldn't have gone up anyway if I had been clear and direct? We'll never know.

 

[Joshrk22]

About 6 years ago I was a CFI at LUK, and one of my students was this little 17 year old twerp that was getting lessons because his daddy wanted to live vicariously through his kid. Anyways, this kid was bitten by the flying bug eventually but didn't have enough brain power to go through with a career path intelligently (he told me one day that he was going to drop out of high school, commit himself full time to flight training, and then get a GED later). He'd been signed off for solo by another instructor at my school and I'd picked him up later to finish his private cert.

He was scheduled to fly a night cross country with me one evening, and about 4pm or so there was a huge evil looking thunderstorm moving towards LUK. The sky had that nasty greenish tint to it, the kind you see before the mother of all tornadoes comes through and bulldozes your town into toothpicks. I called the contact number for him and got the answering machine, so I left him a message saying that the flight wasn't going to happen that night due to very poor weather conditions and that he should call to reschedule. He was my last student that day, so I decided to call it a night.

In the parking lot on the way to my car, who should I run into but this student. He said in his usual overly-excited tone 'are we going up?" I replied in the resoundingly negative, and he asked why in a very whiney annoyed tone. I pointed at the massive thunderstorm that was 20 minutes away and said "THAT'S why." He then asked if he could go up solo instead, and my reply was "I would advise very strongly against it." He just nodded at me and wandered inside the building, and I got in my car and went home.

About three weeks later I get called into the boss' office and was informed about an inquiry from the tower about an incident with one of my students. THIS student. See, after I'd left and after I'd told him it wouldn't be a good idea to go up solo that night, he went anyway. Not only did he fly solo during what was officially night time WITHOUT a night solo endorsement, not only did he fly during a TORNADO WATCH, and not only did he cut off a Falcon 20 on short final, but he topped it all off by landing on the wrong runway at LUK without a clearance. This was the first I'd heard of any of this, and my expression of suprise seemed to convince the boss that I really did have no idea about these events. I'd flown with this kid twice since this incident, and he never told me about it. I called the control tower to get the details from the controller who was on duty at the time, and after doing several mea culpas I assured him that I did not endorse this behavior and assured him that the student in question was going to get my size 13 shoe planted firmly up his backside.

The kid was scheduled to come in that evening for another night cross country with me, and when he arrived I was sitting at the front desk with my hands in a Mr Burns pose and a very annoyed look on my face. He said, in his usual tone, "are we going up?" I replied that we weren't going anywhere until he explained to me why he'd gotten in severe trouble with the control tower and didn't bother to tell me, and until he explained why he blatantly disregarded my advice not to fly that night. He got a deer-in-the-headlights look and just stared at me, because obviously there was no good explanation other than being a total idiot. I asked him to hand me his logbook, which he did, and I quickly turned to his solo endorsement and signed it off as being invalid (not sure if it was an FAA legal thing to do, but at least I felt confident that it got the point across). I then told him to get his butt out of my office and never come back.

Two days later, guess who's voice I hear over the radio of a trainer plane at the school down the street. And yes, he was solo.

Anyway, the moral of the story and the bonehead mistake that I made as CFI was not to be very specificly clear that "No, you are NOT flying solo tonight. Go home." By leaving it somewhat open-ended by "advising stongly against it," it allowed him an option to do something stupid. Now, who is to say that he wouldn't have gone up anyway if I had been clear and direct? We'll never know.

Hahaha, the story was pretty funny, but the kid was a total idiot... some people...

 

[indefinitehold]

Dont get mad in the cockpit.

Many moons ago in airspace far far away......

I was giving a rental check out to a Multi rated commercial instrument pilot. As I recall, I sqweezed the check out in after the end of the day. Hey its going to be a no brainer! Wrong. As it turned out, the pilot had not flown for some time. I was aware of this fact at the time. However I decided to disregard this fact. Hey, he is a multi comm, he can handle it, I said to myself. As many of us know its not quite like getting back on the bike after a fall. It takes many hours in your log book before the efects of not flying for long periods of time don't show up in your actual performance. He was low time.

Our first take off resulted in drifting off the runway and I had to take control of the aircraft. I didnt say much. We were in the pattern. He landed and we once again started heading left off the runway. "WHATS THE MATTER WITH YOU? YOUR A COMMERCIAL PILOT FOR GOD SAKES!" I realised that he put no input or effort for the cross wind condition at the time. It was a windy day. We took off again and he did the same thing. I talked him thru the landing. wasn't too bad. On our next circuit, the renter pilot failed to put the aileron into the wind. I grabbed the yoke and said "PUT IT IN AND HOLD IT IN!" Now at this point he is rattled, bothered by his poor performance and the big mean flight Instructor in the right seat. I was actually ticked off. Bad mistake for an Instructor. So... as we took off again, we didn't drift off the left side of the runway as we did in the previous take offs.

Can you guess what happened next?

We started to go right, and the wing of the Piper Warrior dipped down, so low that there was grass on the tip after landing.I was freeked out. I stuggled with the aircraft. We were heading into the tree line, I was fighting to go left, he was fighting to keep in the control input. My fault, where was the CRM, " MYCONTROLS " was never said by me. We struggled up a hundred feet or two before I said my controls. Now I was rattled.

Lesson to be learned, you must always be in the proper frame of mind when instructing. never assume, judge for yourself based on the actuall performance of the pilot not the certificates and ratings they have.

another case in point regarding assumptions based on rating and certificates. anyone ever give a old airline pilot a check out in a 172. Some of them like to slam the nose down into the ground after the mains hit. Its what they do for a living, Day in Day out.

I wonder if the rotor heads try to hover instaed of flairing, Ha

 

[JediNein]

I wonder if the rotor heads try to hover instaed of flairing, Ha

The rotor heads seem to catch on more quickly when us fixed wing types compare a landing to an autorotation. Not my stupidest move ever, but I did once let a PP-Heli demonstrate a steep turn in a fixed without having my hands on the controls. We were past 60 degrees before I got it stopped.

 

[Princedietrich]

:beer: That sounds like a simple freight dawg style LOC intercept.

 

[twighead]

Your most boneheaded mistake as a CFI . . .

was ever becoming a CFI