Subject: Small Instructional Inconsistency in Academy Takeoff/Pattern Lessons
Hi team,
I noticed a small continuity issue between two Academy lessons that might be helpful as you continue refining the program.
In the Takeoff lesson, the steps never mention lowering the flaps to 10°. However, in the Pattern lesson, the instructions say to retract flaps at 300’, which assumes they were set for takeoff. Since flap deployment wasn’t covered earlier, this creates a minor instructional gap.
This isn’t a complaint — just something I thought you’d want to know as you polish the training flow. I have a few other observations and suggestions as well. Could you let me know the best place to post them so they’re most useful to the team?
Thanks for all the work you’re putting into Academy.
Thank you for reaching out and raising this here. There is actually a good reason for the item on the checklist.
The real life Cessna 172 checklist is made so it covers all possible operations. Making sure that the flaps are up at 300 feet is essential as any flap extension causes a degraded climb performance.
In Academy, we only teach flap 0° take-offs. But we are also only covering normal take-offs from long hardened runways. If you are taking off from a short runway, or one with grass or gravel, it is standard procedure to use flaps 10° in take-off. And that is also why the checklist includes the reminder to check or retract flaps to 0° at 300 feet.
Since only a standard checklist is used for all operations, we train (in Academy and in real life) to check that the flaps are up at 300 feet. Later, when short field operations are trained, the checklist item is memorized and part of your standard flow, and you will not miss it. So this is actually realistic and intended. We hope to bring short field take-off and landing techniques to a future course, if possible.
Please feel free to post more wishes or inconsitencies here, and we can see what we can do!