Best Practices for Mentoring in Flight Instruction

Most pilot certificates are issued with advice that the hard-won document is only a “license to learn.” Newly certificated pilots are then dispatched into the real world to learn through their own experience. While there is ultimately no substitute for experience, too many pilots come to grief because the lessons of experience are harsh and sometimes fatal.

The tests of experience – given, as the saying goes, before rather than after the lesson – are especially challenging for two specific ...