Keeping Student Pilots Safe
Learning to fly is a little like learning cliff diving. The first few times in the air definitely seem like a leap of faith. You might think the combination of altitude and inexperience is the most risky thing about those first few flights. As student pilot Sebastian Bußhardt discovered, sometimes it’s not.
Bußhardt, who lives in Hamburg, Germany, is close to getting his private pilot’s license. He had wanted to fly since a girlfriend gave him a discovery flight for his 18th birthday, but getting a license in Germany is more expensive and regulated than in the U.S. He went to work in high tech and put flying on hold for years. By his 40th birthday, he had just sold an online business, and when his mother gave him a flight with an instructor for his birthday, he decided it was now or never. He signed up for flight training at a small airfield near his home.
Soon, Bußhardt was spending every weekend at the airfield working on his license. After a couple of flight lessons, he wanted his own aviation headset. He tried on a couple and decided on the Lightspeed Delta Zulu™ because he liked its quality, feel, and value for the money. Being able to record in-flight communications was a definite bonus for him. He explains, “There were a lot of things to pay attention to in the cockpit, plus all the things my instructor was telling me. With the [Lightspeed] Delta Zulu, I would record everything my instructor was saying and review it on the way home, like listening to a podcast.”
But it was on his 5th flight lesson that Bußhardt discovered an unexpected benefit of his new headset. Like many flight schools, his started student pilots out on older planes. He says, “We were in the oldest plane they had, a Cessna-150 from the 1960’s that they use for the beginning students. We were still taxiing when the first alert sounded in my headset.” It was the alarm from the Lightspeed Delta Zulu’s built-in carbon monoxide (CO) monitor. Bußhardt didn’t take it seriously at first. He says, “I thought I must have pressed a wrong button or something. I ignored it the second time, too, but by then I didn’t have a good feeling.” When the alert sounded for the third time, he told his instructor. By that time, the instructor was feeling a little dizzy, so they opened the windows, cut the lesson short, and headed back to the airfield.
The plane had one of the check dot CO test strips, which hadn’t indicated a problem. But Bußhardt guesses it was probably 20 years old, not as old as the plane but still two decades past its expiration date. After his lesson, the flight school’s maintenance crew checked the plane, and he found out a few days later that it had had a small leak in the exhaust system.
The experience convinced Bußhardt that Lightspeed Delta Zulu is a great choice for students and other pilots who don’t always know how the planes they’re flying have been maintained. “Pilots who fly with different planes should definitely have a CO sensor in the headset.” He’s planning to buy his own plane in future, but he’s going to rent planes for the first year and see how it goes. Whatever he flies, Lightspeed Delta Zulu will go with him.
His advice to other student pilots. “Not everyone can afford a premium headset at first, but if you can, go for it. I didn’t regret it for a second. Especially if you won’t have your own plane at first, having a headset with a CO monitor can save your life. And if sharing my story prevents one accident, it’s worth it.”