Definition
Flight training tasks performed in the air, in which the student physically controls the aircraft to practice and demonstrate specific skills such as climbs, turns, descents, stalls, steep turns, ground reference maneuvers, and emergency procedures.
Plain English
The hands-on flying exercises a student does in the airplane to learn and prove they can perform required flight skills.
Context Anchor
Seen in flight training when an instructor demonstrates an action in the airplane before the student tries it.
Derivation
“Inflight” means occurring during flight. “Maneuver” comes through French from older words meaning to work by hand. That helps here because an inflight maneuver is not just movement; it is a controlled action the pilot makes with the aircraft.
Why Pilots Care
Inflight maneuvers are the building blocks of practical flight training. Each checkride task in the Airman Certification Standards is, at its core, an inflight maneuver, so understanding what is expected and how it will be taught directly affects a student's progress toward certification.
Intuition Check
Do not read “maneuvers” as random movement. In this context, inflight maneuvers are planned, controlled aircraft actions performed while flying.
Example Sentence 1
The instructor demonstrated each inflight maneuver before asking the student to attempt it.
Example Sentence 2
Before the checkride the applicant demonstrated several inflight maneuvers including steep turns and power-on stalls.