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Comment by bobbylarrybobby | Hacker News Reader

Other commenters are pointing out that MS flight sim alone can't prepare you for flying, and I'm thinking... what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience? Surely they would've known that it was your first lesson and you had no real-life flying experience? I can't imagine them just guessing what you were there for based on your ability to taxi and take off.

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> what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience?

All of them? I booked a discovery flight right after high school with zero experience and my instructor handed me the controls before takeoff. He took the controls for the first landing and did all the talking on the radio, but besides that everything else was under my control including the first takeoff and second landing.

That one line ("He thought I was going for an instrument rating") is obviously bullshit, but this is also the kinda stuff I tell my friends when I'm teaching them something new and want them to feel like they're doing great on day 1. So I'm pretty sure GP isn't making up the whole story. He's just naive enough to take the CFI's praise literally

Could you kindly list the clubs/schools these instructors are at? I want to add them to an “avoid at all costs” list.

Again, this is normal at just about every flying club. Taking off is as easy as pulling the stick back and it's pretty much impossible to mess up during flight because training aircraft are all naturally stable. The CFI just needs to look for traffic and work the radio

They key part you're missing is the "without checking prior experience." I taxiid, performed a takeoff, and most of the landing approach on my first training flight, too. The instructor briefed me thoroughly before the flight, inspected my logbook, etc. Every instructor I had after that checked my logbook and the school's internal note keeping system for notes during the pre-flight brief (I'd bet many did before then, too). It is absolutely not normal for a flight instructor to not do these things.

Where did I say this happens without checking prior experience? I'm describing what happens when a student has zero experience and the CFI knows that. His story takes place during a discovery flight so he obviously didn't have a logbook and shouldn't be asked for one

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