The Art of Staying Ahead of the Airplane

A phrase commonly heard in flight training is, "stay ahead of the airplane!". As a student pilot, you may have trouble decoding that phrase really means, all while trying to maintain altitude and heading, responding to ATC, and listening to your instructor. Staying ahead of the aircraft isn't about being perfecly on headings, airspeeds, and altitudes though, its about anticipating what is to come next and preparing yourself and the aircraft for it.

Early on in your training, its easy to have a reactive response to flying, and it's something that I see many student pilots struggle with. A pilot who’s reacting is constantly behind: chasing the airplane’s speed, altitude, and etc. A pilot who’s planning ahead is calm, methodical, and ready. Consider this scenario: ATC has just switched you over to tower. Ok I'll type in the frequency now. Rather, start practicing staying ahead of the aircraft by programming tower into the standby frequency beforehand, anticipating the change over to tower.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a Cessna 172 or a multi-engine: the airplanes don’t wait for you to catch up. As the airplane gets faster and more complex, the consequences of being behind grow. That’s why instructors teach and encourage flow patterns, callouts, and briefings. They’re not just procedures to keep you busy, they’re tools to keep your brain one step ahead.

When tranistioning to faster and more complex aircraft, it is easy to fall behind the aircraft and let "the plane fly you". Climbs happen faster, longer checklists must be run, and procedures can be more complex. The #1 method to learning to stay ahead of the aircraft is chair flying.

Chair flying is the most useful tool in all of aviation. By taking the time before every flight to sit down and imagine the procedures, run through checklists or manuevers will enhance not only your stick and rudder skill, but your ability to stay ahead of the aircraft. It may sound silly, but it is priceless. My personal method of chair flying begins in a spinny chair. I sit and fly through every manuever, with one hand on an invisible yoke, another on an imaginairy throttle. If am practicing a turn, then I will physically turn my chair in the direction of the turn. If I initiate a climb or descent, I adjust my power as required and physically move the chair in response. Verbally walking yourself through the maneuver, turn, climb, or descent helps reinforce memory retention and builds confidence before you even touch the controls.

Other resources such as apps or cockpit diagrams are great aids to chair flying as well. If you are a pilot who flies with a Garmin GPS, check out the app store for the "Garmin Trainer Aviation" app. There, you can practice programming the GPS for direct to functions, approaches, arrivals, holding patterns, and more!

Garmin App Links:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/685256/

Another method to staying ahead of the aircraft is always asking: "what's next?". Each flight has 3 basic phases: takeoff, cruise, and landing. Cruise isn’t the time to just sit back and stare out the window, it’s the time to stay engaged and think, “what’s next?.  There’s always something you can do to prepare for the next phase of flight. Review your descent checklist, brief your approach, study taxi diagrams, tune and identify the next frequency, or evaluate weather conditions at your destination. These small steps keep your workload manageable and prevent you from being caught off guard later. By using cruise time wisely, you’re setting yourself up for a smoother descent and a safer, more organized approach.

Staying ahead of the aircraft is a skill that you don't forget. The goal is to become a proactive and safe pilot, not a reactive one. Flying will always throw surprises at you: weather changes, ATC reroutes, unexpected turbulence, or mechanical issues, but staying ahead is what keeps those surprises manageable.