Taking newbies flying...

....offers endless opportunities for screwing up the experience for them, as
I've demonstrated yet again.

My business partner's 21-yr. old son has been hinting around for a few years
that he wanted to try flying sometime. When he finally asked outright to
take a flight, I was happy to agree, especially since he would be bringing
along his supermodel-quality girlfriend.

So T_ and M_ showed up at the airport Saturday afternoon. T_ was interested
in everything that was happening on the ramp and M_ was stopping students
and flight instructors in mid-sentence as she walked by. The weather was
perfect and this was going to be great fun.

After the walkaround and passenger briefing, I got my pax headsetted and
buckled in and gave T_ a description of how the controls worked. I let him
steer on the long taxi out to RWY 36. Cleared for takeoff, I let him
control the yoke. He did fine on the rotation and climbout, so I let him
make the climbing 180 deg. left turn to our departure heading. He did that
fine, too. Once I got T_ trimmed out and flying level, I turned to M_ in
the back seat to ask how she was doing.

Ummm..., not so well: M_ had the look of someone who had just stared death
in the face.

" Doing OK, M_?"

"Uh, better now," said M_, attempting a brave smile. "That turn was a
little scary!"

What M_ wasn't saying, of course, was that she had just spent a few seconds
fearing for her life because an apparent lunatic had turned over control of
an itty bitty airplane to her virtually clueless boyfriend, who promptly put
it in a bank 500' from the ground.

M_ brightened up a bit as the flight went along but she mentioned the
scary departure turn a couple more times. I was cursing myself the whole
way. I had really screwed it up by doing a wholly inadequate job of
preparing my pax for what they were going to experience. As a result, I
somehow doubt that I will have the pleasure of M_'s company on any future
flights.

Lesson learned: tell your newbie pax everything that is going to happen in
advance. Be especially detailed about any plans for their controlling the
airplane, and find out if they are going to be uncomfortable with anything
you have planned.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM