Definition
Actions, habits, or procedures performed by a learner during flight or ground training that fail to meet established safety standards and could lead to an accident, incident, or violation if uncorrected. In a training syllabus, unsafe practices are behaviors the instructor must identify, document, and correct before the learner advances.
Plain English
Things a student does during training that are risky or wrong, and that the instructor needs to catch and fix before letting the student move on.
Context Anchor
Seen in training syllabi, lesson critiques, and instructor feedback when identifying habits that must be corrected before they become normal.
Why Pilots Care
Unsafe practices can cause accidents, failed evaluations, or enforcement action by the FAA.
Intuition Check
Do not think of unsafe practices only as obvious reckless behavior. In aviation, an unsafe practice can be a small repeated habit, such as skipping a checklist item or accepting a rushed setup.
Example Sentence 1
The instructor stopped the lesson and demonstrated the correct procedure after observing several unsafe practices during the run-up.
Example Sentence 2
Correcting unsafe practices early helps the student develop safe habits for solo flight.