What's the Problem??

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rt4388

Pre-takeoff checklist
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rt4388
So I had a student last night completely forget to put his gear down on an approach. Did not do flow, checklist, GUMPS, final check, or notice the gear warning horn. What makes it worse is that I had a student on a checkride today do the same thing... so he obviously busted. When you miss a total of 5 checks/warnings, I feel like its an effort and focus thing. What do y'all think? I've had the occasional instance where a student forgets, but nothing close to two in 24 hours and one on a checkride. Know of a way to fix this? The students are foreign so there is a language barrier, but that would only come into play if they were getting lots of instructions from approach/tower. I'm just trying to figure out what I can do to help outside of just motivation.
 
Are they getting behind the airplane? Getting too focused on something else, like flying the pattern or traffic or something? Any other distractions?

Is it a slip, or a mistake?
 
Get an interpreter and sit down and have a hart to hart talk...:rolleyes: Just saying if language is a problem start there..:)
 
Hard to tell without being there, but this is usually the result of poor SOPs, in which flows and checklist are not habitual. That means "when" the checks are done or briefed as well as the act of doing them.
 
Two in the same day is just coincidence. The checkride was likely a bad case of nervousness. The other one could have any number of different causes. The $64,000 question is how do you fix it?
 
My instructor once told the student on an approach that if she'd advance the throttle a little bit that beeping would stop.

Had a neighbor call last night. She'd geared up on the runway in front of my house. Fortunately, it's not so big fo a deal in the SeaRay. The biggest problem was how to jack it up enough to lower the gear to move it off.
 
IMHO, flow and GUMPS check need to be ingrained habits, so if students are missing them it's because the habit was not ingrained to the point where it's automatic. Remember that when we're stressed/tired/distracted, we fall back on whatever instinct is automatic, and reprogramming instinct is tough. Those get changed mostly through careful repetition, emphasizing the new skill. And then you repeat it again. And then you repeat it again. And after about 5 billion repetitions, maybe you've got it locked in.

Step 1: find a way to practice just this skill. Sitting in the plane with the power off and repeating procedures is a good way to do that. (Think of a batting cage. You repeat one skill over and over and over without doing anything else. It's highly effective instruction.)

Step 2: Go practice in the air and practice enough until the normal procedures are automatic. Distract the hell out of them so they get practice focusing their brains on the important tasks (this is a cognitive skill that must be practiced too.) If they miss, keep doing it again.

Step 3: Find a way to create a negative emotional response if they screw up. Scream bloody murder before the go around. Ground them for a week. Whatever works for that student. This isn't for every student, but some students *really* need this kind of input to reprogram an instinct.
 
Let them belly one in, then they'll never forget again. :confused:

Just kidding. I don't know what's the best way to fix something like this other than overemphasizing the importance of some things.
3 IN THE GREEN - 3 IN THE GREEN - 3 IN THE GREEN - 3 IN THE GREEN - 3 IN THE GREEN
 
flyingron said:
Had a neighbor call last night. She'd geared up on the runway in front of my house. Fortunately, it's not so big fo a deal in the SeaRay. The biggest problem was how to jack it up enough to lower the gear to move it off.
Click to expand...

Did she have a mechanical or just forget to lower it? Did the hull survive landing on the grass ok?
 
You said they were foreign students...what area of the world? It matters. I think the FAA needs to change the FOI section to include culture. I just retired from flying all over the world and I trained middle eastern students before airline flying. The "authority" that you have as an instructor is perceived totally different than here. You are the expert and everyone has a desire to impress the expert and to that end I found that several would fly to impress me rather than thinking of what they were doing or supposed to be doing. Language barriers are extremely tough to get around. Go to Asia and just simply read the T shirts of the kids over there. It is incredibly mind blowing of how they put our words together...and funny. I found that the Asian culture and saving face is so incredibly important to them that they will fly into the ground rather than the Captain lose face. This is partly why, if you fly on an Asian carrier you will hear a US, British, Aussie or KIWI voice from the cockpit. We will fight to keep the airplane flying all the way to the crash...many of them will only apply what is rote procedures. Now, MANY MANY of Asian and ME pilots are excellent but they tend to be standouts in any field.
The Asian's are very good at rote memory and spewing out procedures word for word but not understanding the why behind the procedure. We had a Japanese lady at my airline that was synonymous for this. The normal training was 7 sim sessions of four hours each. She was given 57 sessions before passing the F/O check on a 727 and then the line check pilot failed her...multiple times. She did "ok" if she could fly exactly what she expected...go to the outer marker and fly the ILS (forget non precision approaches) but all you had to do to really mess her up (and I found this to be true with a lot of Asians) just say "There is the airport, fly a visual". Couldn't do it under any circumstance. She finally agreed, with the company and the union agreeing to this, to permanently be an engineer until they grounded that fleet and then she retired. Why did the company go so far to protect her? Her Uncle was the head of the Department in Japan that allocated landing slots for foreign carriers...Ta Da!

Now, I have flown with Americans that cannot do much better so this is not meant to foreign pilot bashing but just what I have experienced over 40 years flying. My one student that ignored the gear warning was a farm boy from Oklahoma that NEVER did it again. He was more afraid of his Daddy and him finding out then me. Downwind, Base and then final the horn was beeping in his Daddy's Mooney. I waited until about 200 feet and asked him what that beeping sound was....he melted and performed a great go around and started beating himself up...he was more concerned that his Dad would find out and I assured him that I was teaching him and not his Dad. It was our secret but he had the gear down on every approach after that.
 
Had a student in a Mooney 201, stepping up from a 152. We flew many hour together, and he was getting a pretty good handle on the airplane. We went through GUMPS, all the systems and emergency extension procedures, limiting air speeds, etc,. I told him his “final” test to check out was to complete a 3-way round robin with airports very close to one another, but I expected him to fly as fast as the airplane will go. Off we went from HWD to SQL to PAO, and things were going well - until returning to HWD. Long, straight in approach and plenty of radio work and traffic left my student task-saturated - he just forgot to extend the gear, and I gave him all the rope for the hanging. He was having a devil of a time getting the airplane slow, and when he extended flaps there was that odd beeping horn. I kept encouraging him to to get the speed right for the approach, even on a quarter mile final we were still at 100kts. I let him get to about 5ft above the runway before I told him the gear wasn’t down. His eyes were as big as saucers and we went around. Poor guy was crestfallen. During the post briefing I explained that MOST of the time, a slippery airplane just won’t slow down without the gear extended, and, if he always used the gear to help slow the aircraft, he’d be much less likely to forget it. Then - again - carefully explained what the nice Mooney people installed to remind the pilot the gear hasn’t been extended. Then I explained the real gotcha happens when something out of the ordinary develops: tower changes runway at the last minute while you’re looking for traffic, things like that.
 
rt4388 said:
So I had a student last night completely forget to put his gear down on an approach. Did not do flow, checklist, GUMPS, final check, or notice the gear warning horn. What makes it worse is that I had a student on a checkride today do the same thing... so he obviously busted. When you miss a total of 5 checks/warnings, I feel like its an effort and focus thing. What do y'all think? I've had the occasional instance where a student forgets, but nothing close to two in 24 hours and one on a checkride. Know of a way to fix this? The students are foreign so there is a language barrier, but that would only come into play if they were getting lots of instructions from approach/tower. I'm just trying to figure out what I can do to help outside of just motivation.
Click to expand...

As a flight instructor who has experiance teaching foreign pilots, you are earning your pay.

I am never 100% certain the message is received and throughly understood. Translation is an added step in the process that takes foreign students extra time to process in the aircraft - even when you think they have great English skills.

Translation is a high priority task by many foriegn students in which they become fixated and it can also be a source of anxiety when performing tests. Most these folks are mentally working their tale off.

You might consider using what I call task lists to reduce mental workload. Provide an exact description of the task, including decisions that must be made, and have the student translate to their language for their use.
 
Eric Gleason said:
Step 3: Find a way to create a negative emotional response if they screw up. Scream bloody murder before the go around. Ground them for a week. Whatever works for that student. This isn't for every student, but some students *really* need this kind of input to reprogram an instinct.
Click to expand...

I have found fear to be a great motivator for a lot of people. It was fear that has taught me to never forget the gear. My instructor exploded into a gear not down, go around mode. It was down, but I did not make the 3rd gear down check as we were taught as SOP, and he scared the snot out of me when he went into the exploding gear not down style of getting a point across.

Believe me, I have made that 3rd gear down check every time in the last 24 years.
 
Zeldman said:
I have found fear to be a great motivator for a lot of people. It was fear that has taught me to never forget the gear. My instructor exploded into a gear not down, go around mode. It was down, but I did not make the 3rd gear down check as we were taught as SOP, and he scared the snot out of me when he went into the exploding gear not down style of getting a point across.

Believe me, I have made that 3rd gear down check every time in the last 24 years.
Click to expand...

It may not be fear that's the right response to create, you have to feel out each student and how they respond to things. Some people react too strongly to fear, so scaring them isn't a good teaching tool. Some people get over their fear quickly, so for them it can be a great tool.

Some students will respond immediately to "I'm really disappointed in you right now."

You gotta feel out each one and see what motivates them, how they respond emotionally to success and failure, how fragile they seem, how self-motivated they are to overcome obstacles...
 
Last edited:
j1b3h0 said:
During the post briefing I explained that MOST of the time, a slippery airplane just won’t slow down without the gear extended, and, if he always used the gear to help slow the aircraft, he’d be much less likely to forget it.
Click to expand...
This. I did my instrument and commercial in an old C model with the Johnson bar gear. In my mind, the primary purpose of picking up that bar was to extend the speed brakes and slow the airplane down for landing. The fact that these particular speed brakes had little wheels on them which would also make the airplane much easier to roll into the hangar was a secondary benefit. To me the primary function was speed control no different than how putting flaps out make the plane fly slower. When thought of that way, it seems darn near impossible to forget the gear. But of course darn near impossible isn't the same thing as impossible. ;)
 
Yahbut... there's another kind of fear that can help to remind you to put that lever down: the fear that the gear won't come down or lock down. Having had the issue a few years ago where the gear would come down but not lock (no green), requiring me to cycle the gear an additional time, I can say that this fear is my friend: approaching an airport, the little voice in my head that wonders if this will be the time that the gear doesn't come down is a reminder that I use to my advantage. In addition, my SOP is to put the gear down at the FAF or GS intercept when flying an instrument approach, or when reaching pattern altitude if flying the pattern. I've found that GUMPS is less important than having that SOP - though I always back myself up with a GUMPS check on final.
 
Why are you putting ink in a log book of someone who you have trouble communicating with?
Are you actually going to recommend him for a checkride with his current linguistic issues?


I know the money and hours and nice, but you need to kick this student and tell him to come back after he has a proper understanding on the language his cert says he should be fluent in.

 
azure said:
Yahbut... there's another kind of fear that can help to remind you to put that lever down: the fear that the gear won't come down or lock down. Having had the issue a few years ago where the gear would come down but not lock (no green), requiring me to cycle the gear an additional time, I can say that this fear is my friend: approaching an airport, the little voice in my head that wonders if this will be the time that the gear doesn't come down is a reminder that I use to my advantage. In addition, my SOP is to put the gear down at the FAF or GS intercept when flying an instrument approach, or when reaching pattern altitude if flying the pattern. I've found that GUMPS is less important than having that SOP - though I always back myself up with a GUMPS check on final.
Click to expand...

I had the same issue once, and my (irrational) fear is that if the gear is really down and locked even with all three green lights.
 
Eric Gleason said:
It may not be fear that's the right response to create, you have to feel out each student and how they respond to things. Some people react too strongly to fear, so scaring them isn't a good teaching tool. Some people get over their fear quickly, so for them it can be a great tool.

Some students will respond immediately to "I'm really disappointed in you right now."

You gotta feel out each one and see what motivates them, how they respond emotionally to success and failure, how fragile they seem, how self-motivated they are to overcome obstacles...
Click to expand...

You are correct. When I was instructing I did not need to do that with each student. Usually when I put the fear factor in it was to bring in a point that this is serious, this is leading to a bad habit and you have to correct whatever was needing to be changed. Like me, it only took once with each student to correct what I was wanting them to correct. None of the female students ever cried. Nor any males.

Eric Gleason said:
"I'm really disappointed in you right now."
Click to expand...

Fortunately I was an instructor before the millennium change. I would have invited any student that said that to me to look really hard inside and decide if flying is really for them. Flying is not for the faint hearted and coddled. If what I do to try to teach them to not kill themselves and possibly others is disappointing to them then they would not be the student for me.

But again, that is correct; all students are different and need to be evaluated as to which teaching style will work best for that student.
 
How about teaching them to confirm gear down verbally three times.

Bob
 
azure said:
there's another kind of fear that can help to remind you to put that lever down: the fear that the gear won't come down or lock down.
Click to expand...

I have landed many times in Alaska with one green light not illuminated. Not knowing it that leg is going to stay down or not when landing really gave me some pucker factor.

And it wasn't bad maintenance, it was the nature of the beast of flying in and out of muddy gravel strips. Just a very tiny piece of mud in the wrong place can change the whole outlook of the flight. I usually sprayed the gear down after each flight if I could.
 
A drill sergeant approach will weed out the weak and brainwash the strong (depending on your definition of weak and strong).

Not a soft approach, but a lifesaving one for all.

But I ain’t no CFI.
 
Zeldman said:
Fortunately I was an instructor before the millennium change. I would have invited any student that said that to me to look really hard inside and decide if flying is really for them. Flying is not for the faint hearted and coddled. If what I do to try to teach them to not kill themselves and possibly others is disappointing to them then they would not be the student for me.
Click to expand...

I think you read it backwards :) The instructors explains to the under-performing student that they're disappointed. It's a time-tested technique that has worked for many generations of teachers. Has nothing to do with millennial-ism. Has everything to do with understanding which students want to earn praise from the teacher and using that to motivate them when they fail badly.
 
Eric Gleason said:
I think you read it backwards :) The instructors explains to the under-performing student that they're disappointed. It's a time-tested technique that has worked for many generations of teachers. Has nothing to do with millennial-ism. Has everything to do with understanding which students want to earn praise from the teacher and using that to motivate them when they fail badly.
Click to expand...

Ahhh..... gotcha now, I did read backwards.....

As you know, 5 out of 4 pilots are dyslexic.....

And I did use the ''disappointed in this flight" debrief at certain times, usually as the student was getting close to checkride time. On the last debrief before the checkride I would give the student the I am wasting my time here, you no longer need me speech.
 
Granted most of my complex time has been in one type, but I find it very difficult to get into the white arc without the drag of the gear. Not that it can't be done, but not without being at complete idle and no descent rate whatsoever. The Comanche are not so good at the slow down and go down at the same time thing. Not impossible to manage, but I'm usually looking forward to gear speed and getting the plane slowed down.
 
Maybe some more emphasis on target power settings would help...make improper power settings something to go around for unless the student can explain why it's appropriate this time, when it's never been appropriate before.
 
SkyDog58 said:
Did she have a mechanical or just forget to lower it? Did the hull survive landing on the grass ok?
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Just grass stains. Forgot to lower it. Too many water landings. As I said, biggest issue was lifting the fuselage so you could rotate the gear down.
 
flyingron said:
Just grass stains. Forgot to lower it. Too many water landings. As I said, biggest issue was lifting the fuselage so you could rotate the gear down.
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I bet it can definitely happen after a bunch of gear up water landings. But better gear up on grass than gear down on the water.
 
SkyDog58 said:
I bet it can definitely happen after a bunch of gear up water landings. But better gear up on grass than gear down on the water.
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That was what I told her. The grass here was REALLY wet after days of rain. Our runway doesn't really get soft but it gets real slick with that much water.
 
flyingron said:
That was what I told her. The grass here was REALLY wet after days of rain. Our runway doesn't really get soft but it gets real slick with that much water.
Click to expand...

That's how some folks get their float planes to a hangar for maintenance or winter storage. Lots of videos out there about this.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I knew an instructor who let a guy get down right over the numbers before he said anything about the gear not being down in a 182RG.
Student ignored his comment because he was focused.
That ex-instructor sells shoes now.
 
rt4388 said:
Did not do flow, checklist, GUMPS, final check, or notice the gear warning horn.
Click to expand...
that's kind of scary and would really bother me too! How does he/she handle emergencies? Sounds kind of like tunnel vision / fixation on the landing and just zoned everything else out

my IR CFI was very strict about forcing me to do the whole PFGUMPs thing 3 miles before the FAF (each. and. every. time). In all my PPL training and all the CFIs I did reviews with, etc., no one was ever that disciplined until IR. Now I always do it

Power
Flaps
Gas on correct tank
Undercarriage down and welded
Mixture rich
Pump on
Switches correct (lights, etc.)
 
Maybe not suited for operating aircraft? As in, WTF are you doing here? Go be a management consultant or a telephone sanitizer (Apologies to Doug Adams)
 
Many moons ago I was flying in a complex to another airport to take a checkride for commercial and instrument. On base leg I was cut off by a Bo doing a base leg from the other direction and apparently he had forgotten where the mike transmit button was as I never heard anything from him. I went around remaining in the pattern, checked to be sure I was on the right freq after setting up my climb and retracting the gear. On my next approach turning base to final I couldn't get the plane to slow down. Things didn't seem right so power up, go around and see what's wrong. Reaching for the gear switch it was already in the up position! I left the pattern to settle down mentally and think things over cussing myself for a stupid mistake. Reentered the pattern made damn sure the feet were down landed and taxied to the ramp. Found out then the DPE had seen the whole event and was still talking to the Bo driver. During the oral he asked what I was thinking as I arrived. Told him what went through my mind and why I left the pattern. After the short checkride he told me I had passed it when I told him about the go around with gear in the wrong position. He knew my flight instructor and the training I had.
 
Ah yes, the bonanza drivers that think they own the sky. I chased one around the airport once after he cut me off on final.
 
Tantalum said:
that's kind of scary and would really bother me too! How does he/she handle emergencies? Sounds kind of like tunnel vision / fixation on the landing and just zoned everything else out

my IR CFI was very strict about forcing me to do the whole PFGUMPs thing 3 miles before the FAF (each. and. every. time). In all my PPL training and all the CFIs I did reviews with, etc., no one was ever that disciplined until IR. Now I always do it

Power
Flaps
Gas on correct tank
Undercarriage down and welded
Mixture rich
Pump on
Switches correct (lights, etc.)
Click to expand...
I like the "Power" and "Flaps" as part of procedure...although mnemonics go a bit far for me.
 
I've had Bonanza drivers do those sorts of things to me many times. Fortunately most of them also like to fly what I call 747 patterns with 8 mile finals so I've rarely had to go around because of it. ;)
 
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