The student is initially unaware of many of the subtleties of the environment that he will be flying in. The instructor should be particularly aware of:
- Traffic considerations
- Weather - suitable for solo flying?
- Student and/or instructor fatigue?
- Doing lessons appropriate to the conditions?
- Terrain if they are giving advice for solo flying.
- Radius of action.
The stage the student is at is a particularly important consideration. During the first six or so lessons students derive little benefit in flying with poor visibilities or if the horizon is obscured. Consider the advisability of flying many flights from low tow heights if the student is not able to attempt the takeoff or the landing. On the other hand, during the first few flights, a higher tow (3000 feet) is often beneficial. Generally this gives time to lower the stress of a shorter flight and cover the basics in detail with lots of time available for immediate student practise. Students are often quite excited at this time and can easily be overloaded. While many students can move on quickly at this stage there are also quite a few who will fumble a bit. The problem is that it is usually quite hard to predict what path will be followed until they are actually in the air.
While this is the ideal situation, most lessons can be taught with lower tow heights quite efficiently down to about 1200 feet. This will require experienced instructors and usually more pre-flight ground briefings. In the beginning stages of flight instruction, considerably more launches may be required to achieve the same competencies as seen with the high tows with launches below 1200 feet. At later stages there are usually smaller differences between the two launch environments.
While the above mainly concern learning by the student, instructors may often encounter difficulties in instructing in unfamiliar environments. This could range from basic weather conditions such as wind, turbulence, visibility etc. to problems with orientation. When conditions change instructors have to determine whether their competencies match the conditions. Instructor experience should not be gained at the expense of the student. When conditions deteriorate from the ideal, the instructor has to judge what are the appropriate lessons to deliver to their student at that time. The best lesson may be no lesson at all.