A New Homebuilt And Rusty Pilots

摘要

Not all flight reviews are equal, and rusty pilots are not at all uncommon, but I recently faced a scenario that gave me pause. It read like the beginning of an NTSB report with a stack of extremely novel circumstances. My choice was either be one of the contributing factors to an accident or one of the mitigations. My goal was the latter.I recently had the opportunity to provide a flight review for two pilots-a father and son-who had taken a roughly five-year break from flying. During that time, they built a new plane. It was now ready for its maiden flight, but they, as pilots, were not.Knowing this, I focused my side of the flight review on studying the risks of test flights, while the flight reviewees made sure they were back up to snuff on general aviation basics.They expressed their nervousness, which was understandable. Who wants to show their flight skills to a critic when those skills are at low proficiency? It is human nature to want to show your best side, but a rusty pilot flight review will show the naked truth. I explained there is nothing wrong with being out of practice, and a flight review is not a test, but an opportunity to learn. Their anxiety acknowledged, we moved on to the needed practice.