Flight Training for
Flight Test Engineers
Plug your Flight Instruction directly into
your Professional Background as an FTE
Flight Instruction for the FTE
Flight test engineers (FTEs) often feel it is beneficial for them at some point during their professional career as an FTE to learn to fly and to obtain a pilot certificate. Unfortunately, there is surprisingly little resemblance between the flight instruction materials at regular flight schools for the general public and the engineering-grade understanding of flight dynamics and test pilot school materials, which a flight test engineer is familiar with. In vain would you look for stability and control derivatives in standard civilian flight training literature, or any equations for that matter.
This disconnect forces the flight test engineer to connect the dots between their flight training and their professional background by themselves. This costs a lot of time and thought—and your regular flight instructor will unlikely be able to help you with this. Yet, without making this mental connection, your analytical thinking processes as an FTE will be familiar with equations and theoretical concepts, while the intuitive parts of your brain will have a feeling for how to move the control stick in flight, but there will be very little communication between the two.
At Academic Flight, we will connect the dots for you. You will experience a flight training environment which leverages your flight test engineering background optimally. Our test pilot school educated instructor staff will present the flight instruction materials from the beginning in the precise professional language you are accustomed to from aerospace engineering and flight testing, with deliberate intent to improve your intuition for flight and to connect it to your academic and practical experience as an FTE. We will also be able to proceed efficiently deeper beyond standard flight training content, by giving you deliberate firsthand experience with fundamental flight dynamics concepts such as the phugoid, frequency sweep, Dutch roll mode, etc., because you already know, what these are.
We would like you to have this form of formal flight instruction from the beginning of your flight training, because in crisis situations, people tend to revert to what they have learned first (law of primacy). This technical approach to flight instruction will also set you up in a comfortable position to be able to take some of our advanced flight training courses after your private pilot certificate with ease, such as upset prevention and recovery training (UPRT). And yes, we do pre-solo spin training; we believe a pilot should be intimately familiar with the full legal performance envelope of their aircraft in order to be able to use it in an emergency as required, and we will put your mind and body through their paces.
In-Person and Remote Flight Instruction
Ideally, you would do all the ground instruction and flight instruction for your private pilot certificate and any advanced ratings with us. However, we do recognize that obtaining a pilot certificate takes some time, especially if one pursues it on the side, next to a full-time job as an FTE. We therefore also offer our instruction services online.
In the online format, you can take flight instruction at your regular local flight school, and merely speak with us about what you did in the airplane over the internet, so we can rephrase it in the context of flight test and aerospace engineering. We can also illustrate some flight dynamics and flight control concepts, by having you share the flight simulator on your home computer with us over the internet during the instruction session.
Samples of Instruction Materials
To illustrate the merits of our approach, and to allow you to get a head start for the flight training course, we have made a number of slides from a previous edition of this flight instruction course public on this website. Please review these Pilot Ground School 2023-2024 slides diligently, in order to:
- assess whether this course is the right fit for you,
- get yourself a head start on the course,
- start connecting your practical flight experience with your existing flight test engineering knowledge.
Please also consider reading our general basic learn-to-fly article, explaining how to go efficiently after flight training and self-prepare well. If you have any questions, please contact us. We will be happy to advise you further.