Adding a Glider Ticket: Skill Set Upgrade

Want to dramatically improve your stick and rudder skills as well as overall situational awareness? Pick up a glider rating. You’ll be glad you did.

A Grob G103 on final. Photo courtesy of Ed Figuli. Adding a glider rating
A Grob G103 on final. Photo courtesy of Ed Figuli.

We’ve been listening to the complaints—often justified—of the erosion of stick and rudder skills of modern pilots, of overreliance on automation and of pilot graduates of “puppy mills” who can’t make a crosswind landing.

While there are rarely simple answers to problems in the real world, we happen to think that there may be a good way for a pilot to reduce the risk of looking stupid in an NTSB  report after a loss-of-control event in an airplane: Add on a glider rating.

Rick Durden

Senior Editor Rick Durden has written for Aviation Consumer since 1994 and specializes in aviation law. Rick is an active CFII and holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation. He is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.