In article ,
Michael Ash wrote:

In rec.aviation.student Roy Smith wrote:
In article ,
Michael Ash wrote:

Isn't there somewhat vague a section on emergency procedures which would
allow the examiner to say, "your flaps have failed, now go land"?

When I'm teaching flapless landings, I never tell the student the flaps
failed. I just quietly place my foot on the flap lever (works well in a
PA-28) and refuse to move it :-)

Ooh, you're mean.

Seriously though, it seems to me that this is a better approach than
simply announcing the failure. It's much more realistic and teaches the
student to be adaptable when something doesn't work the way it should,
instead of just changing the tune to follow the instructor.

Exactly. It also teaches you to fly the damn airplane and not get
distracted by little ****. Just about to turn base is no time to be going
heads down in the cockpit or getting distracted.

Declare you're landing without flaps? Fine. Declare you're exiting the
pattern until you can sort this out? Fine. Give me a sharp poke in the
ribs to get me to move my foot? Well, it's not the response I was hoping
for, but it's not the worst you could do :-) Getting into an argument with
me at the expense of your traffic scan? Not fine.

The hardest part of dealing with any equipment failure is recognizing that
it's happened.