Slips and the power-off 180 accuracy landing

The candidate teaches the slip to a landing and the power-off 180 accuracy approach and landing from the right seat. At the end they can teach energy management as a thing a Student can see and act on, rather than as a phrase, and can correct an approach that has too much or too little of it.

These two are together because both are about spending energy deliberately. The slip is how you get rid of energy you do not want. The power-off 180 is what happens when the energy you have is all the energy there will be. A candidate who can teach both can teach a Student to arrive at a runway on purpose.

The power-off 180 is a commercial maneuver and it is also, in every meaningful respect, the engine-out approach flown to a runway. The slip is the correction most often needed at the end of one.

Say that to the candidate and have them say it to the Student. It is the difference between a maneuver a commercial student endures and a skill a private student wants. This lesson is not one of the emergency scenario lessons named in program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md, and it does not need to be: the emergency content here is the maneuver itself.

Element 7 is the transferable skill. A point on the ground that stays in the same place in the windshield is where the airplane is going. Everything above it is reachable, everything below it is not. A Student who owns that never needs a glide ratio number, and a candidate who can teach it in thirty seconds has given away something they will use every flight.

Element 9 is the teaching stance. An approach that is high can always be fixed. An approach that is low is often over. So the entire technique is built around arriving with a surplus and spending it, and the candidate should be teaching Students to be deliberately high early rather than exactly right early.

Some airplanes limit or prohibit slips with flaps extended, and some do not. It is airplane specific, it is in that airplane's approved material, and it is exactly the kind of item a candidate will otherwise carry over from a previous type.

No limitation, number, or configuration restriction from any flight manual appears in this document, per cross-cutting requirement 5. The candidate looks it up for the airplane they are flying and states it in the brief. If they cannot find it, that is a finding worth its own minute: being unable to locate a limitation is the same problem as not knowing it.

Ground 48 minutes, flight 90 minutes. Reconciles with the declared 0.8 ground and 1.5 dual.

Instructor: FAA-S-ACS-25 at Areas IV and VII. FAA-H-8083-3C. The airplane. An agreed touchdown point on the runway in use.

Candidate: headset, the flight manual for the airplane being flown, their written preflight ground lesson, the slip limitations for that airplane from its own approved material, on paper.

Airplane: normal category, dual controls, and a runway environment where a power-off approach can be flown without conflicting with other traffic. Coordinate with the tower or announce the intention clearly at a non-towered field, because a power-off 180 looks like a problem from the ground.

Cockpit recording: optional. Not one of the four P7 lessons.

1. Check the slip limitation lookup before the brief goes further. If it came from memory or from another type, stop there and have them find it.
2. Take the brief as a Student. Ask "how do I know if I'm going to make it?", which is element 7 and the only question that matters in a power-off approach.
3. Grade the brief before the airplane.
4. Agree the touchdown point in feet before the flight, as in lesson 35, and hold it.
5. In part 2, demonstrate one power-off 180 yourself, from the right seat, narrated. It is worth the candidate seeing the aim point technique used by somebody who is not thinking about it.
6. In part 3, be high and be low, in that order. See the script. High is recoverable and teaches the tools. Low teaches the decision.
7. Do not let a low power-off approach be salvaged with power quietly. If power goes in, that is the go-around, and it is called as one.
8. Part 4, candidate first.

Simulated Student script notes

Not in the study guide.

1. Teach the preflight ground lesson on slips and the power-off 180, including the slip limitations for the airplane being flown.
2. Demonstrate a forward slip to a landing from the right seat, narrating throughout.
3. Demonstrate a power-off 180 accuracy approach and landing, narrating, touching down at the agreed point.
4. Talk the Simulated Student through both, including one high approach and one low one.
5. Teach the aim point technique in a form a Student can use immediately.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate delivers the preflight ground lesson on slips and the power-off 180, covering all seven items of the brief, and states the slip limitations for the airplane being flown, from that airplane's own approved material.
2. The candidate flies a forward slip to a landing to commercial pilot tolerances from the right seat while narrating continuously, maintaining airspeed throughout and straightening before touchdown.
3. The candidate distinguishes the forward slip from the sideslip in the taught content, and names what each is for.
4. The candidate flies a power-off 180 accuracy approach and landing to commercial pilot tolerances, touching down at or beyond the agreed point and within the tolerance the current AI.VII.O task specifies.
5. The candidate teaches the aim point technique, in a form the Simulated Student can apply on the next approach, without reference to a glide ratio figure.
6. The candidate corrects the high approach with configuration and slip in that order, and does not use full flaps as the first adjustment.
7. The candidate recognizes the stretched glide and stops it, naming it as the accident it is rather than as an error of technique.
8. The candidate calls a go-around and applies power when a power-off approach will not reach the runway, rather than salvaging it quietly.
9. The candidate takes the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
10. The candidate delivers a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
11. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 7 is the safety-critical one. Stretching a glide is the single most reliably fatal habit in light aircraft, and the candidate will spend a career teaching against it.

Falling short does not block lesson 37. No proficiency gate (Decision 9). It triggers policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

Verbatim in the study guide. Every trigger below is checkable in one second, on purpose.

The instructor takes the airplane when:

• The nose is raised to stretch a glide at any altitude.
• Airspeed reaches 1.1 Vso on final or in a slip without correction applied.
• The airplane is not on the runway centerline extended below 200 ft AGL.
• A slip is still established below 50 ft AGL.
• The airplane floats past the midpoint of the runway and no go-around has been started.
• The nose is pushed forward in the flare or in a balloon.
• Bank exceeds 30 degrees below 500 ft AGL.
• Either pilot is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

The stretched glide item has no time allowance and no qualifier. Everything else in this program gives a second or two for a correction to appear. This one does not, because the airplane is already slow, already low, and already descending, and the two seconds do not exist.

Lesson 34's go-around gate applies unchanged, with one addition for this lesson: on a power-off approach, a go-around means power in, called out loud, and it is not a failure of the exercise. A salvaged approach nobody named is.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time, practiced under load in the pattern.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.VII.M and AI.VII.O, in full. Write down the touchdown point tolerance for the power-off 180.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the sections on slips and on the power-off accuracy approach.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Three things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on slips and the power-off 180. Second, find the slip limitations for the airplane you will fly, in that airplane's own approved material, and bring the page reference, not just the answer. Third, write the thirty-second explanation you will give a Student who asks how to tell whether they will reach the runway, with no glide ratio figure in it.

VS-36-1

Type: Exemplar | ACS task: AI.VII.O | Status: empty What it should show: a power-off 180 flown with the aim point held steady, configuration used in order, and the touchdown at the chosen point, narrated Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar

VS-36-2

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.VII.O | Status: empty What it should show: a power-off approach arriving low with the nose raised to stretch the glide, and the airspeed decaying Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

VS-36-3

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.VII.M | Status: empty What it should show: a forward slip with the airspeed decaying and the slip held into the flare Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

Tagged by ACS task. These serve every lesson touching AI.VII.M and AI.VII.O.

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

Grade the aim point explanation as a piece of teaching, not as knowledge. Ask them to give it to you in thirty seconds with no numbers in it. A candidate who needs three minutes and a glide ratio has the knowledge and not the lesson, and the fix is fifteen minutes of rehearsal rather than more study.

The stretched glide moment is the most important twenty seconds of the lesson. Watch whether the candidate names it before their hands move, whether their hands move at all, and how long both took. Report the seconds.

Watch the order of the high-approach correction. Configuration, then slip, and flaps late. A candidate who reaches for full flaps first has spent the correction they cannot get back, and it is a habit worth fixing here because it looks harmless on a long runway.

Note whether the power-off 180 was taught as an exam item or as the engine-out approach. It is a framing choice, it takes one sentence, and it changes how seriously every Student they ever teach takes it.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-5.2, US-5.4
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior, naming flying tolerance and teaching quality
• ✓Common errors listed, each with the instructor's response
• ✓Intervention threshold stated as single-observable triggers actionable in the moment
• ✓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 ACS-tagged, and the lesson states it is deliverable with them empty
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no reproduced flight manual limitations or numbers, no pricing
• ✓Falling short does not block progression (Decision 9)
• ✓Runs the four-part cycle from standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md
• ✓Positive exchange of controls practiced under load in the pattern, not only described