Backwards Chaining – Accelerating Solo Flight Training
Presented during Concurrent Session 1A: Flight Training
Abstract
Flight simulation has made progressively significant inroads into pilot training at all levels of a pilot’s career – typically starting with training for the Instrument rating in light aircraft and concluding with Type Certification in transport category jetliners. This research was designed to explore if significant training inroads could also be offered to ab-initio pilots, those with no prior flight experience. A control group of first-year, collegiate pilot trainees, all without prior flight experience, enrolled in a traditional FAR 141 PVT (Private Pilot license) curricula on track to their first solo flight, were compared with an experimental group of up to15 pilot trainees, also without prior flight experience, who were exposed to flight in a backwards chaining simulation starting from 4’ AGL (Above Ground Level). Graduated, exponential increments of both altitude and distance from landing were successively added to the simulation experienced by the backward chain experimental group of pilots all the way through a standard FAA General Aviation traffic pattern to return the student pilot to the start of take-off. Once the students had completed the backward chaining simulation, they were placed in an identical aircraft (Cessna-172R/G1000) for an actual flight with an appropriately rated Certified Flight Instructor (CFI). All experimental group pilots were able to successfully act as sole manipulator of the aircraft controls (Pilot-in-Command) for three complete circuits of the traffic pattern on their first flight lesson.
Backwards Chaining – Accelerating Solo Flight Training
Mori Hosseini Student Union Events Center (Bldg #610) – Rooms 165 B/C
Flight simulation has made progressively significant inroads into pilot training at all levels of a pilot’s career – typically starting with training for the Instrument rating in light aircraft and concluding with Type Certification in transport category jetliners. This research was designed to explore if significant training inroads could also be offered to ab-initio pilots, those with no prior flight experience. A control group of first-year, collegiate pilot trainees, all without prior flight experience, enrolled in a traditional FAR 141 PVT (Private Pilot license) curricula on track to their first solo flight, were compared with an experimental group of up to15 pilot trainees, also without prior flight experience, who were exposed to flight in a backwards chaining simulation starting from 4’ AGL (Above Ground Level). Graduated, exponential increments of both altitude and distance from landing were successively added to the simulation experienced by the backward chain experimental group of pilots all the way through a standard FAA General Aviation traffic pattern to return the student pilot to the start of take-off. Once the students had completed the backward chaining simulation, they were placed in an identical aircraft (Cessna-172R/G1000) for an actual flight with an appropriately rated Certified Flight Instructor (CFI). All experimental group pilots were able to successfully act as sole manipulator of the aircraft controls (Pilot-in-Command) for three complete circuits of the traffic pattern on their first flight lesson.
