Maneuver lesson shape

Every phase 3 maneuver lesson is written to the template in standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md, with the six additions below. Nothing here replaces a field in that template. If the two ever disagree, the template wins and this page is wrong.

The shape exists so that the fourteen phase 3 lessons are the same lesson with different content in it. An instructor who has taught one can teach any of them, and a candidate who has flown one knows exactly what the next one will ask.

Every maneuver lesson runs the same four parts, in this order. This is US-5.2 and it is the structural claim of the whole phase.

Part 3 is the part that is usually missing from a maneuver lesson, and it is the part the certificate is about. A candidate who can fly a lazy eight and describe a lazy eight has not yet had to watch somebody else fly a bad one and say the one useful sentence in time for it to matter.

Part 3 is where the deliberate errors live. The Supervising Instructor flies the maneuver with a specific, planned error in it, named in the lesson plan, and does not volunteer what it was. Each lesson's instructor plan carries its own list under Simulated Student script notes, which per the template do not appear in the study guide.

The order does not vary and no part is dropped for time. If the flight is cut short by weather or traffic, the parts that were flown are recorded and the lesson is continued, not compressed. A lesson that ran parts 1 and 2 only is a lesson at part 2, not a completed lesson.

AI.IV.A is claimed by every maneuver lesson in phase 3, and it is the only ACS task that appears on all thirteen flying lessons plus the ground lesson at 31. That is not padding. AI.IV.A is the ACS task titled Maneuver Lesson, and it tests the preflight ground lesson on a maneuver to be performed in flight, which is precisely part 1 of the cycle above.

Graded means graded. The candidate is assessed on the brief against the completion standards of that lesson, using standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md, and the assessment is recorded whether or not the flight happens. A weathered-out lesson still produced a graded ground lesson.

The brief covers, every time and in this order:

1. What the maneuver is and what the Student is expected to achieve, in the Student's terms.
2. The completion standards, with the numbers said out loud.
3. Why it is taught: what real skill it builds, not what page it is on.
4. How it is flown, in a sequence a Student can hold in their head.
5. The common errors and what causes them.
6. The safety brief: airspace, altitude floor, clearing turns, and the specific hazards of this maneuver.
7. The exchange of controls briefing. See addition 4.

A brief that omits item 6 or item 7 fails the element regardless of how good items 1 through 5 were. Both are what the ACS asks for and both are the ones that get skipped when the candidate is nervous.

US-5.2 requires both. Two candidates fail this lesson in opposite directions and the standard has to catch both: the one who flies it beautifully in silence, and the one who explains it beautifully while wandering 200 ft off altitude.

Every maneuver lesson therefore carries a completion standards list with at least these four:

1. A flying standard, naming the tolerance and the certificate level it comes from.
2. A narration standard, naming what has to be said and that it does not stop.
3. A teaching standard, naming what the candidate has to correct in the Simulated Student's flying and how quickly.
4. A critique standard, naming that the error, its probable cause, and the correction are all three delivered, per standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md.

Which tolerance applies is stated per lesson, not assumed. Some phase 3 maneuvers are flown to private standards because that is who the candidate will teach them to, and some to commercial standards because that is what the flight instructor ACS asks the candidate to demonstrate. Every lesson names which and why.

The lesson names the certificate level. It does not reprint the numbers. That is US-4.2 applied to maneuvers: a tolerance copied into a lesson plan goes stale silently, and the candidate needs the habit of reading it off the current task anyway. The numbers are read from the current FAA-S-ACS-25 task by the candidate as part of their preparation, written down, and said out loud in the brief.

Falling short does not block the next lesson. Decision 9, everywhere, without exception. It triggers policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

US-5.4 requires it taught. This shape requires it flown.

The three-way exchange is used in both directions on every flight in phase 3, out loud, every time, with no exceptions for a quiet cockpit or an obvious situation:

"You have the flight controls." "I have the flight controls." "You have the flight controls."

Practiced means the candidate has taken the airplane from somebody who did not offer it. At least once per lesson in parts 3 and 4 of the cycle, the Supervising Instructor as Simulated Student flies past the intervention threshold and does not hand over. The candidate has to take it, out loud, and then say why. A candidate who has only ever received a politely offered airplane has not practiced the thing that matters.

Two failure modes, and each lesson lists whichever is live in that maneuver:

• The silent grab. Taking the controls without saying it. The Student does not let go, both people fly, and in a landing flare that is how airplanes get bent.
• The polite wait. Announcing, then waiting for acknowledgment that is not coming. The exchange is a statement, not a negotiation. If the Student does not release, the candidate says it again louder and takes it anyway.

"As required" is not an intervention threshold, per the template. In phase 3 the bar is higher than that: the threshold is stated in terms the candidate can act on in the moment, without arithmetic.

The threshold is briefed before the flight and appears verbatim in both halves of the lesson, per the template's duplication rule. A candidate who learns the threshold by having the airplane taken from them has been taught something, but not the thing the lesson was for.

Every phase 3 lesson also carries a hard floor, stated as an altitude, below which the maneuver is terminated regardless of how it is going. Where the ACS or a manufacturer's material sets one, the lesson uses that number and cites it. Where neither does, the lesson states North Aero's floor and flags it as school policy under US-3.4, not as regulation.

Per the template's Video Slot convention, per Decision 32 and Decision 33, and per US-12.1.

Every maneuver lesson carries exactly one Exemplar Clip slot and one or more Error Clip slots. The Exemplar is not optional. A candidate shown only failures cannot reliably recognize a pass.

Slots are tagged by ACS task, not by lesson, per Decision 35. That is the property that makes a Clip reusable: a Clip tagged AI.X.C serves every lesson that touches AI.X.C, and when ticket 45 populates the slots it fills a task, not fourteen separate lessons. Lesson 25's slots are reused by lessons 26 through 38 wherever the task matches, and each lesson says which slots it reuses rather than minting near-duplicates.

Every lesson states, in both halves: "This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled." That is cross-cutting requirement 10, and phase 3 is where it earns its keep, because phase 3 is where a video-shaped curriculum would stall waiting for footage.

The curriculum supplies slots and tags. It does not supply Clips. Curation is Erick's, personally, per lesson.

Parameter P7 names four phase 3 lessons that are recorded: 25, 26, 33, and 38. Those four carry the block below. The other ten carry a one-line note that cockpit capture is optional.

Cockpit recording: required (parameter P7) Recording title convention: CFI Flight Lesson - L<NN> <maneuver> - <YYYY-MM-DD> What is recorded: the flight portion, parts 2 and 3 of the cycle Candidate critiques their own recording before the instructor's review Coverage maps to: <the ACS task codes this lesson claims> Retention: Review Video, 30 day Promotion Window, then deletion (ADR 0002) The written assessment is the record. The footage is not (Decision 37) Fallback if capture fails: instructor attests from contemporaneous notes; the lesson is not lost and is not re-flown for the sake of a recording

**A camera changes nothing about the intervention threshold.** Each of the four recorded lessons says
that sentence on its face. The failure this is written against is real and it is specific: a lesson
being recorded creates a small, entirely human pull toward letting a deviation run one second longer
because the recovery will look better on video. The threshold is the threshold.

**Ticket 46 assesses from these recordings.** The standard it assesses against is the one written in
the lesson, not a second standard invented at review time.

US-5.6 requires emergency scenarios in more than one phase rather than bolted on at the end. Phase 3 carries that thread, and program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md names where: lessons 30, 32, 34, and 35 carry an emergency scenario in addition to lesson 38, which teaches emergency operations as its own subject, and lesson 12 in phase 2 carries the ground half.

Each of those lessons names its scenario in the plan rather than leaving it to whoever is flying that day, so the claim is checkable. program/MANEUVER-SET-RECONCILIATION.md checks it.

Ticket 22 established the practice of writing up any place a shape has to bend against real content. Writing lessons 25 through 38 against this shape, it bent once.

Lesson 33, part 3. The cross-controlled, elevator trim, and secondary stalls are demonstration tasks: the ACS titles them as demonstrations, a Student does not practice them, and an instructor shows them once so the Student recognizes the situation. Part 3 as written above would mean handing a deliberately cross-controlled stall entry to somebody role playing a student pilot, which is unsafe rather than merely awkward.

The adaptation, which lesson 33 states on its face: in part 3, the Simulated Student flies the entry conditions and stops at the first indication, and the candidate teaches recognition and prevention. The candidate performs every actual stall demonstration themselves. Parts 1, 2, and 4 are unchanged.

This applies only where the ACS task is itself a demonstration. It is not a general escape from part 3, and no other lesson in phase 3 uses it. If a future lesson claims it, that lesson names the demonstration task it is claiming it for.

Nothing else bent. Thirteen flying lessons and one ground lesson ran the four parts as written, including the three lessons with the tightest thresholds in the program.

One exception to the Video Slot convention, at lesson 38. The convention is exactly one Exemplar per lesson. Lesson 38 carries two, because AI.XIV.A, postflight procedures, is a separate ACS task claimed by no other lesson, and a task with no Exemplar is a worse outcome than a lesson with two. Recorded on the lesson and in program/MANEUVER-SET-RECONCILIATION.md. The rule is unchanged: one Exemplar per lesson, unless a lesson claims two tasks that no other lesson claims, in which case the tag is what the Exemplar belongs to and the count follows from that.

• It does not define a second critique standard. standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md is the standard, in phase 3 as in phase 1. Part 4 of the cycle applies it and adds nothing.
• It does not set the tolerances. FAA-S-ACS-25 does, per task, and each lesson cites the task and writes the number down after reading it on the day.
• It does not reproduce performance numbers. Cross-cutting requirement 5 is absolute. Airspeeds that come from the flight manual of the airplane being flown are looked up in that airplane's own approved material, by the candidate, as part of the brief.
• It does not gate anything on video. Requirement 10.

• ✓The four-part structure defined once: brief, demonstrate, talk through, critique and debrief
• ✓The preflight ground lesson is a graded element, claiming AI.IV.A, not a warm-up
• ✓Completion standards name both flying tolerance and teaching quality, separately (US-5.2)
• ✓Common student errors and their corrections required in every lesson (US-5.4)
• ✓An explicit intervention threshold required, with a stated bar for what counts as explicit
• ✓Positive exchange of controls taught and practiced in both directions, including from a Simulated Student who does not hand over (US-5.4)
• ✓One Exemplar Video Slot and one or more Error Clip slots per lesson, named (Decision 33)
• ✓Every lesson deliverable with every slot empty, and says so on its face (requirement 10)
• ✓Clips tagged by ACS task so one Clip serves every lesson touching that task (Decision 35)
• ✓The critique element applies standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md rather than defining a second
• ✓Capture block for the four P7 recorded lessons, with the threshold sentence
• ✓FAA references verified current on the date issued, 2026-08-13