what kind of pranks do flight instructors play on student pilots I'll
explain it all coming up hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me
my name is Kelsey I'm a 747 pilot my channel 74 gear is all about
aviation today this is a view from my hotel room let me know in the comments
section where you think I'm at and towards the end of this video I'll tell
you exactly where I'm at after the video I did on pranks that
pilots pull on flight attendants I got a lot of messages on my Instagram giving
me prank ideas that flight attendants have pulled on new flight attendants
flight instructors have pulled on pilots pilots had pulled on mechanics I got a
bunch of messages so I thought obviously this is gonna become a thing in this
video I'm gonna go over five different pranks that flight instructors pull on
student pilots let's get into it I want to explain to you flight
instructors before you do any of these pranks remember that these students are
your customers so some people are going to receive pranks well some people
aren't gonna feel well at their prank so just keep that in mind and realize that
aviation is a very small world so who you're pranking today may end up
being your chief pilot in five years just keep that in mind
one of the first things that you've learned as a new pilot has had to do a
walk-around a walk-around is where you inspect the
aircraft make sure everything is safe and the aircraft is going to be safe to
fly one of the things that you check on your walk-around is this this is a pitot
tube now the pitot tube does a few different things depending on the
aircraft that you're flying but let's just say in general it monitors the
airspeed so on this prank while you're walking around and you're teaching your
student how the different things work and showing them what to inspect when
you get to the pitot tube what you do is this you say great now we're going to
check the pitot tube make sure it's working I'm gonna go sit in the plane I
need you to put your mouth over it and then blow on it so you go sit in the
plane and you tell them okay I'm ready during that time you pull your phone out
and you record them blowing on the pitot tube once they put their mouth around it
and they're basically giving their plane a blowy you of course have your phone
out and are recording it and if they haven't caught on to the prank at this
point what you say is make sure this is loud on video hey that's not really
working for me I need you to put just the tip in your mouth and try sucking on
it let's see if that works for me you're a jerk
after you've got the engine running the next thing you do is move the airplane
to the run-up period so what you do is you push the throttle forward and pull
the yoke back if you've driven in type of a motorcycle or a manual car you know
how a clutch works so in this scenario you're basically making the yoke the
clutch and obviously the throttle or the gasses the gas and you do that a couple
times then you teach them how to do it of course when they go to do it you keep
your feet firmly on the brake anybody has driven a manual car knows what it's
like to miss the clutch and you rev the engine that's basically what its gonna
seem like they're doing so you do that once or twice and then on the third try
you let them move forward and then you see how long they keep pulling back on
the yoke and pushing the throttle forward to move the aircraft forward now
that you've taught them how to do a proper walk-around and how to move the
aircraft forward the obvious next step is teach them how to steer the aircraft
if you aren't familiar most small aircraft are steered with the rudder
pedals which are at our feet on a larger aircraft we have something called the
tiller which we use our hand and our feet in some cases to move the aircraft
but your typical small aircraft is just going to be using your feet to steer if
you have an unprepared and a new student pilot they don't know that you steer the
plane with your feet which means when they start to steer they're going to
assume you're gonna steer with your yoke because that's how every car works right
so your first couple turns of course you're going to use the yoke to appear
that you're steering even though you're using your feet then you tell them you
need to write a few things down you're going to let them make the first turn
and you're going to use your feet while they're just using to yoke the steer and
then of course on the second turn it's not going to work and by the time they
get the yoke back to neutral you're gonna grab the yoke and turn it really
quickly and you're gonna give them one of those flight instructors sneers at
all of you guys like to give or at least that you'd love to give me this look out
of the corner of your eye like what are you doing moron and then from that point
on they'll probably keep doing that until they're checkride because it'll
just be such a bad habit that you taught them and of course if you're like any of
my flight instructors you say I need you to do better next time and then of
course the student will feel totally stupid or at least I
now if you're applying if your student is anything like I was as a pilot
they're probably looking out the window while you scream altitude altitude every
five seconds them which did not help me at all
this white wheel that you see right here is a trim wheel the trim wheel is used
to pitch the aircraft for a given airspeed to hold a given altitude that
trim wheel can be trimmed so the plane will descend or climb without doing
anything with the yoke the yoke is how you turn the plane left and right and
how you pitch the plane up and down so if you hold the yoke and hold all the
pressure off and trim the aircraft to go down but hold all the pressure they
won't know the aircraft is trimmed to pitch down they'll just assume that your
hand is on the yoke which is not uncommon for a student pilot to be
flying with their flight instructor holding on to the yo so while they're
looking out the window you're holding on to the yoke and you're keeping all the
pressure off and you trim the aircraft down maybe down a lot and you're holding
on with that yoke so they don't feel any pressure difference and you keep
trimming it down trimming down trimming it down then you say something like I've
never seen that button before have you touched that button before and they're
probably gonna sight and I'll never have so you say yeah just go ahead and push
that button I'm curious to what it does once they push it you let go of the back
pressure and the yoke is gonna push forward and the plane is gonna start
going towards the ground rapidly their reaction is probably going to look at
you something like of course you'll have to grab the yoke back and pull it back
up so you don't break you're out the tube maybe 100 200 feet you pull it back
up and trim it out and of course you know they'll never ever push that button
again now this is kind of a tricky City because I'm in downtown it's kind of
hard to figure out where I'm at but I'm in Hotlanta in the dirty dirty south now
if you haven't already shared this video with your friends that are in flights
who are getting ready to go to flight school then that's just mean and you're
just setting them up to be humiliated and a quick note here before you think I
would never fall for any of these pranks realize that when you're new into an
aircraft your brain can only process so much information at one time and that's
why some of my other videos I talked about being prepared before you go take
a check ride or do anything you want to be so over prepared so your brain
your mind can process new pieces of information more easily so once you're
new to aircraft you're basically having sensory overload and you're making or
saying things that you would normally never do and you're sounding a lot
stupid than you normally would be so you might be watching this thinking I would
never do that I'm not that stupid but the reality is once you have sensory
overload you'd be surprised how stupid things that you do are and I know that
from personal experience if you're someone who's seen me walking around the
airport you may have noticed that I always have a backpack with me
and if you're someone who see me walking around the airport with my backpack and
all my gear and you've come up and said hi sometimes I'm not as friendly as you
might have expected or hoped I'd be and that's because sometimes I may have just
gotten off a 15 hour flight and after that my brain turns to mush and I'm just
walking around a bit like a robot trying to get on my plane to go to the hotel
and go to sleep but one of the things you may have noticed is that with all
the gear that I have is a backpack I've had a backpack and I used it through
flight school and I still carry today up to the flight deck I keep all my flight
stuff that's in that backpack and in flight school I used to keep water in
there I used to keep snacks in there because I get horribly grumpy when I'm
hungry so I bring all that stuff and I throw it in the back seat of the plane
when go for a flight training and this prank you have to set it up ahead of
time when the student comes to you and says they're going to go pre-flight the
aircraft you tell them to double check the oil because just recently there was
a plane that crashed because it didn't have enough oil in it and the engine
seized up so after you taxied the runway and take off watching them steer with
the yoke to get up in the air once they're up in the air you point to the
engine instruments and you say man that engines getting really hot so and pull
it back a little bit again because you're knew your brain is not gonna
process what is the temperature normally at because that's not something you're
just concerned with flying the plane and keeping it straight and level let alone
looking all the instrument gauges so you'll get the student pilots to pull it
back a little bit and pull it back a little bit more and then you start
getting nervous in your voice saying man this does not look good this hinging is
really heating up are you sure you check the oil of course you're gonna say yes
I've double-checked it twice just like you said because most student pilots are
really trying to do their very best eventually you have to get really
anxious with your voice and you say oh my god
she never wanted this to happen crap I can't believe we're gonna have to crash
the plane grab your parachute and then reach into the back and pull your
backpack out there of course gonna be looking you like what parachute and
you're gonna say okay well we don't have a choice now where I'm gonna jump out of
the plane and you're gonna have to jump out too of course the look on their face
is gonna be something like speaking of student pilots scared to be flying if
you've never saw the hollywood versus reality did on an executive decision
it's about a student pilot getting to fly a 747 if you haven't seen that video
i'll put a link to it right here i look forward to hearing from you until then
keep the blue side up