Mock flight

What this lesson is for: flying the flight portion at practical test scope, teaching throughout, with an instructor who has never flown with you.

Same evaluator as lesson 40. They have read your written assessments, they have your deficiency list from the mock oral, and they have built a plan of action weighted toward whatever the oral exposed.

It does not produce a pass or a fail. It adds to the same written deficiency list, which lesson 42 exists to close.

FAA-S-ACS-25 Appendix 1 requires the evaluator to confirm your ability to perform the tasks at the level of a commercial pilot while giving effective flight instruction.

Read that as one sentence. Not "fly well" and separately "teach well". At the same time, under load, from the right seat.

This is where candidates lose points and it is almost always the same way. Under pressure, one half degrades to protect the other. Either the narration stops while the airplane is flown precisely, or the narration continues while the altitude wanders. Both are the same failure, and knowing which way you go is worth more than any amount of extra practice.

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 below. 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.

The evaluator does. They cover the maneuver clusters the certificate is tested on, weighted toward what the mock oral exposed.

If you were hoping to fly your best maneuvers, that is the instinct this lesson exists to defeat. An examiner will not ask what you would like to show them.

1. The preflight brief, the way an evaluator briefs a practical test.
2. The view limiting device procedure, agreed before we fly.
3. Preflight preparation and procedures, taught.
4. A preflight lesson on each maneuver before it is flown.
5. Airport operations, takeoffs, landings, and go-arounds, taught.
6. Fundamentals of flight and performance maneuvers, taught.
7. Slow flight and the stall series, taught, with the stall area reviewed in the brief.
8. Basic instrument maneuvers, taught.
9. Emergency operations, taught.
10. Postflight procedures, taught.
11. Analyzing and correcting your Student's errors, throughout.

Point 11 runs through everything else. The evaluator will act as your Student during selected maneuvers, which the ACS explicitly allows so that your ability to analyze and correct common errors can be assessed. The errors will be real ones from their own students, not textbook errors, and you have never seen their habits.

Point 4 is graded on its own. AI.IV.A, the preflight lesson on a maneuver to be performed in flight, is an area of operation. Skipping it because the maneuver is familiar is a fault against a task, not a shortcut.

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.
4. Analyze and correct your Student's errors as they happen, in priority order.
5. Demonstrate maneuvers to commercial tolerance while narrating them.
6. Take the airplane from your Student when your own stated threshold is reached.
7. Critique yourself before you hear anything back.
8. Agree your half of the deficiency list, or say where you disagree and why.

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

1. You teach continuously from the right seat and do not go silent through any maneuver entry, roll-in, or recovery.
2. You deliver a preflight lesson on each maneuver before it is flown, covering the objective, the elements, and the common errors.
3. You fly each demonstrated maneuver to commercial tolerance while narrating it, meeting both halves of that standard at the same time.
4. You identify and correct at least six simulated Student errors, naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction.
5. You prioritize correctly when two errors are present, addressing the one that matters first, at least twice.
6. You state your own intervention threshold before the flight and take the airplane at or before it during at least one deliberately induced deviation.
7. You defer a Student question asked at a high workload moment, and return to it.
8. You teach the postflight procedures, rather than performing them silently.
9. A written deficiency list exists at the end of the lesson, 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. Shortfalls become rows on the list rather than a verdict. Falling short does not block lesson 42. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

• Going silent through the demanding part of a maneuver. This is the lesson 26 skill and it is the first thing to decay when somebody is assessing you.
• Flying well and teaching nothing, or teaching well and flying loosely. One standard, not two.
• Skipping the preflight lesson because the maneuver is familiar. It is a graded task.
• Naming every error and fixing none. A list is not instruction. Fix the one that matters.
• Correcting an error your Student did not make. Watch the airplane, not your lesson plan.
• Finding a fault in a maneuver that was flown correctly. A critique names what was right too. If your Student flies it well, say why it was well flown.
• Answering a question on short final. Fly the airplane. Deferring is the correct instruction, and it is a graded behavior.
• Taking the airplane much earlier than your stated threshold. Your Student never gets room to learn, and it means your stated threshold was not honest.
• Taking it late, or narrating instead of taking it. This is the one that ends real tests.
• Not noticing a Student who has gone quiet. Silence is a signal.
• Treating the postflight as paperwork. AI.XIV.A is an area of operation.
• Waiting for a verdict. There is not one. You will get a list.

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 you have 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.
• You are 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 today. Being absorbed in an explanation while the airplane needs attention is the characteristic failure of a mock flight, which is why you are reading this in advance rather than finding out when the airplane changes hands.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Being given the airplane is not a fail. It becomes a row on the deficiency list, with an observation, a cause, and something specific to work on, exactly like every other row.

Not applicable. Video Slots hold Clips of a Student flying a maneuver. This lesson teaches no new maneuver, and the Clips for everything you fly today already sit on the phase 3 lesson that taught it.

We may record this flight if you want it for your own review. Any footage is deleted on the 30 day Promotion Window, and the written deficiency list is the record. A camera changes nothing about the intervention threshold above.

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