Flight Training The Way I See It

Flight Training The Way I See It presents itself as a podcast and video newsletter. Each edition is labeled by month and ends on the same three-part promise: news, tips and opinion. Host Mike Shiflett starts by listing what he plans to cover, then works through the items one at a time in a plain, methodical voice. Regulation is the backbone. Shiflett sat on subcommittees for the Part 141 modernization effort, and when its recommendations were headed for the Federal Register, he went through them point by point. One would put anything a school must report to the FAA on a standard one-to-five grading scale, while schools could keep their own scales internally. Another would loosen the rules on flight training devices so that VR goggles could replace the 135 degrees of monitor space normally needed for circling approaches. That wording is kept generic so it will not need rewriting as technology changes. Changes to the sport pilot and sport pilot instructor standards also make his lists. The instrument material is just as exacting. He notes that an LPV approach is now classified as a precision approach. He also follows a note in the instrument rating ACS to its third appendix to show that a CFI checkride or IPC requires at least two non-precision approaches. The show's sharpest edge is its criticism of FAA handbooks. Shiflett argues that handbook illustrations sometimes fail to explain what they set out to, and he has pointed out errors he found in the Airplane Flying Handbook. On eights on pylons, he disputes the claim that altitude changes stay small even in strong winds. Because pivotal altitude depends only on groundspeed, he argues, that is true only if airspeed is allowed to vary, and at a constant airspeed the difference can reach several hundred feet. Technique tips break up the regulatory items. His landing advice starts the flare at about ten feet and ties that height to the point on a ladder where most people start to feel uneasy. He then adds the runway expansion effect, the way the runway's shape grows as the airplane gets closer. Elsewhere he recites a letter-by-letter checklist that runs from controls to seat belts. Because the show also runs as video, he describes graphs aloud for listeners who are driving and cannot look. Episode titles such as 'The Instructor's Mindset: Lessons from the CFI Round Table' and 'What's Changing in 2026' show a range that runs from the instructor's craft to the rule changes coming up. Promotion is part of the package too. That includes the Smart Study Pro series of audio-first checkride prep, built on individual ACS line items and paired with PDF companion guides, along with Airspace Flashcards and CFI Boot Camp's accelerated CFI and CFII programs. He also announces his talk at the Redbird Migration flight training conference. For regulatory news from someone who sat on the subcommittees, the edition titled in part 'Part 141 Is About to Change Everything!' is a natural place to start.