Right-seat introduction

The candidate flies the airplane competently from the right seat. Seat position stops competing for attention, so that when narration starts at lesson 25 there is capacity available for it.

This lesson is where flying begins, and it sits at lesson 10 for a reason worth telling the candidate: a pilot who does twenty-five consecutive ground lessons gets rustier, not sharper. That is Decision 6, and it exists substantially for the second-career candidate whose precision has decayed.

Nothing is taught from the right seat in this lesson. The candidate is not narrating, not demonstrating, and not instructing. They are learning to fly from an unfamiliar seat. Adding teaching here is the single most common way to waste this lesson.

Elements 6 and 7 are the lesson. Everything else is context. The sight picture in the flare is the single thing that takes longest to re-establish, and the hand swap is the thing most likely to produce a clumsy moment at a bad time.

Ground 60 minutes, flight 90 minutes. Reconciles with the 1.0 ground and 1.5 dual declared above. The debrief happens inside the flight block on shutdown.

Instructor: FAA-S-ACS-25 at the tasks above. FAA-H-8083-3C. The airplane.

Candidate: preparation deliverable, headset, current charts, the flight manual for the airplane being flown.

Capture: cockpit audio and video are not required on this lesson. The recorded phase 3 lessons are 25, 26, 33, and 38. Recording this one is optional and some candidates find a baseline useful.

1. Brief elements 1 to 8 on the ground. Do not shorten this to get airborne.
2. Fly from the left seat. You are the safety pilot and the instructor, and you retain the ability to take the airplane.
3. Let the first two landings be worse than the candidate expects. Say beforehand that they will be, so the surprise does not become discouragement.
4. Do not ask the candidate to narrate. If they start explaining what they are doing, stop them. That skill is lesson 26 and mixing it in here degrades both.
5. Watch the hands. A candidate reaching across for the throttle with the wrong hand is a habit to catch on day one.
6. Debrief on shutdown, against standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md.

1. Arrive with the deliverable.
2. Conduct the preflight, start, taxi, and before-takeoff check from the right seat.
3. Fly the fundamentals of flight to private standards from the right seat.
4. Fly normal takeoffs and landings from the right seat.
5. Maintain a traffic scan that accounts for the changed blind spots.
6. Self-critique first at the debrief.

Identical wording in the study guide.

The standard is right-seat solo-equivalent competence at private pilot standards. That means: if the instructor were not in the airplane, the candidate could safely fly it from the right seat.

1. The candidate conducts the preflight, engine start, taxi, and before-takeoff check from the right seat, unprompted, in the correct sequence.
2. The candidate flies straight and level, turns, climbs, and descents to private pilot standards from the right seat.
3. The candidate completes at least three normal takeoffs and landings from the right seat to private pilot standards, with a safe touchdown in the touchdown zone.
4. The candidate maintains a traffic scan that covers the right-seat blind spots, demonstrated by calling at least one traffic sighting or one deliberate clearing turn before each maneuver.
5. The candidate manages the throttle with the correct hand without reaching across, throughout.
6. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

There is no proficiency gate. Decision 9. A candidate who does not reach the standard above still starts lesson 11 on schedule.

What falling short triggers is the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md: extra right-seat work becomes a separately recorded item so that neither progress nor cost is a surprise. Say this to the candidate at the briefing, before they fly, not afterwards as consolation.

This is the lesson most likely to need extra work, particularly for a high-time candidate whose right-seat time is near zero. That is expected, it is normal, and it is not a mark against them.

The instructor takes the airplane when any of these occurs:

• Deviation below 300 ft AGL on approach that is not corrected within two seconds.
• Any drift toward the runway edge on takeoff roll that is not arrested immediately.
• Airspeed below 1.1 Vso on final without correction being applied.
• Bank angle exceeding 45 degrees in the pattern.
• Any point at which the candidate's attention is inside the cockpit during pattern operations and a traffic conflict is developing.

Positive exchange of controls, every time. "My controls", "your controls", "my controls". Taught and practised on this lesson rather than assumed, because it is the first lesson where control ever changes hands, and every flight lesson after this one relies on it.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation V Tasks A to D and F, Area VI, Area VII Tasks A and B, Area VIII.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, Airplane Flying Handbook, the chapters on basic maneuvers and on takeoffs and landings, plus the October 2025 addendum.
• The flight manual for the airplane you will fly. Speeds and configurations come from the book in that airplane.

Deliverable: Written, one page. List every action in a normal takeoff and landing that you perform with a specific hand, and say which hand you will use from the right seat. Then list the three places you expect this to feel wrong. Bring it. We will check it against what actually happened.

Not applicable in the usual sense. This is a flight lesson and the worked example is the flight.

Needed and not yet available: a Clip of a right-seat landing showing the changed sight picture, which would let the candidate see it before feeling it. Owner: Erick. See the Video Slots below.

VS-10-1

Type: Exemplar | ACS task: AI.VII.B | Status: empty What it should show: a normal landing flown from the right seat, filmed so the sight picture over the nose is visible through the flare Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar

VS-10-2

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.VII.B | Status: empty What it should show: a right-seat landing flared high, with the sight picture visible, so the difference from VS-10-1 is legible Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of that flight

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.

Assess flying, not teaching. Nothing in this lesson is a teaching assessment and grading it as one is the commonest way to misuse it.

Say the standard out loud before the flight, and say what happens if it is not met. A candidate who thinks a bad landing might stop their progress will fly worse, and will not tell you what they are worried about.

This is the first flight lesson of the program, so it also sets the debrief pattern for phases 2 and 3. Self-critique first, then yours, to the standard.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-5.1, US-2.3
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior, and are right-seat solo-equivalent competence at private standards
• ✓Common errors listed
• ✓Intervention threshold stated explicitly, with positive exchange of controls taught and practised
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots named, and the lesson states it is deliverable with them empty
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no POH performance numbers, no pricing
• ✓Sits at lesson 10, before maneuver teaching begins (Decision 6)
• ✓Falling short does not block progression; it triggers the visibility rule (Decision 9)