A glance at the military trivia and WWI/WWII uniforms thread got me thinking: I know that aviation technology has advanced massively since the inception of powered flight, and I assume that pilots today are expected to be familiar with a great many more electronics systems and gadgets than their predecessors. I also assume that there are a lot more standard and emergency procedures that pilots need to know, as those would have at least in part been built on the back of experience. But I’m curious, how much has the basic coursework and training changed over the past 80+ years? If an expert pilot from, say, the 1940s strolled into a flight school today, how much (if any) of his training would still hold?
Well here’s a question pitched right down the middle at me. I’m a professional flight instructor, and this is something I’ve thought about from time to time. Some of this answer will be factual, some of it speculative since I learned to fly just ten years ago.
There are a number of maneuvers that are required of pilots in training, and some of them have changed over the years. The most well known is that spins were required prior to (IIRC) 1949. They are now only required for flight instructor candidates. However, the wisdom of removing spins is still frequently debated.
Some time more recently ( I believe in the 50’s or 60’s) they began requiring some instrument training. We now must give at least three hours of simulated or actual instrument training for Private Pilot candidates.
Three hours of night flying is now a training requirement, although I’m not sure when that was brought in. Fairly recently I believe, perhaps in the last 20 years.
As mentioned in the OP, the technology has changed a lot. The old radio ranges no longer exist. However, some of the old navigation methods are still with us. VOR navigation is still a necessity. Even the old NDBs are still around, and there are still questions about them on the written test, although I’ve largely stopped teaching them in actual practice. GPS is deceptively complex to use in aviation (at least for instrument flying), so I’d rather my students were well schooled in that. I don’t see too many light aircraft with ADFs in them these days (which is the instrument for navigating with NDBs).
As for as anecdotal evidence:
I’ve heard from the old timers that students were sometimes soloed after about three hours of instruction. That would be unheard of today, with the average probably being somewhere between 12-20 hours. They were also using more tailwheel aircraft than we see today, which are arguably trickier to handle in takeoff and landing. Although I’m sure it still happens, I’d guess that few people take their initial training in tailwheel planes today.
It’s an interesting question that I sometimes ponder - How would I do as a pilot back in the 1920’s or 30’s? I have all the necessary skills, including navigating with nothing more than a map and a stopwatch. But I’d sure miss the precision of VOR and GPS navigation.
Yes, pilot training HAS changed, and not just because of the electronics.
An expert pilot from the 1940’s walking into a flight school of 2010 would be amazed by some things. For example, we have a MUCH better understanding of things such as spins and how/why they are survivable in some aircraft and not others, and microbursts and their effects on airplanes (yes, I realize those are very divergent areas). He’d also be rather shocked at how much longer students are instructed prior to being permitted to solo, and might even argue that it’s an unnecessary delay. On the other hand, we have a hell of a lot fewer training accidents than they did in the 1940’s.
Of course, many things would remain the same, but how we teach differs as well. In the 1940’s primary training still routinely took place in airplanes without intercoms or radios, requiring pilots to shout or even rely on hand signals from the instructor. Now, the cockpit environment is much quieter, allowing for better and more detailed communications during actual flight lessons. Training courses are more standardized and standards more uniform. Flight training is certainly more consistent than it was 70 years ago.
That’s aside from the learning required by all the additional gadgets we have on board these days even in small and relatively simple airplanes.
That only applies in the US - other countries still do require spins of private pilots.
Arguably, that saved my life at one point. Not because I used the instruments to fly myself out of a bad situation, but because the training had taught me just HOW bad the situation was, enabling me to recognize an emergency that I might not have otherwise, and take effective action. We’ve had 70 more years of experience to draw upon than in the 1940’s, so student pilots today benefit from the mistakes of yesterday’s pilots. That has altered how situational awareness is taught, and the accident record certainly was a topic of discussion in my training at all levels.
At least 15 years - it was required when I took my primary training starting in 1995.
It doesn’t help that a lot of insurance won’t cover students in tailwheels until they have at least a private license. And tailwheels aren’t “arguably” trickier in ground handling, they ARE trickier. Anyhow who says otherwise hasn’t taxied one. Despite that, yes, they were soloing people in 3-5 hours. As I mentioned, they also had a lot more training accidents, too.
I do know a flight school that offers primary training in a tailwheel. The few people I know who went that route weren’t soloing any faster or slower than those using tricycle gear. Tailwheels are trickier but they are something you can master with reasonable speed.
'Nuther flight instructor checking in.
I’ve been instructing for about 26 years now, and I’d say the biggest change I’ve seen is the introduction of GPS and glass cockpits. Here is a picture of the cockpit in a simple Cessna trainer (post 2000 vintage); This is the same airplane, with a cockpit from roughly 25 years ago. I suspect a pilot from the past, while able to maneuver the plane, would be bewildered by the new displays.
I realize the OPs question was regarding training from much farther back, but I thought I’d offer a shorter perspective. It seems to me that most of the training has always involved the same set of skills with relatively little change. Turns, climbs, descents, etc. are probably still done the way they were in the '40s. My WAG is that most of the progress in cockpits has involved a new instrument added to the existing cluster. A pilot from say, WW2 brought forward to 1975 would be confused by the newfangled VOR receiver, but the rest of the panel would be largely familiar, and he would be able to fly and navigate with little trouble. The glass cockpits, however, are a complete change from the past, and I would venture that a pilot from an era as recent as the '70s wouldn’t be able to make sense of most of it. It would take quite a bit of experimentation to even tune a radio, and the chance of getting the system/displays in an unfamiliar, unrecoverable (to him) mode is very high. An analogy would be taking a secretary from the '60s and watching her try to operate MS Word. Almost nothing would be familiar.
The FAA now requires pilots of aircraft with the new displays to receive additional training and an endorsement for TAA (Technically Advanced Aircraft). My course took 3 days (I went to the Cessna factory). This is a substantial change to the normal training curriculum that we’ve followed for so long. It could be that I’m just showing my age, but I think glass/GPS cockpits are one of the most fundamental changes to flight training that we’ve seen in awhile.
That’s why I said “arguably” trickier. To people like myself who were nosewheel trained and didn’t get in a tailwheel until much later, they seem very difficult. If that’s all you know, it’s all you know and is therefore very natural.
I think of it like driving a stickshift. I learned to drive on a stick, so I don’t consider it any more “difficult” than driving an automatic. While people who have never handled one typically consider it very hard at first.
Although they’re considering it, TAA isn’t yet a required endorsement. It probably should be, IMHO. But right now it comes in more as an insurance requirement.
I went with a client to pick up a Cirrus at the factory, and they put us through a very good training program on the advanced avionics in that plane. The insurance required it, but the FAA didn’t. Theoretically, a pilot with only a high performance endorsement could fly a Cirrus with no training at all, and of course no insurance.
Thinking on the OP’s question further, I think a WWII era pilot would do better being brought forward than someone like me would going backward. They would have to learn about all of our modern navigation, but as Pullin said, flying is still flying. Someone like me, OTOH, would have to learn to live with much less precise navigation and weather information. I would find that worrisome, while once the WWII guy figured out how to work VOR, he would be enjoying much better navigation than he was used to.
When I earned my helicopter certificate, I was told that in the past a student had to demonstrate to the examiner the ability to hover within a 20-foot circle. Then someone figured out that the ability to hover in a circle much smaller than 20 feet was demonstrated on every landing. By the time I started training, the requirement had been dropped.
Good point. I stand corrected. Often times, I forget it’s the insurance company driving requirements, not the gummint.
Sorry, this is slightly off-topic, but I gonna brag here.
Odd this should happen while in an aviation thread, but just a few minutes ago I got a call from a former student. While approaching an airport this morning, he discovered his landing gear wouldn’t extend. (For the pilots, he had a gear-unsafe indication, and only 2 greens, no nosewheel). He climbed to a safer altitude, cycled it several times (to no avail), and finally went thru the emergency extension checklist. This seemed to get all three down, and another aircraft did a flyby, confirming it was extended. After this, he said he did the softest touchdown he’d ever done, and the gear held. Early suspicions are of a hydraulic leak. Thankfully, the only problem we have to deal with now is getting him transportation back to the home field.
Makes me want to go cut his shirttail all over again. 
Sorry about the hijack.
I imagine that, at least on the military side of things, flight simulators have changed things a bit - a young pilot can gain familiarity with a cockpit without needing an actual plane, and they can be put through any number of situations which I imagine you wouldn’t or couldn’t safely recreate during an actual flight.
I’d have to agree here. Aviators from the WWII era routinely navigated long distances using techniques such as pilotage (looking out the window and comparing it to your map), deduced reckoning (I know how fast the airplane should be going and I know what the winds are supposed to be doing, so I know where I should be), and in the case of oceanic crossings, celestial navigation. This stuff is taught (with the exception of celestial nav) to private pilots today, but it’s certainly not emphasized. Back in the day, it was all they had. I’ve been teaching five years and many of the low time pilots I’ve flown with would be completely lost without their GPS. Many of these people go on to become instructors and pass along the same deficiencies to all of their students. I blame the instructors. And the instructors’ instructors.
Even worse is a lack of basic airmanship. Today’s training has so much emphasis on the ever more complex mechanical and electronic systems and the maze-like regulatory environment that many newly-minted pilots are literally afraid of executing basic maneuvers such as aerodynamic stalls. Again, much of the blame should fall squarely on the low quality of the instructors. Put one of these people (student or instructor) into an inadvertent (or even intentional) spin, and they just stop flying the airplane. Back in the 20’s (or even the 60’s), the primary goal of the training was to absolutely master controlling the airplane in any situation. This is because flying is damn unforgiving. It shows in the older guys I’ve flown with. Many more of them can really fly well. The physics are the same today, but unfortunately many instructors out there don’t have the basic skills to pass on to their students.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t lots of GREAT instructors out there. All I’m saying is that there are lots of not-so-great ones - I’ve worked alongside more than I can count.
/soapbox rant
Ran out of edit time:
To answer the OP’s question, the 1940s-era pilot would likely fly circles around most of the instructors at the flight school he walked into. However, the students at that school would probably have much better risk-assessment skills and more knowledge about the hazards in aviation that the old pilot would. Seventy years of scientific research and operational experience certainly makes a difference.
Part of the problem here is that instructing is what brand new commercial pilots do to build hours, so you have very inexperienced guys and gals teaching the next generation of pilots. There will be an experienced instructor involved in the process along the way but a lot of it is a bit like the blind leading the blind. That’s not to say they’re not capable of teaching the required manoeuvres, they are, it’s just that they have nothing to offer beyond the basic skill set. Experienced instructors are vital to the industry and I take my hat off to the guys up thread who have made a career out of it rather than just getting a few hours and moving on.
To the OP, I suspect that there have been more changes to pilot training in the 16 years since I finished mine than there were in the 50 years prior. I didn’t have glass cockpits or GPS for my training and my primary navigation method was following ground features.
Meanwhile in this backwater they call “Australia”, the only ground based navaid at my home airport is an NDB.
Flight instruction is one of the few fields where being old and gray actually works to your advantage :). Frequently, people will pick the most senior member of the flight school staff to teach their kids.
Commercial airline cockpit procedures have changed significantly.
I remember reading a book on safety that told about how the international aviation authorities noted significant differences in the rate of fatal crashes between different national airlines, and tracked that to sociological differences in the interactions between cockpit crew members and air traffic controllers.
Basically, some national airlines had an almost militaristic hierarchy in the cockpit, such that a junior co-pilot or navigator was too deferential to a senior pilot to actually say “you’re about to fly into a mountain!”; or a pilot was too deferential to say to an air traffic controller “no, I can’t go around again – I’m about to run out of gas!”. So they did some training on proper relationships for this (which was rather difficult in some cultures), resulting in significant reductions in such crashes.
The whole flying to high thing and passing out from lack of oxygen probably wasn’t something talked about much before airtight jets
Hypoxia was talked about a long time before that. People had been flying since the Montgolfier brothers first took off in a balloon in 1782, and people flew too high from time to time. The 1941 film Dive Bomber featured a Naval doctor working on the problem. Actually, ‘airtight jets’ are ‘airtight’ so that they can maintain a livable cabin pressure. It’s the non-airtight aircraft where you have to worry about hypoxia.
Around here NDB stands for “Not Done By Me”. Having flown an NDB hold in instrument conditions and a brisk crosswind, I’ll be glad when they’re all gone.
I quite enjoy doing them, mainly because they’re a bit more of a challenge. We have only started doing GPS approaches in our company recently due to the simulators not having the same GPS equipment as our aircraft. Before then I’d do NDBs regularly and was reasonably good at it. Now I just do one every 90 days to stay legal. The problem we have is doing ILS approaches. I don’t regularly fly to anywhere with an ILS or even a VOR so I normally only do one at each 6 month sim check. Luckily ILSs are so easy it doesn’t really matter if you don’t them very often (perversely CASA require you do 1 every 35 days for currency while you can get away with doing 1 NDB in 90 days.)
I don’t see where it’s arguable at all. A nose wheeled plane has the center of gravity forward of the main gear and will right itself touching down where a tail dragger won’t.