Instructors always have hundreds of funny memories and stories, but this one is my current all time favourite, mainly because it is one of the few times a student completely surprised me, but secondly because I gained a good friend in the process.

Shortly after I began instructing full time, with around 200hrs instruction and 800 hours total time my boss introduced me to a ‘to be’ new student of mine.

The student was an adult private pilot who flew for recreation, at some point she told me she began learning to fly to conquer her fear of flying, but whenever it was it didn’t quite register to me that some of that fear was still very much alive and well.
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I work for a fairly traditional airline in a fairly backwards or shall I rather say stagnated thinking country.

Pilot bags are not specified in the company uniform code, nor are they provided by the company, and with the recent addition of an airbus many pilots must carry laptops.
This resulted in one or two pilots purchasing the latest very stylish laptop backpacks.

After much speculation, umming and ahhing by management, they decided this is not the way a “proffessional pilot” presents him/herself. An out of date bulky “I’m a pilot” style double width black briefcase is much preferred, and note, regardless of the 35 degrees temperatures we must not be seen in public without our jackets on.
I wanna know, do they want us to also go back to wearing 80’s style Ray-Bans and while we are at it shall we bring back the hats?

Well apart from the stylish laptop bags, I personally also like the new buget airline style polo shirts, much more practical, but regardless I just wish they would stop being caught up in the “that’s what we do because that’s what we’ve always done traps”, hasn’t CRM taught us any lateral thinking?

I just had to include some of the really funny ones, but here is the original link: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=264727

Also from ATC (radar unit) on a student navex “cy instructor” “CY instructor go ahead” - “do you want me to say something”, “CY instructor - no thank you”. And still the student did not realise she was lost!

Student declared emergency at Cranfield a few years ago, in a C150/152 with the flaps not working.
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I was visiting a friend in Munich, on arrival he asked us what we wanted to do. “How about a flight over the alps?” We both fly for airlines normally but find nothing more fun than flying around in small aircraft (note: some of my colleagues think it is quite scary). I normally find it a bit expensive, and stick to instruction for kicks, but since I was on holiday, and where I come from there is not even snow let alone alps, I thought, lets do it.

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I am sick of operators saying - we can’t afford it. I mean can we afford fuel? Can we afford maintenance? Perhaps we should just skip those too (note: it’s hard to believe but there are operators out there changing name plates and falsifying overhauls on engines).
Safety in aviation takes a precedence - and you must either operate properly or give it up.
Some people can make money and still stick to the law. If you cant do this take a good look at yourself or your operation. Are you really one of those people that puts money ahead of people’s lives?

We dropped into the skydive club at the local airfield one night. Pilots always find skydivers quite curious folk, as the old saying goes - why would someone want to jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane. However it made for an interesting change in the conversations from the typical aeroclub banter.
One of the tandem masters after completing his last drop was sitting down over a beer and was relaying his experience.
According to the jump master the guy was struggling a bit when they jumped out of the aircraft. This often happens when the jumpee panicks, and apparently causes quite alot of problems as if you dont align yourself correctly when you open the shoot you can get the shoot tangled. The following conversation between two jump masters followed:
Jump master “You know mate -It’s always a problem when they start struggling, specially when they are bigger than you”
Other jump master “Yeah mate - you someimes can’t get them under control, That’s when should you bounce them”
Me - “what’s bouncing?”
Jump master - “You release- But anyway, this guy was a czech”
Other jump master - “Oh yeah - you really shouldn’t bounce a czech should you?”

Note: for those of you out there thinking about tandem skydiving I do think they were joking about the bounce part.