Pre-solo and Solo Flights in Aviation School

Video Transcript

"The first part of your flight training is essentially going to be with a flight instructor in the aircraft with you at all times. This is the pre-solo phase. You'd be coming out, checking the weather, planning what the lesson is going to entail and then you would be going out in the practice area. For this area, it would be just south of Johnson County, going up several thousand feet and just getting used to the controls of the aircraft. In this phase, the instructor would be demonstrating a particular maneuver, for example turns or a climb or something like that and then would turn the aircraft over to you. Of course the aircraft, all the training aircraft are equipped with dual sets of controls so you would have an identical set of controls in front of you and the instructor can take over control of the aircraft at any one time so there's no real concern there as far as the safety of that. But at the same time, it's just to get you comfortable with how does the airplane fly and getting used to brining the aircraft into the traffic pattern, doing take offs and landings. You do a lot of take offs and landings during the pre-solo phase of your flying. And at a point where your instructor has found that your skills to be up to the point where they should be, then he'll conduct a supervised solo. A supervised solo is nothing more than at a point where he is going to have you bring the aircraft to the ramp, he'll exit the aircraft and tell y OK, it's time for you to go out there and do it on your own. And this is the point where maybe some people have a little bit of butterflies about it but I don't think there's usually fear on most people's part. It's usually excitement, but it's one of those times when you've been working toward this point and it's a big day in a pilot's life. It's a point where, your training has brought you to a point where now you can take off, get up to altitude, get around to the pattern and bring it back in for a landing and so it's one of those days that I guarantee, along with your wedding and the birth of your first child, you are never going to forget."