The Simplicity Of Technology May Be Making It Harder For Flight Instructors

By Maria Morrison

About 25 years ago, for a kid to talk to someone, they had to bike or get driven over to the other person’s house, plan, talk to parents, and then sort out communication. Now, you send a quick text, find a ride and you’re there. Technology has made things simpler, but according to commercial pilot and flight instructor Theodore Sanders (pictured), things might have been easier without it.

In Sanders case, being a pilot was all he wanted to do. However, many kids are now splitting their time flying with their time texting or taking photos. Mr. Sanders told me about when he was taking a girl on an intro flight, he looked over from time to time, and she was texting for about 3/4 of the flight. When he was a kid, flying was a privilege, but also expensive and rare. Many people who wanted to fly, Sanders included, joined the military to get to fly. Because most started families, they took a break from flying for a while. When they came back,  the flying world was very different. More traffic, complicated radios, and different, harder instruments were just some of the problems.

“Although this generation has more complications with flying,” Sanders said, “They should not think they have flown just because they were in a simulator or played a flying app.”

Kids now are overloaded with technology and are not ‘joiners’ They experience things digitally and think that they have done the real thing. According to Sanders, technology reduces skills and actually makes things harder than they need to be because kids don’t know what something is like in real life. Less kids want to fly because they think that they already have. From many people’s points of view, technology is making things harder because of it’s simplicity. To learn more about flight instruction through the EAA visit.

FMI: www.EAA.org