Its been a while since my last post. But now we have a bunch of posts all lined up in a row. In this post I'm going to talk about what I would do with a private pilot student who just isn't able to get landing the airplane down pat. The scenario is this: I have a student one lesson before the first stage check, lesson 8 I believe, and he/she just isn't getting it.
Perhaps the first thing I will do is talk to the student. Its really important to communicate with the student and let them know what the standards are for passing the first stage check. I will then go through the many ways of practice. Landings are tricky because even if you were to practice them for an hour straight, the actual time spent on final approach, a round-out, flare and touchdown is very small. It would also be beneficial to recognize what part of the landing is struggling, and then focus on it. If the round-out needs help, we'll try doing low approaches, and then going around. If the student becomes frustrated or tired, it is obviously time to stop practicing. I would also have another instructor fly with the student to see if he/she could assist the student.
If these struggles are not fixed, and there have been multiple review flights with no noticeable progress, I would inform my supervisor. At this point I would talk to the student. If he/she is very determined to continue, I would allow him/her to do so. However, I would explain that flying is very expensive, and I wouldn't want the student to be wasting money. I'm not sure I could assign a certain amount of time as a limit of when I wouldn't teach a student, because I think it changes for everyone. However, if there were more than 3 review flights or around 8 hrs of flight time with no improvement, I would definitely sit down with the student and discuss his/her future in aviation.
