Debriefing Your Flight

Jeff:

“An honest debrief is one of the best things you can do for your long-term success as a pilot. It should be part of any flight lesson, but it’s also a great thing to do on your own.

The problem I find, both with students and with myself, is that we tend to focus on the negative. ‘I really messed up that second approach’ or ‘I’m so glad no one saw that landing—way off centerline.’ Those critiques may be true, but they’re not that helpful.

Eventually, I adopted a more positive and forward-looking debrief with my students and myself. It has three parts:

First: What did you do today that you want to do again on future flights? Basically, this is where you remind yourself of the things you did right. No need to go overboard and list everything. Come up with three things and (ideally) write them down.

Next: What do you want to do differently next time? This is the examination of what you did wrong, but with a forward-looking, actionable twist. Way off centerline on today’s landings? Get on centerline next time. Maybe you’ll do some low passes to practice. Maybe you’ll treat every landing as having crosswind even if it’s so low you think you could ignore it. Maybe it’s just that you need to keep those feet more active on the rudder pedals. But decide what you’ll do in the future to improve performance. Again, no more than three. Write those down too.

Finally: Is there anything that happened today that you absolutely, positively, don’t want to do again? Hopefully, it’s a rare flight when there’s a ‘yes’ to this question. But it’s worth asking. And if it’s a yes, you probably don’t have to write it down. Chances are, it’s something you won’t soon forget.

Next time you’re ready to go fly, review your list. Do those things. At the end of that flight, rinse and repeat.

Pretty soon you’ll have a fairly comprehensive list of the actions you want to do whenever you get up in the air … and maybe a few you’ll avoid in the future.”