I know the flight is already over with but one thought...
If you're booking the rental so tight that you "must be back" you're building a habit that's not good. One of get-home-itis. Don't paint yourself into a corner like that, it'll show up to bite you later in your flying career in bad habits learned being on too tight a schedule. Just sayin'...
lol. My CFI responds to my texts once every... actually, never. I end up calling
Some of us are old enough to remember when text messaging didn't exist and also have bifocals and small phone keyboards. Hahaha. My current CFI is in his 70s and types with one finger. I never email or text him. It'd almost be rude. Hahaha.
My favorite CFI text story lately was from a younger CFI who posted "student problems..." and a screenshot of a back and forth on his phone from a student that went something like this...
"I forgot to turn on the fuel pump to start the engine and it's running now and I'm not sure if that's okay...?"
"So the engine is running and you're texting me?"
"Yes."
"And you're not on fire?"
"No."
"Sounds like no problem to me. Put the phone away and go flying."
I'm sending my first student off for solo cross-countries soon.
I feel like I'd rather he not get out and hang out at an airport, but rather, stay in go-mode. If he needs a breather, fine. But I feel like it helps to limit the other stuff going on. Any thoughts either way?
@Cajun_Flyer, your long XC was epic, maybe it should be the model instead?
Similar to my opening comment. Don't teach "go mode" it leads to get-home-it's. Teach to stop if you feel any reason to at all and re-evaluate, re-preflight, re-check weather, and treat it like its a new flight with a new go/no-go decision, like it should always be, heck even a T&G and heading to the next airport should be in your student's heads. No need to hurry them.
It was a TON of fun. No rush and ended up home 10 min early.
That's kinda close on scheduling, as mentioned above. Blowing 10 minutes checking something that doesn't seem right or problems at a remote airport (ever have to wait around a half an hour to find the damn fuel truck guy who went to lunch and took the keys to the truck with him? Haha. I have...) can eat 10 minutes in a hurry and then give you a false sense of needing to hurry up. Don't fly hurried. It'll lead to problems, I promise.
They make a nice momento.
They do. Many places you go never had anyone at the counter but they had a sign in book. I've flipped back through the book years later on the next visit to the airport and found where I was last there and what I wrote the last time.
I think I've mentioned this before, but I happened to be at the FBO when a foreign student of mine taxied in from his long cross-country...
...and I watched as a fellow student deplaned from the passenger seat.
Needless to say, I was not happy, and he had to redo the solo cross-country properly.
Ohhhhh I bet you were mad... Wow.
I've heard of a couple of CFIs who needed to do a currency flight or whatever jumping in a much faster airplane and beating their students to the third stop just to surprise them, since they didn't have someone else booked that day. But neither had a student pull that stupidity... They were standing in the FBO at the stop and handed humorous "landing scorecards" as a joke to their students when they arrived. Stuff like "extra points for the six bounces"... pre-printed on them.
Then they got in the faster airplane and beat the students back home. Heh.