6 Things to Know Before Launching Professional Flight Training

From trimming to time studying between lessons, a professional pilot details what he wished he knew before his flight training.

[Screenshot/YouTube]

Looking back over the progression of professional flight training, there are a few things that airline captain Sam Weigel now wishes that he knew then.

This week, Weigel details six of those.

For one, use of the trim is a skill to be honed early and used often. "Early in your training, get in the habit of constantly trimming and you'll find the flying much easier," Weigel says.

For another example, go-arounds shouldn’t be considered failures, either, according to Weigel. He says all his scary landings stemming from botched approaches during training could have all been prevented with a timely decision to just go around.

"Let me tell you something that will make things easier,” he says. “An approach is a maneuver that ends in either a landing or a go-around, and either is a perfectly normal outcome." 

Sam Weigel has been an airplane nut since an early age, and when he's not flying the Boeing 737 for work, he enjoys going low and slow in vintage taildraggers. He and his wife live west of Seattle, where they are building an aviation homestead on a private 2,400-foot grass airstrip.

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