Mock oral and mock flight standard

Two lessons, and the one document they both produce.

The mock is not a rehearsal and it is not a reassurance exercise. It exists to find what an examiner would find, one to three weeks earlier, at a point where it can still be fixed. A mock that everybody passes has told nobody anything.

Lessons 40 and 41 are conducted by a Delivery Pool instructor who is not the candidate's Supervising Instructor. This is US-8.2 and Decision 4, which removed the staffing escape clause the story used to carry. It is not a preference and it is not waivable by the person who would benefit from waiving it.

Why it has to be somebody else, stated so that the requirement survives the first time it is inconvenient:

1. Your own instructor cannot hear your gaps. They taught you the words you are using. An explanation that is missing a step sounds complete to the person who supplied the other steps, and it will not sound complete to an examiner meeting it cold.
2. They have already decided you are ready, or they would not have scheduled the mock. That is the wrong starting position for an assessment whose value is entirely in what it finds.
3. The real test is with a stranger. Teaching a person who does not already know what you mean is the skill being certificated, and it cannot be practiced against somebody who does.

61.195(i) prohibits self-endorsement, read live 2026-08-14, and the mock is built on the same instinct one step earlier. The regulation stops you signing your own application. This standard stops the school marking its own homework.

The second instructor must meet 61.195(h) to give this training, exactly as the Supervising Instructor does. See standards/DELIVERY-CAPABILITY.md. Being a second body is not the qualification; being a qualified second body is.

The Delivery Pool holds one person, and that is escalated rather than worked around

North Aero cannot deliver lessons 40 and 41 today. The Delivery Pool holds one person, and this standard requires two. That is objective O2 and risk R1, and ticket 41's own acceptance criteria require it to be escalated on the board rather than engineered around.

It is escalated on SUPERVISOR-TASKS.md and it is not resolved here.

What is deliberately not done, because each of these is the workaround that would quietly destroy the requirement:

• The Supervising Instructor does not conduct the mock and call it independent.
• The mock is not shortened, split, or converted into a self-assessment because no second instructor is available.
• An instructor who does not meet 61.195(h) is not used on the grounds that a mock is not real training.
• The requirement is not softened to "where practicable". Decision 4 already removed that clause once.

What this standard is for in the meantime. Lessons 40 and 41 sit at the end of a program that runs four to thirteen months. The definitions exist now so that the day the pool grows, the mock is ready to run rather than ready to be designed. This is a scheduling constraint on delivery, not a gap in the curriculum, and it does not gate enrollment. It does gate certification, and the distinction is worth being precise about: a candidate can start this program today and cannot finish it today.

Scope: everything, built the way an evaluator builds it

The mock oral covers every area of operation applicable to an initial flight instructor certificate, airplane single-engine land. Not a sample chosen for the time available, and not the areas the candidate is weakest in.

The second instructor builds a plan of action the way FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1 requires an evaluator to, read live 2026-08-14. Four properties of a real plan of action carry into the mock, and each of them is a thing a comfortable mock would drop.

1. It includes all required areas of operation and tasks. The ACS says the plan of action must, and a plan of action that skipped areas would produce a mock whose silence on an area means nothing.
2. It is scenario-based. The ACS requires scenarios that evaluate as many required areas and tasks as possible, with problems and simulated emergencies introduced as the scenario unfolds. Question-and-answer down a task list is not what the test is.
3. It tests every element the candidate was deficient on in the knowledge test. The ACS names this as a required minimum element to be tested, alongside at least one knowledge element and at least one risk management element per task. The candidate's Airman Knowledge Test Report is an input to the plan of action, which is the mechanical reason policy/KNOWLEDGE-TEST-DEFICIENCY-CLOSURE.md has to have been worked before lesson 40 rather than after it.
4. Correlation, not recall. The ACS asks evaluators to test the ability to apply and correlate, and to use rote questions only where they are appropriate to the material. A mock built out of rote questions is easier than the test and teaches the candidate to prepare for the wrong thing.

The candidate does not see the plan of action in advance, for the same reason the Simulated Student's script notes stay out of the study guide.

Duration: the scheduled block is 4.0 hours and the mock runs to the plan of action

Lesson 40 is scheduled at 4.0 ground hours in program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md. That figure is deliberate: the reference breakdown allotted 2.0, this program first set 3.0, and the program structure's own sanity check records the increase and its reason, which is that an oral at real scope does not finish in an hour.

The mock ends when the plan of action is complete, not when the block is. If the plan of action is not finished at four hours, the mock is not finished, and it either continues or is resumed in a second session within the same week.

Time beyond the scheduled block is recorded under policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md rather than absorbed silently into the lesson. A lesson whose hours quietly grow is the exact failure that rule exists to prevent, and lesson 40 is the single most likely lesson in this program to grow.

A finding this standard raised rather than hid, now closed. An initial flight instructor oral is one of the longest in general aviation and routinely exceeds three hours in practice, so this standard said on issue that 3.0 hours might prove short, and that the honest fix would be to change parameter P1's hours for lesson 40 rather than to run a shorter mock and call it full scope.

Erick decided on 2026-08-14: lesson 40 is 4.0 ground hours. The change moved the phase 4 subtotal, the program totals, the sanity check against the reference breakdown, and lesson 40's own schedule, which is exactly why the standard raised it as a decision rather than making it. The route it named is the route that was taken.

Four hours is a better floor, not a new ceiling. The rule above is unchanged and is the part that matters: the mock runs to the plan of action and any overrun is visible under policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md. If real mocks show four hours is also short, the same route applies again. What is not available is shortening the plan of action to fit the block.

The ground portion comes first, and the candidate is told why

FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1, read 2026-08-14, states that the applicant must pass the ground portion of the practical test before beginning the flight portion, and that oral questioning continues throughout the entire practical test.

The mock reproduces that sequence, so that lesson 40 precedes lesson 41 and the candidate meets the real structure before they meet it for real.

It does not reproduce it as a gate. Per Decision 9 this program has no proficiency gate, and a poor mock oral does not stop lesson 41 from running. What the second instructor does instead is say plainly, at the end of lesson 40, what a real evaluator would have done at that point. That sentence is worth more than a blocked lesson: it is information the candidate can act on, delivered without costing them the flight that would have shown them the rest of their gaps.

Scope

The flight portion at practical test scope, flown in N41459 from the right seat, with the second instructor in the left. Scheduled at 0.5 ground and 2.0 dual.

The second instructor works the two roles FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1 describes for a flight instructor practical test, and the candidate should expect both:

• The evaluator, determining whether the candidate meets the standard.
• The Student. The ACS states that during the flight portion the evaluator may act as a student during selected maneuvers, which gives the evaluator the chance to assess the applicant's ability to analyze and correct simulated common errors. That is the same instrument this program has used since lesson 8, and on the mock it is used by somebody whose errors the candidate has never seen.

The four things the evaluator is confirming, verbatim in substance from ACS Appendix 1 read 2026-08-14: the ability to apply the fundamentals of instructing; knowledge of and ability to teach the subject matter, procedures, and maneuvers; the ability to perform the tasks at the level of a commercial pilot while giving effective flight instruction; and the ability to analyze and correct common errors.

The third of those is the one candidates lose. Teaching well while flying to commercial tolerance is a single combined standard, not two standards that can be met in turn, and the mock is usually the first time it is assessed by somebody who is not also coaching.

The maneuvers flown are chosen by the second instructor

Not by the candidate, and not by the Supervising Instructor. The selection covers the maneuver clusters in program/MANEUVER-SET-RECONCILIATION.md, weighted toward whatever the mock oral exposed. A candidate who nominates their strongest maneuvers has been given the wrong mock.

Intervention threshold

The second instructor takes the airplane at the same threshold every phase 3 lesson uses, and says so before the flight. The mock changes the assessor, not the safety standard, and a candidate who believes an examiner tolerates more than an instructor will find out otherwise expensively.

Stated explicitly in both halves of lesson 41, per the template's duplication rule.

The mock produces a written deficiency list with assigned remediation. It does not produce a pass or a fail. This is a US-8.2 acceptance criterion and it is the design decision the whole standard turns on.

Why not a verdict. A mock that ends in "you passed" transfers no information, and a mock that ends in "you failed" transfers one bit and a bad afternoon. Neither tells the candidate what to practice on Tuesday. The deficiency list is the artifact the candidate takes away and the artifact the recommendation at lesson 42 is written against.

The second instructor does state an opinion, because a candidate is entitled to one and withholding it is its own kind of dishonesty. The opinion is recorded as a sentence on the deficiency list, and it is explicitly not a grade, not a Tracker Status, and not a recommendation. Tracker Status is set by the Supervising Instructor, named and dated, per cross-cutting requirement 9 and program/COVERAGE-MATRIX.md.

The deficiency list

One table, in the candidate's records file, produced from lesson 40 and lesson 41 together.

Every column is load bearing and none of them is optional.

• What was observed is stated as behavior, per standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md. "Taught the entry to a lazy eight without ever naming the reference point" is an observation. "Weak on lazy eights" is not, and it cannot be remediated because nobody can tell when it has stopped being true.
• Which standard was not met names the ACS task and the element, or the lesson completion standard. A deficiency that maps to no standard is either an opinion or a gap in the standards, and both are worth knowing which.
• Assigned remediation is specific enough to schedule. A named lesson revisited, a named teaching assignment, a named reading, or a named number of repetitions.
• Assigned to is a human. Usually the Supervising Instructor, occasionally the candidate alone.
• Closed by and closed on are the cross-cutting requirement 9 fields. A human, and a date.

The three-part critique standard applies to every row. Per standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md, a critique names the error, its probable cause, and the correction. A deficiency row with an observation and a remediation but no probable cause has skipped the middle term, which is the one that makes the correction more than trying harder.

The candidate self-critiques first, before the deficiency list is read to them, exactly as everywhere else in this program. That ordering is not a courtesy. A candidate who can find six of their own eight deficiencies is in a materially different position from one who finds none, and that difference is worth recording on the list.

The list survives certification

The deficiency list is written to be read by somebody who was not there, after the candidate holds the certificate. That is a ticket 41 acceptance criterion and it is the reason for the "what was observed" column rather than a set of ticks.

Post-certificate mentorship is a different project, per Decision 1, and this list is one of the things it consumes. The interface is the file, not a conversation. A row that only makes sense to the two people in the room on the day is a row that will be worthless in three months, which is precisely when a new instructor's first weak areas resurface.

It is not deleted when the candidate passes. Nothing in policy/RECORDING-AND-RETENTION.md deletes it: the retention rules there govern Session Recordings and Review Videos, and this is a written assessment.

The mock is assessed against the retained written assessments, and footage is not available to rewatch.

Per Decision 37 and ADR 0002, a candidate's cockpit footage is deleted on the 30 day Promotion Window and the written assessment is what is retained. Any judgment from phase 3 that the mock needs was written down at review time or it does not exist.

Three consequences, all of them practical:

1. The second instructor prepares from the written record. The four recorded phase 3 lessons under parameter P7, lessons 25, 26, 33, and 38, contribute their written assessments, not their video. Lesson 25 is the baseline and lesson 38 is the comparison, and the change between them is the single most useful thing the second instructor can read before lesson 40.
2. "We can go back and look at the tape" is not available, and nobody should plan as though it is. If a phase 3 judgment matters to the mock, it was written down in phase 3.
3. The mock's own record is written, for the same reason. Recording lessons 40 and 41 is permitted and is sometimes useful in the moment. It is not the record, it is not required, and the deficiency list does not depend on it.

Every area of operation is looked at, and any area without a PROFICIENT Proficiency is visible before the recommendation is written. That is US-8.1, and the mock is where it becomes concrete.

The order of operations at lesson 40 and 41:

1. The second instructor opens program/COVERAGE-MATRIX.md for this candidate before building the plan of action, and reads the Proficiency column by area.
2. Areas that are not PROFICIENT are weighted into the plan of action. They are not skipped, and they are not the only things tested.
3. The mock produces observations, which become deficiency rows.
4. The Supervising Instructor, not the second instructor, updates Proficiency, named and dated. The mock is evidence they reason from. It is not a status change that happens by itself.

Coverage is not an input to any of this. Coverage says which topics a Taught Ground Lesson demonstrably addressed and says nothing about how well, per Decision 21. A mock that started citing Coverage percentages would have confused the two columns the matrix exists to keep apart.

Recorded here so the phase 4 lessons inherit it rather than restating it.

• ✓At least one mock oral and one mock flight defined, at full practical test scope, with the duration rule stated. The risk that 3.0 hours was short was raised rather than absorbed, and Erick closed it on 2026-08-14 by moving lesson 40 to 4.0
• ✓A second Delivery Pool instructor conducts both, as a requirement with no escape clause (Decision 4)
• ✓The second-instructor role matches what program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md records for scheduling
• ✓The output is a written deficiency list with assigned remediation, not a pass or fail verdict
• ✓The deficiency list is written to survive certification and to be read by post-certificate mentorship in another project
• ✓Assessment draws on retained written assessments rather than footage (Decision 37, ADR 0002, US-12.2)
• ✓Conducted against the coverage matrix, so any area without PROFICIENT is visible before the recommendation (US-8.1)
• ✓The one-instructor Delivery Pool is escalated on the board rather than worked around, with the specific workarounds that are refused named individually
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no currency figure, no reproduced flight manual numbers
• ✓FAA references verified live on the date issued, 2026-08-14, at title 14 currency 2026-08-12