Training K oos K ieck
THE PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTOR Koos ‘Rapier’ Kieck is an ‘uber-pilot’. A career pilot with the SAAF he was a ‘vlamgat’ Mirage pilot and air combat instructor. After leaving the SAAF as a Lt Colonel, he joined Working on Fire to fly their massive Air Tractor
Cheryl Smit Photography
802 Fire Bombers, which he did safely for nine years.
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OOS is dismayed by what he sees as slipping standards in flight instruction and has put together a list of bullet points (what did you expect from an air combat instructor) for a presentation he made to civvy flight instructors: 1. INTRODUCTION: 1.1. How professional are we instructors? 1.2. What is our approach to our students? • Is it just about the income and are we ‘milking’ our students? • Are we just ‘hour building’? 1.3. What is the level of our theoretical and technical knowledge? 1.4. At what level are our flying skills? A very senior instructor at Dunnottar once said to me, “You are obliged to give the best instruction possible to a student because he deserves the same chance you had. Who are you to play God and deny a student a career in aviation because you don’t like him – or his father – who
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