Mock flight

The candidate flies the flight portion at practical test scope with an instructor who has never flown with them, teaching from the right seat throughout, and leaves with their half of a written deficiency list.

The combined standard is the one being tested, and it is the one candidates lose. FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1, read 2026-08-14, requires the evaluator to confirm the applicant's ability to perform the tasks at the level of a commercial pilot while giving effective flight instruction. That is one standard, not two that can be met in turn. A candidate who flies beautifully in silence and one who narrates fluently while drifting off altitude have both missed it.

The Delivery Pool must hold a second qualified instructor. It currently holds one, North Aero cannot deliver this lesson today, and that is escalated on SUPERVISOR-TASKS.md rather than worked around. See standards/MOCK-PRACTICAL.md for the workarounds that are refused and why.

Lesson 40 comes first. FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1 states that the applicant must pass the ground portion of the practical test before beginning the flight portion, and the mock reproduces that sequence so the candidate meets the real structure before they meet it for real.

It reproduces it as a sequence and not as a gate. Per Decision 9 there is no proficiency gate in this program, and a poor mock oral does not stop this lesson running. What lesson 40 does instead is tell the candidate plainly what a real evaluator would have done. That is information they can act on, and it does not cost them the flight that would have shown them the rest of their gaps.

Element 11 runs through all of elements 5 to 10 rather than sitting at the end. Per Appendix 1 the evaluator may act as a student during selected maneuvers, which gives them the chance to assess the candidate's ability to analyze and correct simulated common errors. This program has used that instrument since lesson 8. What is new today is that the errors belong to somebody whose habits the candidate has never seen.

Element 7 carries a briefing requirement that is not optional. FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 3, read 2026-08-14, states that the applicant and the evaluator must review the slow flight, stalls, and spins area of operation during the preflight briefing, including whether recovery is at the first indication or after a full stall. Brief it in block one.

30 minutes ground and 120 minutes dual. Reconciles with the declared 0.5 ground and 2.0 dual.

The flight block is the constraint and the maneuver selection flexes to fit it, not the other way around. If weather or traffic costs twenty minutes, the evaluator drops maneuvers from the plan of action and records which ones were not assessed. An area not assessed is recorded as not assessed, exactly as a real evaluator records areas not tested on a notice of disapproval. It is never recorded as satisfactory by default.

Second instructor: FAA-S-ACS-25, complete. standards/MOCK-PRACTICAL.md. The written plan of action, carried forward from lesson 40 and weighted by what lesson 40 exposed. The deficiency list started at lesson 40. A kneeboard, because observations are written in the airplane.

Candidate: their view limiting device, which 61.45(d)(2) puts on the applicant rather than on the school. Their own charts, publications, and electronic flight bag if they use one. The lesson plan for whichever maneuver they are asked to brief.

Aircraft: N41459, with its records current per policy/CHECKRIDE-DOCUMENT-CHECKLIST.md section

6. Nothing inoperative that is required for an area of operation on the plan of action, per 91.213 and FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 3.

Taught Ground Lesson: no. This is a flight lesson and the candidate teaches in the cockpit, which is US-12.2 cockpit teaching rather than a Taught Ground Lesson as CONTEXT.md defines one. Meeting title convention: CFI Mock Flight - L41 - <YYYY-MM-DD> if recorded Coverage maps to: nothing. This lesson generates no Coverage. Fallback if capture fails: none needed. The deficiency list is the record and it is written in the airplane and in the debrief.

Recording this lesson is permitted and is not required. Per Decision 37 and ADR 0002 any footage is deleted on the 30 day Promotion Window and the written assessment is what is retained. A camera changes nothing about the intervention threshold below.

1. Brief as an evaluator briefs, not as an instructor briefs. The plan of action, the sequence, the stalls area review Appendix 3 requires, the view limiting device procedure, and the intervention threshold. Then stop briefing.
2. Select the maneuvers yourself. Not the candidate, and not their Supervising Instructor. Cover the clusters in program/MANEUVER-SET-RECONCILIATION.md, weighted toward whatever lesson 40 exposed. A candidate who nominates their strongest maneuvers has been given the wrong mock.
3. Make them brief a maneuver before flying it. AI.IV.A is the preflight lesson on a maneuver to be performed in flight and it is a graded task in its own right, not a warm-up.
4. Act as the Student during selected maneuvers, per Appendix 1, and make the errors real ones. Errors from your own students, not textbook errors. The candidate has never seen your habits and that is the point.
5. Assess the combined standard continuously. Commercial tolerance and effective instruction at the same time. When one degrades to protect the other, that is the observation, and it is worth naming precisely: which one went, at what point, and under what load.
6. Do not instruct. You are assessing. Coaching during the mock destroys the measurement, and it is the most common way a mock quietly becomes a lesson.
7. Write in the airplane. A kneeboard note per observation. Reconstructed on the ground two hours later they are impressions rather than facts.
8. Take the airplane at the threshold below and not before it, and hand it back. The candidate must have room to make a call themselves and to get it wrong once, which is the same principle phase 3 uses.
9. Record what was not assessed, if the plan of action was cut short.
10. Take the self-critique first. Count how many of their own deficiencies they find, and record the number.
11. State your opinion once, and label it. One sentence on the deficiency list. Not a grade, not a Tracker Status, and not a recommendation. Lesson 42 makes that decision.

Simulated Student script notes

Not in the study guide, per the template's duplication rule.

The Student you play is a private student in the middle of their training, competent enough to fly the airplane and inconsistent enough to be instructive. Not a beginner, and not an examiner pretending to be one.

Do not warn them which move is coming, and do not soften a move because the flight is going badly. A mock that gets easier as it goes is worth nothing.

1. Brief the flight, and brief each maneuver before flying it.
2. Fly from the right seat, teaching continuously.
3. Teach the preflight inspection, the engine start, and the postflight to the evaluator as Student.
4. Analyze and correct the Student's errors as they happen, in priority order.
5. Demonstrate maneuvers to commercial tolerance while narrating.
6. Take the airplane from the Student when their own stated threshold is reached.
7. Self-critique before hearing anything back.
8. Agree their half of the deficiency list, or say where they disagree and why.

Identical wording in the study guide.

Read the note under standard 9 before reading standards 1 to 8.

1. The candidate teaches continuously from the right seat and does not go silent through any maneuver entry, roll-in, or recovery.
2. The candidate delivers a preflight lesson on each maneuver before it is flown, covering the objective, the elements, and the common errors.
3. The candidate flies each demonstrated maneuver to commercial tolerance while narrating it, meeting both halves of that standard at the same time.
4. The candidate identifies and corrects at least six simulated Student errors, naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction.
5. The candidate prioritizes correctly when two errors are present, addressing the one that matters first, at least twice.
6. The candidate states their own intervention threshold before the flight and takes the airplane at or before it during at least one deliberately induced deviation.
7. The candidate defers a Student question asked at a high workload moment, and returns to it.
8. The candidate teaches the postflight procedures, rather than performing them silently.
9. A written deficiency list exists at the end of the lesson, in the format in standards/MOCK-PRACTICAL.md, covering lessons 40 and 41 together, with every row carrying an observation, the standard not met, an assigned remediation, an owner, and a date. Any area of operation not assessed is recorded as not assessed.

There is no pass mark and there is no fail. Standards 1 to 8 describe what the candidate does, and shortfalls become rows on the deficiency list rather than a verdict. Falling short does not block lesson 42 (Decision 9), and it triggers policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

Verbatim in the study guide.

The mock changes who is assessing. It does not change the safety standard, and it does not raise the threshold because an assessment is in progress.

The evaluator takes the airplane when:

• Any trigger in the phase 3 lesson for the maneuver being flown is met. Those thresholds carry forward unchanged, and the candidate has flown against every one of them already.
• The airplane reaches 10 knots below the target airspeed for the maneuver without correction applied.
• Bank exceeds 45 degrees outside a maneuver that calls for it, or 30 degrees below 500 ft AGL.
• The airplane is not on the runway centerline extended below 200 ft AGL.
• A stall recovery is not initiated at the first indication where first indication was the briefed recovery point.
• Altitude loss in any recovery exceeds what was briefed, and no recovery input has increased.
• The candidate is teaching rather than flying while the airplane needs flying.
• Either pilot is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

The last two are the ones specific to this lesson. A candidate absorbed in explaining is the characteristic failure of the mock flight, and it is the reason the threshold is stated in a document the candidate reads in advance rather than discovered when the airplane changes hands.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Taking the airplane is not a fail. It is a deficiency row, with an observation, a cause, and an assigned remediation, exactly like every other row.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• standards/MOCK-PRACTICAL.md, in full, if you have not already read it for lesson 40.
• FAA-S-ACS-25, areas of operation IV to XII and XIV, and Appendix 3.
• The intervention threshold above. You will be asked to state it before the flight.
• Your own written assessments from lessons 25, 26, 33, and 38. Read lesson 25 against lesson 38 and notice what changed. Your evaluator will have read the same two.

Bring:

• Your view limiting device. 61.45(d)(2) makes it yours to furnish, not the school's, and the same rule applies on the real test.
• Your charts, publications, and electronic flight bag if you use one.
• Your lesson plans, on paper. You may be asked to brief from any of them.

Prepare by teaching, not by reviewing. Fly with somebody in the week before and teach them something from the right seat. Reading maneuver descriptions is preparation for a knowledge test and this is not one.

Not applicable, and the field is retained rather than deleted.

Video Slots hold Clips of a Student flying a maneuver, per CONTEXT.md and Decision 32. This lesson teaches no new maneuver and introduces no new Clip. The Clips for every maneuver flown today already exist as slots on the phase 3 lesson that taught it.

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

Assess the combined standard, and be precise about which half failed. "Weak on chandelles" is not usable. "Narration stopped at the 90 degree point on both chandelles, and the roll-out was 10 degrees late on the second" is two observations, and each has a different cause and a different correction.

The most diagnostic single move is the two-error move. Standard 5. A candidate who names both errors and fixes neither has the knowledge and not the judgment, and that is a specific, teachable gap rather than a general weakness. It is also the gap most likely to matter in their first month of instructing.

Watch what happens to the narration under load. Silence under high workload is invisible to the person doing it, which is exactly why lesson 26 exists and why it is one of the four recorded phase 3 lessons. If it has come back, say so, and reference lesson 26 by name so the candidate can go back to their own written assessment from it.

Record what was not assessed. If weather cut the plan of action short, that goes on the list as not assessed. A real evaluator records areas not tested on the notice of disapproval, and a mock that silently treats unflown maneuvers as satisfactory is worse than one that ran short.

You do not set Tracker Status and you do not write the recommendation. Both are the Supervising Instructor's, named and dated, per cross-cutting requirement 9. Lesson 42 makes that decision.

Hand the completed deficiency list, covering lessons 40 and 41 together, to the Supervising Instructor and to the candidate the same day, and file it. It survives certification, and post-certificate mentorship consumes it in another project.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-8.2, US-8.1, US-5.2, US-5.5
• ✓Carries ACS areas and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior
• ✓Common candidate errors listed, each with the instructor's response
• ✓Intervention threshold stated explicitly, verbatim in both halves, and stated in advance
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-14, at title 14 currency 2026-08-12
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure, hours reconciling. Claims no new ACS task
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots marked not applicable, with the reason, rather than deleted
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no reproduced flight manual numbers, no pricing
• ✓Falling short does not block progression (Decision 9)
• ✓Conducted by a second Delivery Pool instructor, with no escape clause (US-8.2, Decision 4)
• ✓Full practical test scope for the flight portion, with unassessed areas recorded as unassessed
• ✓Output is a written deficiency list, not a pass or fail verdict
• ✓A camera changes nothing about the intervention threshold (US-5.4)
• ✓The one-instructor Delivery Pool is named here and escalated on the board, not worked around