SPC088 [HS] Powered by Human Intelligence, a Discussion with Jason Miller

All right.

Welcome back, SPC listeners.

My guest today has been teaching people for over 20 years, maybe

over nearly 10,000 hours of instruction, something like that.

Nod if I'm right.

Yeah.

the FAA has named him Western Pacific CFI of the Year twice.

Yeah

built one of the most respected flight training platforms in general aviation,

in my opinion, The Finer Points.

Jason Miller, welcome to the Student Pilot Cast.

Thanks, Bill.

It's a pleasure to be here

Awesome.

It's been a while since we've, connected, maybe like a decade or more.

Yeah

so, I'd love to just kinda catch up with you a little bit on what

you're up to these days and, what you're doing with The Finer Points.

Just give me a high level

Yeah, sure.

I mean, The Finer Points is, um, kinda still humming along.

and social media and stuff like that.

But really the business has evolved into a flight training app that's made

for the iOS devices, whether it's a Mac computer, an iPad, or an iPhone.

Um, and it's, it's really a download of almost e- my entire career.

Wait a minute.

Did you just say it w- it's got an app for the Mac?

Yeah, it does.

And that's brand new.

know that.

that's great.

No, I, no, see, I got the, I, I go on shows like yours

to try to get the word out.

That's

Exactly.

that, that's… Yeah, so

love, I love the app.

I use it, I use it actually to prep for my own teaching,

Wow, that's great.

Yeah

uh, because I just think it's… I, I just love your approach.

And, uh, so anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Keep going.

But I'm super happy to know that it works on a computer now too

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, check it out.

It should just sync with all your devices.

Um, but yeah, that's, that's kind of it, you know?

It's like that, the… Our app is different than almost all other

ground schools in the sense that it's, it's a little bit, it models

real-world training, as you know.

So, like, of course, there's the ground school side of it.

That's the written test prep or the groundwork, home study course,

whatever you wanna call it.

But there's also the flight side, and on the flight side, each lesson

is constructed with me giving you a briefing, and then we go to the

plane, and then we do a debriefing.

So it kinda models real life, and there's five courses in there now,

and it's just growing and improving all the time, as, as you know.

Now we have a Mac version, um, and that's what we put our whole heart into.

Um, I really feel like I, you know, after doing, like, podcasts and videos

and just sort of throwing tips out at the world for 20 years or so, it feels

really rewarding to me to be able to say to myself, "Okay, I want somebody

ultimately to download this app and kinda know everything I know," you know?

Like, as if I was your mentor for any rating or any certificate.

Um, and, and yeah, so we, we, we put everything we've

got in, into that product.

And that's, that's our future, and that's, that's what we're doing.

Yeah, it's really cool.

I love the, um, I mean, it's, it's not the app so much, it's the content.

It's that 10,000 hours of experience that you've got that you're able to get

across in there, and that's, that's what makes it so valuable to me and, uh, to

a couple of my students who've used it

Well, that's great.

Thank you.

It's great to hear that 'cause, you know, like I just said, that's my

goal, is to have the users of the app feel as though they had-- they

leveraged my experience, you know?

As you know, there's not a lot of instructors that really

teach full-time for very long.

You know, most instructors are passing through, which, which is okay, but,

um, I'm not one of those guys, and so I want, wanna create a product that sort

of reflects what the world looks like if you stay in it for 20 years, you know?

Yeah.

I love that.

I mean, most of my colleagues that I teach around and with are kids.

They're literally the ages or younger than my kids,

Yeah.

uh, pretty nuts.

I mean, they're great instructors.

I love working with them, and they keep me young, keep me, you

know, keep, keep me inspired.

Yeah

they certainly don't have your type of experience.

so yeah, I, I really love that.

And that's what this podcast is really about.

That's what I'm all about, is that lifelong learning, always

a student kind of mentality,

Mm-hmm

I love the teaching.

So before I get going further with that, I've got a question for you.

You

Sure

music?

Do you bring your guitar on your airplane camp trips?

I do, I do.

I always feel like it's a bit egregious.

I've got everyone captive.

They're there and they can't leave.

They've already had a beer or something, so they can't fly away,

and that's when I pull out the guitar.

No, it's, uh… Yeah, yeah, I do.

It's, it's a lot of fun.

And I still play, um… It's funny where, where that happens, but I just played

at my daughter's school two days ago.

So, like, that kind of thing happens a lot where I'll, I'll go to the

kids' school and play music or

That's one of the things I remember.

It's one

Yeah.

remember is you w- us sitting around in Camp Scholer and you playing the guitar,

Yeah.

Well, that still happens.

I'll be in Camp Scholer this summer if you're around.

Perfect.

Yeah, I'm probably… I, I think I'm gonna be, um, for the third time now, I think

I'll be, uh, camping with my airplane,

Oh, wow.

Cool.

Yeah, that's fun.

The North 40 is fun too

if I decide to make the trip, but I'll come over to listen

to your music for sure in

Yeah.

Oh boy, pressure.

All right, so, um, you know, just to kinda kick things off here,

um, give you a little background.

I've been a full-time CFI now for about 18 months, and I'm watching students

show up at the flight school with wildly different levels of preparation.

Mm-hmm.

excellent, some are basically none, like, "What's this all about?"

Yeah

and you've been watching this type of thing longer than almost anybody I know.

Yeah

so I just wanna get a kind of an idea from inside your head, uh,

Uh, we're, we're in recovery.

This is, this is a recovery mode, I think that, that what,

what we're into right now.

I mean, uh, from trying to get the years right, 20-

2015 maybe, maybe a little earlier than that.

You know, you remember everybody was getting hired, y- right?

So people were just moving through the system so fast, and we took a lot

of steps backward during that time.

And now I think we're-- the hiring has slowed down a little bit, which is good.

And for anybody that is listening that doesn't quite get the correlation

there, it's when the CFIs are hired rapidly that way, then you

have nobody with any experience really teaching the newer people.

And so then you start to… It's like, uh, snowballing mistakes.

We say babies teaching babies, and that's a symptom of the industry

in any situation, at any time.

You know, it's just the way it works out is most people don't teach for very long.

really bad and it, and, and it was starting to show up in accidents.

And it's scary for me as somebody who depends on this industry for my

livelihood because the, the industry, so to, so to speak, has kind of amnesia.

We don't remember what happened in the '80s, which is there were so many

accidents, the entire industry shut down.

Like they just-- it ground to a halt.

A lot of people don't know that, you know, from '86 to…

amnesia, like these, these instructors weren't even twinkles in their

parents' eyes yet in the '80s,

That's, why I blame the industry.

I blame-- I, to be honest, I'm trying not to blame my competition, but I

really think that, like, some of the big gorillas in the room that are positioned

to, you know, that are the go-to brands for ground school or whatever are, are--

They have a certain responsibility.

They're in a position where they can make a difference, and

they should make a difference.

And, um,

Mm-hmm.

it's my belief they, they don't really make a diff- You know, they,

they are getting pushed in that direction, but they have to get pushed.

So yeah, I mean, so, so kids coming in don't really know

the difference, you know?

And, um, I think we're, we're starting to recover from that.

In fact, you can see the FAA take aim at that.

We haven't spoken too much about it publicly, but I'm not sure if you're

aware, the FAA just announced they're overhauling the entire way they do

written tests, and they're taking aim.

it yet

Yeah, it's brand new.

Um, they're taking aim at, um, some of the big companies that are helping

students memorize answers, right?

They're getting rid of it.

They're gonna no longer publish the airman testing supplements at all.

Nobody will have any idea what figures are going into the written tests.

They're gonna start writing questions that pull from the knowledge codes

of the flight tasks on the ACS.

We had a student come back from a test not too long ago saying one of the

questions he got was, where should he position the aircraft during a run-up, on

the taxiway, on the ramp, or, you know.

But it was like an operational question on a written test, right?

Right.

So we're moving into, like, the FAA is, is it's, it's on the front burner

for them to start to fix that problem.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And I, yeah

they got rid of the questions that had wrong answers.

I know, right?

that step,

I know.

It's like, it's like watching molasses flow uphill.

It's so slow, I can't… They promised this, honestly, when they

released the ACS in, what was it?

I

that was a long time

a long time ago, right?

And, and that, that was the promise, and they're finally delivering.

And for, you know, for us at The Finer Points, I feel we're really

well-positioned to absorb that because our philosophy has always

been there's no memorization.

Like, we're gonna teach everybody the truth, we're gonna teach it fully,

we're gonna make sure they understand it, and then the written test should

be a no-brainer regardless of what questions are on there, you know?

Um, in fact, over the years, we continued, or we're, we're-- it's,

it's so nice that the FAA is doing what they're doing because people have

been continuing to send us requests for more, like, Shepherd Air-type things.

They're like, "Can you just show us the whole database and let us

go through all the questions?" And we're like, "Uh, I don't know if I

wanna do that exactly." You know?

And now there's no reason to do it 'cause the FAA's cha-

those companies are in trouble.

I don't know what they're gonna do.

Oh,

You know the ones…

Yeah.

Um, so

yeah, you, um, you mentioned the steps backward we're taking, and

then you mentioned, um, safety.

Mm-hmm

is that the only metric you use for that?

Or what other metrics or what other things are you noticing that indicate

the steps backward that we took?

Well, the, it's, it's anecdotal for me, so it's-- I don't wanna judge

the industry based on what I hear.

But being in the position that I'm in, uh, you know, we have our CFI club where we've

got almost 4,000 CFIs around the country.

We've got our public-facing app, so we have support tickets,

and people send us questions.

And so during that time when it was really bad, um, I can just tell you

in one story that's anecdotal from my life, but a guy calls me from the East

Coast and says his instructor thinks he's ready to solo, but he's gonna be in

California, and he wants to fly with me to see if I agree with his instructor.

So we, we get, we get there and, um, you know, I do a little bit of vetting.

Like I look at his driver's license, and I get to know him a little bit.

But by and large, people call me and we get in the airplane, we go to the

airplane, we get in, I take it… I looked at his logbook a little.

But I asked him to start the engine of the aircraft, and he

told me, "I've never done that."

And I was like: "Wait, you're, but you're pre-solo, right?" And he's like: "Yeah,

I'm, I'm ready to solo." He's like, "But my CFI just starts the airplane

every time." And I was like, "Okay."

Wow

Yeah.

And so anyway, through the course of getting to know this kid, I come

to realize that his instructor has never left the traffic pattern with

him, that his instructor shows up to the lesson, his instructor brings

the airplane, his instructor starts the engine, and his instructor just

runs laps in the pattern with him.

He'd never done slow flight, he'd never done stalls, he'd never done steep turns.

That's just one story.

Um, another story, you know, so by the way, you, you're an instructor now too.

That, with that story, it was very, very difficult for me to not contact

the FAA 'cause that, that instructor is, in my opinion, criminally negligent.

I mean, that's really bad.

But I hear stories of instrument instructors that say things like,

"I'm not comfortable flying in the clouds in a light airplane," so they

won't go into IMC with their students.

Um, you know, these kinds of things.

Like I just have a sense that, uh, the pilots that we're producing are

just it's not as at a, at a, at as high a level as it might have been.

Now, if you look back, I always joke that I got started during the drought, right?

Because we just dis- discussed

you learn to fly?

'97. So, so the year that I started was the year Cessna

started making planes again.

So

All right

from '86 to '97, the whole industry was shut down because of

liability and lawsuits and safety.

And so it was a drought.

We went from, we had about a million pilots in '86 down to 200,000 in '97.

We lost 700,000 active pilots during, during the shutdown when I started

I mean, it was th- for the eight years prior to that,

nobody was making airplanes.

We lost 700,000 pilots just to quitting and going into other things.

So I call it the drought is when I, when, when I entered the industry, and at

that time nobody was hiring instructors.

So when you went into a flight school, like when I went into a flight school

for my first job, there was like this whole cadre of senior guys.

I mean, gray beard.

right?

grizzled graybeards.

They've been teaching for decades.

They're probably like, you know, like me today.

But, um, you know, then there's the younger instructors and,

and all the younger instructors, we had to pass muster.

We had to like please the older guys.

The older guys are the ones that did all the phase checks, and if you're

a young instructor and you turn in a student for a phase check and they're

not up to snuff, it was like, you know, you got smacked down in the next CFI

meeting and you had to bring your skills.

Yeah.

It was like there was, those guys are just nowhere to be found, guys

and girls, and it was just a bunch of new people looking for guidance.

And, um, it's one of the reasons we actually, you know, really focused on

building the, the ground school product was to fill that void and to give…

'Cause at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're a

new instructor per se, right?

It's not, it's not how much ex- I mean, experience helps, sure.

But it's, it's like your, your attitude and your approach to, to training.

So like, you know, we have our CFI club now.

A lot of those people are new CFIs or relatively new CFIs,

but they want to be good.

They have that same drive to excellence, and so they r- they

gravitate toward our products.

Like, I think that's fine.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be an airline pilot.

It's just, you know, the people that don't know what they don't know are passing

along things that can be dangerous, so

Yeah

I, I hear you.

So what, uh, since you brought up CFI Club, um, why don't you

talk a little bit about that

Mm-hmm

um, what kind of data you're receiving from that, that, that helps you kind of

see the industry and see what it needs?

Yeah, it's-- so it's probably a bit one-sided 'cause the, like I said,

the people in our club, and our club is just a free club for CFIs to join.

Um, you can, if anybody's listening and they want their CFI to join or they are

a CFI, just go to, um, oh boy, cfi.club, I think is what it is, or cficlub.com.

Something like that should work.

Anyway,

I'll put it, I'll find it and put it in the show

there you go.

Leave that to me to, to mess up the URL.

But, um, it's, it's a free club.

And one of the things that I always resented about CFI Club meetings in the

real world is that it was just a lot of like administ-ad-administrative stuff.

It used to drive me crazy.

I mean, we get all these great instructors in one room, and

everybody is like, you know…

And d- I've worked at almost every flying club in the Bay Area, so in

some cases it's a lot of people.

It's like 70 people in a room at West Valley Flying Club

or at Advantage Aviation.

You've got dozens of CFIs in the room.

And instead of talking about, you know, tradecraft and how to work

through student problems, they would say things like, "Now I need everybody

to make sure they put the binder in the red box at the end of the flight.

If I see a binder in a blue box…" And it was like, you

know, what are we doing here?

You know, you got all these great instructors, and we're just getting

all this administrative stuff.

So first and foremost, our CFI Club is meant to be kind of a, a mentorship,

and we have a meeting on the third Thursday of every month, and all

the meeting archives are available on the dashboard for CFIs to view.

But I want it to be a place where they can level up their game, you know.

And, uh, a lot of the instructors in the group are experienced like myself.

Some are brand new.

But it's always good for everybody to talk about re- changes in the regulations or,

like I mentioned, changes in the written testing or what to do if your student just

can't figure out what height to flare at.

You know, maybe somebody else has some ideas.

Maybe I do.

So we really get into the, the skill and the art of flight instruction.

And there's actually even 48 videos there that I call the CFI Handbook

that are just free for instructors that's really my brain dump for

each lesson in our syllabus.

Why are we doing the lesson?

What's the objective of the lesson?

Uh, what are some things you're probably gonna see people

do, and how do you fix it?

You know, stuff like that.

So at this point, we've got a detailed syllabus in the app and on the dashboard.

We've got those CFI Handbook videos.

We've got monthly meetings for the instructors.

So it's, uh, it's a way to just help instructors, really.

I mean, I've been a ca-career instructor my whole life and, um,

you know, if we can… Not my whole life, my whole adult life, really.

My whole ca- my, whole career life.

And if, if I can help people, uh, succeed during the time that they

are flight instructors and if they can find success using our products,

that's what the club is for.

Awesome.

Yeah, I find it an incredibly useful resource.

Oh, good.

I'm so happy to hear that.

one appreciate it,

Good.

Thanks

being a, uh, an older guy but a newer instructor, um, it, it's really helpful

for me to, like you said, hone my craft and, and get as good as I can get, right,

Yeah

level I have.

So yeah, it's, it's awesome.

So that leads me to the question, Jason, what made you decide to go

against what most of your peers were doing and become a career instructor?

You

Why, education?

Why, why did you go that route?

yeah, it's funny.

I think it was, uh, um, looking backwards on my life, it was a series

of interesting coincidences, but a powerful moment for me was, you know,

my music was my first career, right?

So I was, um, touring in a band.

We were doing quite well at, you know, pretty big shows, bringing in 1,200

people, 1,500 people to these theaters in Chicago, and yeah, it was great.

And, um, we were booked for, like, a year when we decided to call it quits.

So for, for that year I, I knew that I was going into aviation.

I mean, all I read in the tour van was aviation books.

I'd re- I'd mail order books.

I read Flying magazine.

That's, like, all I thought about.

Um, you know, I don't know if you know, like, Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden,

you know how he fly, he flies the 757,

Yeah

right?

So he was, like, my hero.

I'm like, "I'm gonna fly the van someday." But, um, ultimately, that

didn't work out, and I went immediately into aviation, and I got a job at an

FBO in a charter company in Chicago.

By sheer coincidence, all of the pilots who worked at the charter company,

well, most of them, were Eastern Airline pilots that were furloughed in their 50s.

So this is probably older than most of your audience remembers, but Eastern

Airlines used to be like United Airlines.

I mean, it was

a, it was a staple.

It was a thing.

It was never going away, and all these guys gave their whole life

to it, and then Eastern folded.

So literally every pilot I met at, at my job at Priester was just jaded and angry

and telling me, "Oh, you can't be a pilot.

You're gonna need a fallback.

You can't-- Don't risk your life on becoming a pilot."

Like, they were just angry.

So, like, my first awareness of airline flying was that you have

to get, at that time, you had to get a four-year college degree.

Then you have to go do about 70 to $100,000 of technical training, right?

Then you have to slave away.

At the time, you had to work at jobs where you're making 19,000 a year.

This has all changed, but, but

15 years sometimes

15 years, right?

And then all of that to end up at a company where if they fold, I go to

the back of the line when I'm 60?

I mean, the risk analysis was just like, how are you guys tolerating

the risk of that endeavor?

I mean, especially because your flying skills atrophy to some extent.

You know, if you're an airline pilot and you're not flying in the general

aviation world, sometimes you don't ever fly in the general aviation world again.

I mean,

Right?

flying a light plane is very, very different.

And, um, so all of that come out…

You know, so that was one big, I think, kinda seminal moment

for me, was understanding that that is what the reality is.

I c- it took me a while to even believe it.

I couldn't believe it that your, that your seniority number is tied

to the company, not to your years of experience, but to, to the company.

Or even how good you are at your job.

There's no, there's no way to set yourself apart other than

I got hired earlier than you.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's kinda crazy, yeah.

And then, you know, other things over time, like I'm a real homebody.

I'm, I'm a family guy.

Like, uh, I get up early, you know, so I'll get up at 4:30, but come

00, I mostly just wanna be with my wife and kids , you know?

I…

in a hotel room or

Not in a hotel room, yeah.

And so, like, even just the heaviness of, like, when my kids were young,

um, like having a baby at home, there were, there were some trips

and I would look at these, you know, but thinking, "Do I wanna do this?"

But some trips would have me fly somewhere else, let's say Dallas,

then I have to go to Seattle, then I have to come back to San Francisco,

where I'm a mile away from my wife and kids, and then depart again at,

midnight to go stay in some hotel in Bakersfield by myself.

I mean, just the… I don't know.

It just wasn't a life for me, honestly.

Plus, I'm pretty entrepreneurial and very, like, creativity is important to me, so I

Oh I hadn't noticed I'm just kidding

I think just, you know, controlling my own fate and, um, you know, being able

to do some music and edit and learn video and all of that was a part of

how I ended up at The Finer Points.

But the reality is I love teaching.

I mean, that's just the thing is, you know.

And moving to California from Chicago, I realized with the weather

the way it is here, people can teach for real, like, for as a job.

It's a thing people do.

My mentor, Richard, was 52 when I met him, and he was just a

professional flight instructor.

That's what he, that's what he did.

So that sort-

role model there to kind of pattern you know your future career off of

Yeah, 100%.

And it was a-- And I lived in an, in an area at that time, um, you know, where

everybody just had money and time and flexible schedules, and just almost

instantly there were more students than I could handle that would pay pretty

much whatever I would charge, you know?

Interesting

Yeah.

Yeah Okay um if I if you don't mind I'm gonna go back to CFI Club real quick

Sure

um and maybe not just CFI Club but the rest of your um experience see if

you can talk about uh you've already mentioned some of these but where do

you see the big struggles for CFIs

Well

today's world especially those who are in CFI Club and are

really trying to be better

Yeah.

So that's what I was gonna say earlier, is that I think that my, my, um, my opinion

of this is tainted a little bit by the CFI Club, 'cause I think that people

that gravitate, like, like yourself, people that gravitate to it, that find

it a great resource, that use the, the, the tools that we provide and the

products that we provide, you're already, like, not the group that needs help.

You know what I mean?

It's like when you go to a,

Doesn't

to…

it I need a lot of

Do you?

Well, even, even your awareness of that tells me something about

how good of an instructor you are.

Yeah, because I think caring is the big thing.

You know, like, there are just so many instructors that either don't care or

don't know that there's a difference.

You know, I-- when I coach CFIs or even when I talk to my team about the,

the products that we're building, I find myself a lot of times saying:

Look, pilots aren't morons, right?

They're not gonna pay more for the same thing they could get

somewhere else for cheaper.

But they will pay more for something that's far more excellent

than the other thing, right?

Like, pilots will complain, for example, about a 50 cent increase in fuel prices,

but then they'll go buy a TBM, right?

And so, like, what's the difference there?

The difference is the fuel is the same thing, and they can get it

for 50 cents less down the street.

So they're not, they're not morons.

They're not gonna pay more when they can get it cheaper down the street.

But yet, if they see something that's glorious like a TBM, then

they understand it's worth more.

And I think that's important to remember as a flight instructor, is that if you

can show up and deliver a product that's better than the product a lot of your

colleagues are delivering, then it's a healthier ecosystem for everybody.

A, your student gets better training.

Your student will be more engaged with you as a student.

Your student will allow you to charge more and not care so much about it, 'cause they

understand they're getting the TBM and not the 50% or 50 cent increase in fuel.

Um, and so I think caring is a, is a, is a big part and, and

just knowing that there is…

Like, going for excellence, I think is a big… A lot of CFIs

are just not going for excellence.

Hmm

They're not even trying for it,

So it's really the desire is the biggest thing

I think the desires is a, is a very big thing.

Um, and then, you know, a, a CFI is only as good as what

they've been taught, right?

Like a journalist is only as good as his sources, right?

Like a, a CFI is only gonna, you know… So it d- a lot of it depends, like

shades of gray would be like how much did the CFI really invest in themselves?

Like did they come up through a Part 141 program like ATP and then find themselves

now backpedaling trying to fill holes and, and get good all of a sudden?

Or are they fortunate like I was to have met a mentor who just kinda took

me under his wing and brought me all the way through the ratings and certificates?

Um, so a lot of that stuff matters.

I think I might've lost track of the original question.

That's okay But um I I think what you're doing with CFI Club with um

Finer Points with the app um all of that information is sort of like

using technology to expand your impact and be that mentor to so many others

100%.

feel like

Yep.

mission then

On the nose.

Yeah, that's exactly it.

Yep

And I

that

feel very for- well, just, yeah, I feel very fortunate too, because if you look

at a lot of the other organizations that, um, are trying to do this, they

have to support themselves, right?

So there's a… You have to pay.

If you're a CFI and you wanna be a part of NAFI, for example, you have

to pay $90 a year or whatever it is.

But for us, it's a little bit more like software on an iPhone.

Like, we make our money on the app that you're using with your students.

Your s- you know, the, we don't, I don't wanna take the CFI's money.

In fact, I wanna do the opposite.

I wanna help the CFIs figure out how to make more money so that they can be better

CFIs for longer in a more sustainable way, and ultimately influence their whole

community and hopefully the industry, you

Yeah there is no substitute for experience So if if you can make the tenure of

a of an instructor in general longer

Yeah

that extra experience is going to necessarily create better instruction

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there--

I mean

it, gets to-- There is a parabola there, but yeah.

I

Yeah

know, you'll have guys that are, that have gone on autopilot many decades ago.

Well that yeah

But yeah.

it's still a stepping stone and they're just bummed cause it's taking so long

that's that's still different But

Right

but you know I I know for for sure I'll be a better instructor in 18 months

Yeah.

18 months ago

Yeah, for sure

I'll have had more experiences I will have figured out better

ways to explain something and

Yeah

uh it that there is no substitute for that right That's why these

mentorships are so important

Yeah

so that leads me to one of the big questions I wanted to ask you and that

is about technology and training So um I think I think you're pretty wellpositioned

to have been thinking about this Where where do you think technology has really

improved aviation education and training

Mm-hmm

and where has it not In other words m maybe there's areas where

it's made it worse So what's

Yeah.

that

Um, just kind of riffing on it.

It's funny, um, let me just tell you a, a quick, the story that

seems like it's not related, but it actually answers your question.

When my daughter… When we were living in San Francisco, we had… The schools there

are kinda crazy, so we had my daughter in a private school, and it was a stretch.

I mean, they had a sliding scale, but I'm just a CFI.

A lot of these people were, like, Facebook tech founders and stuff like that, right?

So struggling to keep up, and my wife and I are doing what we can to

keep our daughter in private school.

And one day she comes up to me at the dinner table and she says,

"Hey, Dad, did you know that there's 48,000 different kinds of spiders?"

And I just looked right at my wife, like, beaming.

I was like, "You see?

Like, private school education.

That's why we're sending her to the private school." And she said, "Well,

I didn't learn that in school, Dad.

I saw it on Wild Kratts." Right?

So, so, so my point is, I don't think we can underestimate the value of YouTube,

and I know that sounds crazy because you can see anything you want on YouTube.

You can see crazy garbage like people flying through the

clouds and almost hitting trees.

But with that, we get Blanco Lirio, we get the Air Safety Institute, and so

much of, you know, for accident review, which has always been important, and I

could talk about this for hours, so we should be careful, but, but accident

review is the v- very beginning to safety.

Like, if you don't know what's going on out there, like, if you

don't know the problems people are getting into, you're bound to get

into those same problems, right?

a full addict for all those channels

Everybody is.

That's why it's so great, right?

So that's what's so great, is I can make a joke to pilots now like, "Well, you don't

wanna end up on the Blanco Lirio channel," and everyone knows what I'm talking of.

Right?

So that is a huge, uh, lift for safety.

Just knowing, just the collective awareness of the problems people are

encountering and putting that little bug in pilots' minds of, "I don't wanna

be that person," that's a huge lift.

Um, other technologies, like let's say EFBs, and I won't pick on any particular

EFB, I think they s- they, they started out and, and continue to make, I would

say, a net positive impact on safety.

But we're getting into an area where they're, like, in my opinion,

they've kind of… They're going off the rails a little bit.

Um, and it's, it's kinda-

super interesting This is a whole nother episode on

I know.

As I say, we have to… I just glanced at the clock.

We have to be careful.

But y- I'll tell you something funny.

I've been advocating, like, I don't know if your listeners know or if you

know that there's an organization called GAMA, the General Aviation Manufacturers

Association, and it's like Piper, Cessna, Beechcraft, like all the big aviation

manufacturers, and they get together in this sort of, I don't know what you'd

call it, advisory group or whatever, where they agree on certain standards.

They're, they're competitive businesses, but they, they work together to

create a baseline standard for safety and, and effectiveness, I guess.

And so I've been talking to ForeFlight and Garmin and on webinars and, like,

everywhere I can, saying, "You guys need to do this." And it was Garmin

that told me they actually do do it, but they only do it for commercial aviation.

So this is in, this is an interesting truth.

I don't know much about it, so I hope I'm not speaking out of turn.

I just know that it exists, and that in the commercial world, representatives

from Garmin and ForeFlight and other EFB manufacturers, Jeppesen, whoever else is

providing databases, they do get together in a friendly, cooperative way to make

sure that the standards of the, the, the features they're releasing aren't

detrimental to pilots or whatever else.

And we need the same thing in GA, because just recently, you know,

I'll… not I'd say just recently.

In the last four or five years, I've noticed my students just

do just bizarre behavior.

You know?

I'll say, like, just basic things, just quiz them.

Like we're inbound to an airport, I'll say, "Okay, so, uh, what's

the ATIS for our destination?"

And I'll just see them go onto their thing, and they tap, and then they

tap, and they slide, and they tap.

And I'm thinking, "Man, that was information that you

just glanced at a minute ago.

That's it.

I don't have to tap anything." Like, what have we done?

You know, what are we doing here, you know?

And so I, I think the EFB is a big challenge going forward and,

and it's gonna be a hard one to

awareness Like you said overall there's

Yeah

I mean you and I both started flying uh you probably don't know this but um I

No

you know I just was doing it for fun back then I had no idea I'd become a

you know professional CFI at some point

Right

yeah I mean we've seen both sides and the situational awareness

from those things is amazing

is.

It is

can be super distracting

Yeah.

I mean,

Yeah

and, and, I would say situational awareness is amazing with a

small asterisk at the end.

But, um, it, you know, it's like the old joke how, you know, Steve Jobs

didn't let his kid u- kids use iPads.

Have you ever heard that?

Oh yeah yeah yeah

So I go to Palo Alto.

This is the heart of Silicon Valley.

I mean, Facebook, I could throw a rock on Facebook.

I could throw a rock on Google.

Like, everybody's there.

Apple's there.

And in Palo Alto, the, the largest flight school does not

use iPads for training, period.

They use paper still to this day, to this day.

And so the reason I put the asterisk, it…

for instrument right

Not true for instrument, no.

But, but I think what,

Okay

what they've recognized is the situational awareness is incredibly

powerful, but more so, or let's say especially for people like you

and I that started on paper, right?

Because there is this other thing that happens, like where I hopefully, I think

that had a marketing thing going on in their booth at Oshkosh that sounded like

something like, "You can now plan your flight on your phone," and they show

a car pulling up to a phone and like, "Send it to your FMS, and off you go."

And I was like, "Whoa. Wait, wait, wait a minute. You just said this guy's like

planning a flight on his phone in the car, gets to the plane, throws it into

the FMS, and off they go?" Like, that kind of stuff is a little spooky, you know?

And

Yeah

so, so as much as it does bring amazing situational awareness,

and I do not want anybody to hear this as I don't use an EFB.

I do, and I recommend you- that people should.

But the challenge I like to create with my students is, okay, let's

plan a couple flights on paper, as, as horrible as that is, you know.

We're gonna take three hours and,

Mmhmm

you know, we're gonna sit here and pore over everything for three hours

and we're gonna plan it, and then we're gonna plan it on ForeFlight.

Which one do you feel like you know more about?

Which,

which

which, one of those two experiences, yeah, leaves you feeling more

prepared to execute that flight?

And so, so there's a lot of… The devil's in the details with the EFB, and

I think without some best practices or guiding principles or a little bit of, I

don't wanna say oversight 'cause I'm not looking for regulatory oversight, but just

gui- I don't know, some, some guidance there, I think people can get lost.

Use with prudence right

right.

And have -- and, and even for CFIs, 'cause I think like, you know, this is something

I think we're gonna start to do more of.

Like, this is how we would use the EFB.

This is when… Like, if you look at our syllabus, we don't bring the EFB in until

I think it's the third cross-country, and then we transition to the EFB.

Cool

Yeah

here's a little um example Um first time I flew into Oshkosh myself I

Mm-hmm.

And um while um ForeFlight existed at that point it was pretty primitive right

um certainly didn't have ADSB or anything like that That didn't even exist yet

Right

and so we used our eyeballs and we you know for traffic I was with a nonpilot

friend um did did that thing I'm I haven't flown into Oshkosh in over a

decade I'm probably gonna do it this year

Nice

like I I don't wanna see the traffic I might turn the traffic off because

the I look at it when I'm on the ground and I go That that makes me sweat

Yeah

wanna see hundreds of airplanes around me I wanna see

Yeah

in the haze that is a problem to me

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a, that's a really wise idea.

That, you know, it's like when ATC says you have traffic at 2 o'clock

six miles moving away from you.

It's like,

And your head looks down

yeah, and it's like, what?

that's ba

Right?

But it's like, why did you tell me that?

That's in my brain now, right?

He's six miles away and not converging.

yeah I don't need to

just le-

that

I don't need to know.

Yeah.

No, that's…

All right

There's, something to that and, um, I tell a story about, you know,

Oshkosh in a Cirrus, and I was late getting to where I wanted to be.

I left Chicago and flew up to Oshkosh, and at that point, it was, like, the fifth

or sixth time I'd ever flown up there.

But that was the time that I came this close to busting a Class Delta airspace.

It wasn't when I did all the paper planning and all the years before that.

that thing on autopilot, put the pedal down, and started reviewing the NOTAM.

I didn't, I didn't do

checked out

mentally checked out from the flying part, correct.

It's a, it's a risk.

It's a, you know, it's a danger

Super interesting Yeah that's really good insight All right I know we

gotta hurry along here but I I've got a big question for you here

Sure

It has to do with technology Um and it and it really has to do with um

know something that's really new for humanity right now and that's

uh AI or large uh language models

so you've built this like really principled and structured way of training

You've articulated it in in the Finer Points app You're sharing it with people

You're you're letting people learn from your experience You've got all of

this stuff in there And then meanwhile anybody can ask know ChatGPT or Claude

anything they want and they will get something that sounds like an answer

Mm-hmm.

So what's your take on AI in the training process Is it just like the

EFBs and the other technologies we have to be careful Do you see it as a huge

boon or are you mostly worried about where it may take aviation education

Well, I don't, I don't worry too much about it because it's not my nature.

Um, I do find a lot… Like, so one of the things I'm most proud

of is the content team that we've built around our product, our app.

I mean, we've got airline check pilots in there.

We've got former military pilots.

We've got, I mean, everybody is an active flight instructor.

Um, it's a- about seven extra CFIs in addition to me that are writing

those questions, writing those answers, finding the resources.

And, um, sometimes I even tell my team, I think we should be

advertising that we're powered by human intelligence just because the, you

I love it

you know, just 'cause

that

in our team alone, there's like 100,000 hours of collective experience, you know?

Yep

And, these people show up at the office hours every Friday.

So, you know, students that come into our office hours, they've got

You know, it's like we're… There's a lot of

HI I I'm telling you Jason that's the best thing I've heard all day

Yeah, that's great.

intelligence That's awesome

Yeah, I mean, because-- So here's the thing.

I lo- I, I think AI is very interesting, and I use it for a lot of things, mostly

writing web copy, you know and um, what else do I… Polishing my emails

so I sound like I went to high school.

You know, stuff like that, right?

Like, just very basic little things.

But if you ask AI, I mean, this is certainly the way it is now, to do

anything that matters, like if you say, "Here's my picture, here's my

bio, now build me a website," and look at it, I mean, it gets you,

like, 70% of the way there maybe.

You know, it's not done.

It's not good.

And so for me, I just don't understand people that would accept… I- if,

if there are people out there that are accepting that in flying, knowing

that this isn't perfect, but it's probably pretty good or good enough,

Interesting way to look at it

we're just, like, different kind of pilots.

Like, the plane will probably not crash too if you fly it

kinda good enough, you know?

It's like, I don't even know.

I don't really… I don't know.

It's, it's not me.

So it may come to a place where AI is phenomenal and, uh, can, can

replicate what a regular instructor or somebody like me does, but I don't

see that day too close, you know?

I really don't.

Um, I think it's gonna be a minute.

I think AI's really impressive and flashy for certain things.

I think probably the best use of it that I've seen from anybody is there

was a young company that was using AI to analyze audio tracks so that if you

just recorded your flight, when you come back, it would flag the learning moments.

It would scan the audio and say, "Hey, at minute 7:63 is when he showed

you how to use the auto squelch.

Do you wanna play that moment?" You know, something like that.

yeah Yeah.

You know-

indexing your flights a little bit so you can go back and reinforce, which is

something I love about your Finer Points, by the way, is timing out of knowledge.

And,

Yeah.

Yeah

yeah

what you call it, but it's, it's, uh,

Knowledge recall.

Yeah.

Yes, recall.

Yeah.

I… See, I couldn't remember.

I need to do knowledge

More recall.

Yeah, it's funny.

We're actually-- Thank you.

Yeah, we're, we're evolving that too.

I'm trying to really get to a place where, you know, our ultimate goal for the app

is I always, and I say this to the team a lot, as soon as we are consistently making

people feel safer and more confident for having used it, we're golden.

Like, that's our whole, like, I want people to really feel as though this

app makes me safer and, and better.

Um, so different ways to do that.

Knowledge recall is one of them.

Yeah.

Cool

but you know, so I think that people-- Like there was a great AI, one of

the AI founders was on a podcast recently, not talking about flying,

of course, but just talking about large language learning models.

And he said something like, "People have it wrong. People think that AI

is gonna take your job, but that's not exactly true. Your neighbor who knows

how to use AI is gonna take your job."

Right

so, so it's like this marriage.

So like sometimes when I see a young company doing something like that

where it's like, okay, I'm gonna harness this and I'm gonna deploy

it in a very specific way that I think will help pilots, that's great.

But people out there that think Chat DPE or something is gonna get

them through an oral, I think are in for a rude awakening, you know?

Yep.

All right, cool.

All right, well let's start to wrap it up here, but I gotta ask

you about your adventure training.

Sure

it's super cool, and I wanna get you, give you a chance to kinda talk about that

Yeah

that compares and contrasts with this

technological

learning where you're going out, getting your hands dirty, um, kinda learning how

to fly in, in different environments.

Can you talk a little bit about that and why you do it?

Yeah, of course.

I think it's, first of all, I do it 'cause it's, it's just a labor of love.

I just think it's so darn cool really to

fun,

It's fun, yeah.

And, um, when I was designing those courses, I was doing it with Howard

Donner, who is, you know, his roots are as a river guide, and he's a medical doctor

who, um, his expertise is wilderness medicine, which is a really unusual

n- corner of the medical industry.

So other doctors, surgeons, or whomever else can take continuing medical

education credits with somebody like Howard, and they can go camp on a

river system for a week and learn how to make s- you know, splints out of

stilts or tie tourniquets or whatever the continuing medical education is.

Um, and that's his world.

And I've always had a huge passion for survival and, um, just understanding.

You know, I think we're all this way, pilots.

We're, we're w- cautious adventurers.

You know, like, we, we want the adventure, but the risk mitigation

of the adventure is almost as much fun as the adventure itself.

You know, we're not like BASE jumpers.

We're not like adrenaline junkies exactly, or most of us aren't.

Instead, we're trying to, like, take on this challenge and manage all the

possible risks and execute it saf- safely with precision at the right time.

You know, it's a, it's a slightly different kind of adventuring.

Um, but our ultimate goal is to return, right?

That's the whole thing is like a successful flight is one you

go home to your family after.

That's, that's the way we measure that, and that's why we measure things in hours.

How many times have you done this safely and come home?

Okay, you've done it a lot of times, you must be good.

Um, and so contingency planning, risk management is what those trips

are all about, is going into, um…

We do sometimes as many as four trips a year.

This year we're doing two, just the mountains and the canyons.

But we'll go out into the environment.

Uh, the mountain training is high density altitudes and mountain passes.

But, um, half the time we're on the ground, everybody gets a survival vest,

and we go through all the gear in the vest, and we talk through how to think

about contingency planning, how to think about having to land the airplane if

your engine quits, what you're gonna do for the next 24 hours while you're

stuck in the wilderness, how will you survive injuries, how will you get found.

Um, and it's funny, we used to call it adventure training, but one year,

um, a kid came with, with his dad.

He was about a six-year-old kid, and he, he looked around, he saw us all

doing our signal mirrors, and he saw the food cooking and the planes camped out,

and he said, "Oh, I get it." He said, "This is airplane camp for adults."

Yeah.

And I said, I was like, "That's it, kid. Airplane camp for adults." So ever since

then, we've called it airplane camp.

But yeah, that's what we do.

Yeah.

Uh, very cool.

All right.

Well, is, is there, um, anything I should have asked you about that I didn't?

No, but it's, uh, been a lot of fun talking to you, Bill,

and thanks for having me.

If, if you wanna do this again, just let me know.

If you think of, uh, anything else that we didn't cover, I'm

always happy to join you again

Awesome.

It'll be fun.

We gotta dive into that EFB thing.

I can't wait.

Yeah, that could be a whole, we just, that's the whole topic of that show.

Exactly.

right, so where's the best place to, to find you then?

See if you can remember some URLs here

Yeah, sure.

Well, just the, the main website is learnthefinerpoints.com.

Um, and then on YouTube, in the App Store, we're The Finer Points

or in the App Store, Groundschool.

But I think if you just come to our main website, learnthefinerpoints.com,

that's, that's a good way to go

Awesome.

Jason, this has been super fun.

Appreciate you taking the time, and I hope we'll connect soon

Yeah, my pleasure.

Thanks for having me, and, uh, I'd love that.

Thanks again

Awesome