Delta Connection Academy

Supervised Pilot in Command

As a part of your Commercial Certificate, you need to log five hours as pilot in command (PIC) in the multi engine. These are supervised for insurance reasons. You also need 10 night landings. You cover these in two night flights, one before the stage check and one after. As PIC, you have to do everything as if you were the only one in the plane. My instructor just sits there & says nothing & does nothing. It’s very strange at first, because up until the first SPIC, everything was done together – We used crew resource management (CRM) where he read the checklist & I completed the task. Some earlier revisions didn’t have CRM and you had to be more proficient earlier. If your revision is all CRM, I’d suggest you ask your instructor to step back with each lesson and let you do more. Once I completed my SPIC, it gave me a lot more confidence with my skills in the multi. Good luck with yours!

Weather

Yesterday I had a review flight with my instructor, Travis Ponder. After he flew with me, he had a flight with my classmate, Martin Cantu. I backseated Martin’s flight and as we left Ellington (EFD), storm clouds were approaching the field. We headed south to practice engine failures and stalls. When it was time to head back to EFD, it was socked in. There was no way we could return at that time. Martin completed a few traffic patterns at Galveston and we ended up landing and spending some time there at the FBO. Jeffery Horn made us feel very welcome & comfortable – even sharing his stash of snacks and bottled water with us. During our 30 minutes or so we kept in contact with our base and tracked the weather on the computer & on local news. When there was a window of opportunity, we decided to try to make it back. The first cell was out of our way but another was approaching the field quickly. Travis kept reminding us that if it got too bad we would return to Galveston. There was a storm to our west and we could see distant lightning the whole way back, but we made it back to EFD safely.

Loss of Proficiency

I left town as soon as Ground School was over & spent a week at home, in Cincinnati. I had to turn in a LOA (Leave Of Absence) form a month before my vacation so DCA knew my plans and it didn’t count against me when I left. Your instructor can help you fill out the form (which is not difficult). I’m thankful I was able to get out of here for a week. When I returned, I had to take the tests I missed when I was home. There was a ground school stage 2 exam and a final. The final is the test you take so DCA approves you to go take the official FAA written test. I passed all of these the first time. Whoo-Hoo! As I figured, being away for a week decreased my proficiency in the plane. Especially at the beginning when learning to fly a new aircraft, it’s best not to miss any days if possible. Proficiency declines quickly when you don’t have much experience. I flew about 150 miles from Ellington to Austin for a night cross-country flight then had a supervised Pilot-In-Command (SPIC) flight. The cross-country went well, but the SPIC left much to be desired.