I'd say someone got signed off to solo a bit early...

Country Flier

Country Flier

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This came across my Youtube feed this morning. She did good (and ATC was great), but she obviously wasn't ready to solo.

 
I felt that very same way on my first solo and I suspect many others did too. It felt like a really bad idea as soon as I leveled off and had time to realize nobody was sitting next to me to catch my mistakes anymore The difference is that there wasn’t a tower there to hear it or the internet to broadcast it. I had to push those thoughts out and just try to focus on rote memorization from training. I hope she keeps at it after this as it gets a lot easier after getting through the nerves of that first flight
 
Well, in the end she landed the plane.

Kudos to the tower and instructor for talking her through that situation.

The same things happens with motorcycles and race cars. Until you have enough experience to gain the confidence to trust your abilities, self-doubt can override proper decision-making.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Rare but it happens.
Click to expand...
That same scenario happened at my home field. A young female student on her first solo panicked at landing and had to be talked down. She also made it down safely. Great team effort!
 
I had a young college student and I promise you we had double checked the winds and everything, but on his second pattern the winds shifted something weird and it took me three tries to talk him down safely. I still think he was ready, as evidenced by his survival, but there's only so much you can do with a student even in 10-20 hours. Most of the time they really are ready, but personality stuff can come out on solo.
 
I don't have experience as a flight instructor, but I have had similar experience instructing others who clearly had the ability but lacked confidence in their ability. Sometimes, you just have to put them in the position where they have to rely on their own abilities for them to figure out that yeah, really, they can do it on their own.

In my situation though, if the student didn't succeed, they were only going to figuratively crash and burn, not literally. That's rather a significant difference.

I respect--and do not envy--the CFIs who have to make that "is (s)he ready?" judgment call.
 
I was euphoric on my first solo takeoff and apprehensive for my first solo landing.

That first landing was terrible, to the point that I was surprised when my instructor let me continue, but I figured out what I was doing wrong, and the second landing was much better. The third landing was textbook.
 
I felt completely comfortable on my first solo flying wise (yes, I remember it back in 1984).
As an instructor my students also seemed comfortable.

Perhaps my standards are too high.
 
Kritchlow said:
I felt completely comfortable on my first solo flying wise (yes, I remember it back in 1984).
As an instructor my students also seemed comfortable.

Perhaps my standards are too high.
Click to expand...
If they were too high you would never let a student go. I would say that they were just right.
 
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Kritchlow said:
I felt completely comfortable on my first solo flying wise (yes, I remember it back in 1984).
As an instructor my students also seemed comfortable.

Perhaps my standards are too high.
Click to expand...
I was comfortable on mine too, but I was young, dumb, and fearless...
 
Wow. I think the controller was awesome. Really good job. I can't fault the instructor for signing off on the solo without more info. Different people react differently to new things. But from my listen to the discussion on final, the instructor had the pilot set 1800 RPM right after the controller tell her to climb because she was below the tree line on final. If the instructor didn't have visual and didn't know either the altitude or airspeed, that doesn't sound like a great plan. The student saying the plane was shaking didn't sound like a good thing. Happy she got it on the ground and hope she got back up after some practice.

My first solo? After clearing the trees at the end of the final, on a pretty nice takeoff, I remember a very happy feeling, followed immediately by the thought "OK, now you have to land this f*&*ng thing". Even though I'd done that more than a hundred times before, the first time solo still was about 2 seconds of stress. I used my perfect two step landing checklist "1 - pull carb heat. 2 - land the f&*& airplane." and all was good. My inner voice swears a lot.

I've related this before, but a long time instructor friend of mine said that one type of students that he worries about most are the ones that always fly perfect approaches. That he doesn't know what they're going to do when things don't go right. In theory, they fix it early or go around. If this student bounced a landing or something on solo, and had never done that before, I can see how it could scare or panic them. I was lucky - I screwed up so many approaches and bounced so many landings that everyone knew I'd be completely comfortable with them on solo. My innate lack of skill proved to be an excellent advantage. (Confirmed by the instructor friend, who when I asked "so you're not worried about me, then" replied "no, not a bit.")
 
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