when his car, or the other fellow's, skids on the wet pavement for the first time? The answer is that good driving results from experience and the requisite of having met many varied situations.
And so with planes. Straight flying is, of course, the necessary basis; but it is the ability to meet crises, large and small, which counts. And the only way to train for that is, as I have said, to have actual instruction in stunting and in meeting emergencies. To gain experience after the beginner has soloed, and while he is at home in a plane he knows intimately and upon a field familiar to him, he should play around in the air for four or five hours alone, practising landings, take-offs, turns and all the rest of it where he is perfectly safe and can come down easily any time.
Then he should have three or four more hours' instruction in emergency situations. This feature is too often overlooked. As I visualize it,
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