The “Death Grip”. It’s not just students that do it, pilots do it too. So what am I talking about? I’m talking about squeezing the yoke so hard that your fingers turn white! Let me start by saying, STOP! I understand the fear and unknown in the beginning of your training, but I see pilots with years of experience doing the same thing.It’s usually the turbulence rocking the plane back and forth that people are really nervous about.

People think that if they don’t hold the plane there and do the best they can to keep the plane from rocking, it will flip over from the turbulence. I used to feel that way while I was learning many years ago. It’s not always turbulence, it could be just fear in general.Other reasons, from what I’ve seen so far, is because people are not trimming the airplane. The trim is there for a reason, and that is to relieve the control pressures, allowing you to fly with just a touch of the fingertips. If the plane is not trimmed, it will want to climb or descend and the only way to stop it without trimming will be to manually hold the plane, fighting those control pressures. Whatever reason it is, you are just making it harder on yourself.

For you students, you have to force yourself to understand that just because it’s turbulent, doesn’t mean you will lose control if you don’t hold the yoke really hard. Next time it’s turbulent out, trim the plane (if you don’t know how yet, ask your instructor to demonstrate this) and let go of the yoke. The plane will rock and roll but doesn’t flip over. Every now and then you may get a strong gust of wind that will roll the plane more than is comfortable but all it will take is quick correction to level the wings again. For the most part, the plane will be stable, just rocking back and forth without your hands even touching the yoke!

Now that you know that you won’t lose control of the plane, try to keep the plane trimmed and fly with fingertip pressure only and it will reduce your workload.Just imagine a boat rocking in the waves of the water. If you tried to stop the boat from rocking, would you be succesful? If you squeezed the controls of the boat really hard, would the boat stop rocking? If you let go of the boat, would it rock any worse? I think you know that the answer is NO to all of these questions. The plane is no different. The plane is the boat and the waves are the turbulence. Just relax, ride the waves and focus on learning! It’ll take a little while to get past this fear, but once you do, you will wonder why you ever worried about it in the first place!