RIGHT SEAT RULES NO. 4 - PREPARATION FOR FLIGHT

Instructors, you instruct with your mouth, not your hands and feet. And the only things you have in your toolbox are words.

- JIM DAVIS

IT'S YOUR JOB TO USE the right ones at the right time, and to be effective, the words must be not only correct, but also interesting and memorable.

Have a look at this heading. Now that's a really dull, boring title - but that's what it says in the syllabus. What it means is planning for a safe and comfortable flight. To achieve this you have to use a whole lot of the right words and numbers.

Some of the right words are on screens, some are on bits of paper, some are numbers, some are on keyboards, and some are spoken. I'm going to tell you a couple of stories about people who used the wrong words while flight planning and got very close to killing hundreds of passengers.

Of course, if you use the right words, you can transform the lives of your students and their families and friends and ultimately their own students, and then their students.

You can breed generations of great instructors and good safe pilots.

For your words to be right - they need three properties - they must be:

Interesting - if your words are not interesting you will lose your audience. You will see their eyes glaze over and they will squirm in their seats and fiddle with their phones.

Correct - your words must be correct otherwise you are lying to your students. Examiners call it 'accuracy of statements'. Many of us are afraid of these three wonderful words, I DON'T KNOW.

As an instructor, you will gain the pupil's respect if you say, 'I don't know - let's look it up.' You will also learn to love pupils who happily admit they don't know. The dangerous pupes are the ones who say, 'Yes, of course I know all that stuff' when they don't.

Memorable - if what you say is not memorable your pups will forget it in five minutes - then why bother saying it?