In short: Rod Machado tells the story of a student who stuck his tongue out whenever he got nervous on final approach, even pointing it in the direction he planned to turn. Rod’s unusual fix involved a leather glove from his flight case, and the result is one of his more memorable classroom stories about how students behave under pressure.
Video: “A Tongue Turn for the Worse” by Rod Machado, from his YouTube channel.
What you’ll learn
- How stress shows up in student pilots in strange and sometimes funny ways
- The odd habit one of Rod’s students had on final approach
- Why Rod once carried leather gloves in his flight case
- How Rod dealt with the habit, and the student’s surprising reply
Pressure does strange things to students
As Rod notes in the video description, students do odd things when they’re under pressure, and he admits he did his share of strange things as a student too. This story is about one of his own students, who had a habit of sticking his tongue out whenever he got nervous during an approach to land.
It wasn’t just a nervous twitch. Rod noticed that the student actually pointed his tongue in the direction he intended to go, almost as if he were steering with it. Rod jokes about what that might look like once the student moved on to instrument flying, and decided the habit had to stop.
The leather glove solution
Back then, Rod carried a pair of leather gloves in his flight case. He explains the reasoning he had heard from the Air Line Pilots Association: if something in the cockpit catches fire, leather gloves let you grab it and push it away, because leather doesn’t burn easily. Rod adds a few jokes about ALPA and cows along the way.
On this particular approach, Rod put on a glove, reached over and took hold of the wandering tongue. The student’s protest, which Rod delivers as the punchline, makes clear the student believed he still needed it to finish the maneuver. You’ll want to hear Rod tell that part himself.
The takeaway
Beneath the laughs is a familiar truth for instructors and students alike: stress shows up in the body in unexpected ways. Noticing those quirks, and keeping a sense of humor about them, is part of learning to fly.
Go deeper with Rod Machado
Rod’s collection of aviation essays and humor is full of stories like this one, each written to make you laugh and help you remember a lesson. Learn more in Speaking of Flying.
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