Sue's Diary—Fear and confidence

There is a saying in the horse world, “fear travels down the reins”.

I have found this to be absolutely true. Horses (and other animals) instinctively recognise fear and act accordingly.

Therefore, anyone who is nervous and wishes to learn to ride a horse will have more difficulties in achieving this than a more confident student.

I firmly believe that you could apply this statement to any kind of sport or discipline in all walks of life,

As mentioned in a previous article, I came into flying after a long and successful career in the racing  world.

After an accident, I set myself a new challenge and found to my great surprise that I was 'hooked' on flying.

I was very fortunate to find a flying school, with a dedicated instructor who was also a superb pilot so I found no major difficulties in gaining my PPL.

Sadly, this is not the case for many pupils. Time and time again, I find that students come to me in desperation, having lost confidence in themselves due to a multitude of reasons including the lack of structured training programmes, frequent bad-weather cancellations and 'bossy' instructors.

We all can remember our schooldays when inspired teaching produced excellent results but only moderate marks were achieved with teachers who were either intimidating or boring.

The same applies to flying—we can all excel if inspired but not if we are bored, scared, or nervous.

Much later in my life, while working through my 'commercial' training, my confidence was shattered when told by an instructor that ”I would never pass my CPL".

Having recently completed ground examinations which were the most difficult undertaking of my life, I was looking forward to the flying test until totally devastated by this thoughtless remark.

Luckily, I met Tizzie, a wonderful lady instructor, who told me “there are no bad students, only bad  instructors” and got me through the CPL with only 10 hours of additional training.

I later achieved my ultimate goal of the Instructors Rating and vowed that I would always use positive teaching methods in order to give my students confidence.

Two years ago, I was contacted by a man in his sixties who, as a teenager, started flying Tiger Moths with the Air Training Corps but was totally discouraged by a bombastic lady instructor who constantly shouted criticisms in his ear (the Tiger Moth has tandem seating so he got it in stereo).

Consequently, he gave up his dream of a PPL before even going solo and this failure haunted him for the next 40 years, despite his great success in business.

Then, as a birthday treat, his son paid for him to try again which is when he came to me for two weeks training with the simple goal of flying and landing the aircraft which he did very well. Only strong crosswinds prevented from going solo at the end of the holiday and I am delighted to report that he went home a very happy man.

Confidence is the key to the enjoyment of flying. We can all enjoy the wonders of flying if we are relaxed and confident.

My advice—please don't give up or you may miss the best experiences of your life.

Best wishes

Sue