Good, maybe they'll chime in
Leslie's in San Diego this week busy with work. Maybe I'll do.
Our flight training started with my getting her an intro flight for her birthday, after she turned down a chance to jump out of what was once a perfectly good airplane. I followed along a little on her ground school, learning the phonetic alphabet, the pattern legs, and a few other things. I also took a single intro flight myself, not too long after she decided that she really liked it (sometime during her intro flight!)
She had a number of instructors as they cycled off to the airlines, and then she had to postpone for a couple of years because she started working out of town. Once she came back into town, she knew it would be a bit of a restart. That's where the "training together" part starts. I work for a community college, and one of the benefits at the time was free classes for employees and a minimal charge for spouses. So she signed up for a ground class as a refresher, and I figured that since it was free and I could share her books, I'd do it too.
They suggested that learning the book portion would be easier if we were learning the in airplane portion simultaneously. So Leslie and I went around to local airports, seeing what was available for flight training. We eventually walked into the flight school at Clow Airport, liked the instructor who happened to be riding the couch when we walked in, and made his day. By the time we were done, Brian was known affectionately as the "Prellwitz Flight *****".
As training progressed, we would occasionally have one of us sit in the back as the other flew. Given W&B constraints, this was probably less frequent for us than with other couples. We did find it helpful, though we needed to take care that the person in back was an
observer rather than an active participant.
We even worked out our long cross countries so that we could meet up
en route. She flew the clockwise route (10NM short of a commercial cross country, because many of her planned cross country flights were weathered out), and I flew a somewhat shorter clockwise route. We met up briefly in Litchfield, IL.
As we reached completion of our certificates, it was made clear to Brian that, since Leslie started her training before I did, she would likewise complete the training before me. Yes, there was an element of competition to it, and that has continued on throughout our flying experiences. We flipped a coin to determine who would get their instrument ticket first.
During our training, we were able to do a number of dinner or even overnight trips with both of us and the instructor. These were generally done in the latter stages of our training, and were done in more complex aircraft (Cessna 182, 310) and for fun purposes, e.g. a weekend at Mackinac Island or dinner at LakeLawn Resort. It helps keep the interest of both parties and shows the benefits of having a pilot certificate (and sometimes the desirability of having an instrument ticket.)
Some practical thoughts:
- Teach CRM from the get-go. They're frequently gong to be flying together, and this is somewhere that we can learn from the airlines. The Kings had an article or video on that a while back, where they dealt with some of those issues. They made a point that whenever the PNF (Pilot Not Flying) had a suggestion/criticism/comment of the pilot flying, they would preface it with the word "Captain" to acknowledge that the other was the PIC.
- Encourage study together, and have them teach one another. The best way to learn something is to teach it yourself, and as long as there's a qualified instructor monitoring what they're communicating, this is effective.
Others who may have input on this:
Diana & Tom Richards
Sharon & Greg Bockelman
Martha & John King
Diane and Rod Machado
Peggy and Don?
(After reading Aunt Peggy's response, I should note that Leslie and I had been married over 15 years when she started lessons.)
