What PSTAR Students Say About Flight Training in Canada
What PSTAR Students Are Really Telling Us About Flight Training
We reviewed 3,429 written answers from students signing up for our free PSTAR course. The patterns are useful for students, instructors, and flight schools across Canada.
The PSTAR Is About More Than One Exam
A lot of students find Canadian Flight Trainers because they are trying to prepare for the PSTAR.
On the surface, that makes sense. The PSTAR is one of those early aviation hurdles that sits between I want to become a pilot and I am actually starting to move toward solo flight. It is not the biggest exam a pilot will ever write, but it is usually one of the first Transport Canada exams that new students take seriously.
Transport Canada describes the PSTAR as the Student Pilot Permit or Private Pilot Licence for Foreign and Military Applicants, Aviation Regulations examination. It covers Canadian Aviation Regulations, ATC clearances and instructions, controlled and uncontrolled aerodrome procedures, Special VFR, NOTAMs, and related subjects. The exam is 50 questions, the pass mark is 90%, and weak areas are corrected to 100%.
Read Transport Canada's official PSTAR study and reference guide.
But when students sign up for our free PSTAR course, we ask a few questions that are not really about the PSTAR at all.
We ask what they like about their instructor. We ask what they dislike, or what could be better. We ask what has been difficult so far. We ask what they wish their flight school could improve.
Those answers are useful. They tell us where students are confused, what they value in an instructor, and where flight schools may be missing the mark. In many cases, they also show something people in aviation sometimes forget: the hardest part of flight training often starts before the airplane leaves the ground.
A Large Snapshot, Not A Lab Study
This is not a formal academic study, and it should not be treated like one. It is better understood as a large snapshot of what new and early-stage students are saying when they arrive at the PSTAR stage.
These were open-ended written responses from students who signed up for our free PSTAR course. Some were already flying. Some had an instructor. Many had not started flight training yet. Some wrote full paragraphs. Others wrote short answers like N/A, nothing, or not sure yet.
How the answers were handled: no names, emails, or personal identifiers were used. Answers were grouped by theme. A single answer could fit more than one theme, so the percentages below are signals, not a pie chart.
Many PSTAR Students Have Not Really Started Yet
One of the clearest patterns was that many students signing up for PSTAR are not yet in a normal flight training routine.
On the question about what students disliked about their current instructor, about one in five responses said some version of: I have not started yet, I do not have an instructor yet, or I cannot answer from experience.
That matters.
A student preparing for the PSTAR may not just be studying air law. They may also be trying to figure out the entire Canadian flight training system for the first time.
Many students did not have enough instructor experience to answer the instructor questions from real training experience.
Across student accounts, a large number of students were still trying to understand the basic order of events.
Transport Canada's student pilot guidance lists the early path as getting a medical certificate, radio operator certificate, and Student Pilot Permit, successfully passing the PSTAR, completing dual and solo flight training, passing a written exam, and completing a flight test.
That sequence is obvious to people who already live in aviation. It is not obvious to someone who is trying to get started from zero.
This is something flight schools sometimes forget. We live in the system every day. Students do not.
Students Want Instructors Who Can Actually Teach
When students described what they liked about their current instructor, three themes came up again and again: clear explanations, patience, and help connecting the theory to the flying.
Mentioned explanations, clarity, or the ability to make things understandable.
Mentioned patience, attitude, respect, calmness, or approachability.
Mentioned ground school, theory, studying, or help with knowledge.
This should not surprise anyone, but it is worth saying plainly: students are not only looking for a pilot who can fly well. They are looking for someone who can teach.
There is a difference.
A good instructor is not just someone who knows the correct answer. A good instructor can explain why the answer is correct, notice when the student is pretending to understand, and slow down without making the student feel stupid.
The words that appeared often were things like patient, knowledgeable, clear, questions, understand, helpful, and calm. That tells us something important. Students do not expect flight training to be easy. But they do want the learning environment to make sense.
They want to ask questions. They want feedback. They want an instructor who can explain the same concept more than one way. They want someone calm enough that the cockpit still feels like a learning environment, not a performance review with wings attached.
The Instructor Problems Were Usually Practical
Most students did not use the instructor question to attack anyone. Many had nothing negative to say. Many had not started training yet. But where students did identify problems, the themes were fairly consistent.
Mentioned access to instructor time, rushed lessons, or difficulty getting booked.
Mentioned explanations, accents, confusion, or needing concepts explained more clearly.
Mentioned impatience, ego, respect, or the way corrections were delivered.
The smaller number on attitude does not mean it is unimportant. It just means most students were not complaining about obvious unprofessional behaviour. When they did mention it, though, it mattered.
A student who feels talked down to may stop asking questions. A student who is afraid of sounding stupid may stay quiet even when they are genuinely confused. In aviation, that is not just a personality issue. It can become a safety issue.
Good instruction does not mean being soft. Students still need standards. They still need correction. They still need to be told when something is not good enough. But correction and condescension are not the same thing.
The Hardest Part Is Often Not The Flying
When students were asked what the most difficult part of flight training had been so far, the largest theme was not landings.
It was not steep turns.
It was not even radio calls, although those came up often enough.
Mentioned theory, memorization, knowledge, air law, PSTAR, radio, or understanding the material.
Mentioned time, booking, availability, or keeping training moving.
Mentioned weather, aircraft handling, operational skills, or practical flying challenges.
This is one of the awkward truths about pilot training. Flying is practical, but aviation knowledge is cumulative.
A student cannot really understand controlled airspace without also understanding communication, clearances, weather, aircraft performance, and regulations. A student cannot make good decisions in the circuit if they are still overloaded by radio calls, spacing, checklists, wind correction, and traffic.
The airplane may be where the training happens, but the confusion often starts much earlier.
Ground School Is Not Just Exam Prep
Students often think of ground school as something separate from flying. It is the book work. It is the online course. It is the thing you do to get a recommendation letter and eventually write the exam.
That view is understandable, but it is incomplete.
Ground school is where flight training starts to make sense. It explains why the airplane behaves the way it does, why weather matters, why the rules exist, and why procedures are not just things instructors nag about.
This is especially true around the PSTAR. A student can memorize PSTAR answers and pass. Plenty of people do. But every rule on that exam exists because someone, somewhere, found a way to make that rule necessary.
Memorizing may get a pass. Understanding is what actually helps when the instructor is no longer sitting beside you.
Scheduling Is A Learning Problem, Not Just An Admin Problem
Another strong theme was scheduling and availability.
Students mentioned difficulty booking flights, inconsistent instructor availability, aircraft availability, weather cancellations, long gaps between lessons, and the feeling that progress kept restarting.
On the question about what flight schools could do better, scheduling and availability was the largest category at 17.6%.
That may sound like a customer service issue, and in some ways it is. But it is also a learning issue.
Flight training depends heavily on continuity. If a student flies once, waits three weeks, gets cancelled for weather, switches instructors, and then spends the next flight reviewing the previous lesson, training becomes more expensive and less effective.
A lot of students do not understand this at the beginning. They think flight training is like booking a dentist appointment. You book a time, show up, and the service happens.
Flying is not like that.
Weather matters. Aircraft maintenance matters. Instructor schedules matter. Student readiness matters. The student's own life schedule matters too. But from the student's perspective, inconsistent scheduling can feel like the school is disorganized, even when there are legitimate operational reasons behind it.
That means flight schools need to explain scheduling realities early, not after the student is already frustrated.
Students Want Flight Schools To Make The Path Obvious
When students were asked what their flight school could improve, the answers were not unreasonable. They were mostly asking for the basics to be clearer.
Mentioned availability, bookings, instructor time, or flight continuity.
Mentioned a clearer training plan, consistent process, or better organization.
Mentioned explanations, clearer expectations, or better communication from the school.
Aircraft and fleet availability also appeared frequently. So did online resources, ground school support, cost, and clearer direction for brand-new students.
None of this should be shocking. Students are spending serious money, often while trying to learn a completely unfamiliar system. They want to know where they are going.
That does not require a perfect flight school. It requires better onboarding.
A new student should not have to piece together the licensing process from Reddit threads, outdated forum posts, random YouTube videos, and three different government pages. At a minimum, a student should understand the basic path before they start spending aircraft rental money.
What This Means In Practice
1For Flight Instructors
Students value patience, clarity, and useful feedback. That does not mean lowering standards. Good students usually want high standards. They just want to understand what the standard is and how to reach it.
- Explain the why, not just the what.
- Invite questions before the student has to force them out.
- Debrief consistently.
- Be specific with corrections.
- Tell students what they did well, not just what they did wrong.
- Remember that silence does not always mean understanding.
A student may forget a regulation. They may forget a radio call. They may balloon a landing. But they will remember whether they felt safe asking for help.
2For Flight Schools
If you run a flight school, this should sting a little bit. Not because students are complaining. Most are not. It should sting because many of the problems are fixable.
Students are asking for clearer steps, better scheduling expectations, more communication, and a better understanding of what comes next. That does not require a new fleet of aircraft or a perfect weather system. It requires a better first experience.
Give students a roadmap. Explain the licensing process. Tell them what to do before their first lesson. Tell them how weather cancellations work. Tell them why flying twice a week is better than once every three weeks. Tell them what the PSTAR is for. Tell them when to start the medical.
Students should not have to discover the training process by accidentally doing it wrong.
3For New Students
If you are new to flight training and you feel overwhelmed, you are not alone.
A lot of students feel unsure at the beginning. They do not know the steps. They do not know what to study first. They do not know how much they are expected to know before showing up at a flight school. They may not even know what questions to ask.
That is normal. The important thing is to start building structure early. Do not just collect random aviation information. Build a plan.
If PSTAR Is Next, Start Here
So, if you are just starting and the PSTAR is the next thing on your list, here is the practical order I would suggest.
Enrol in the free PSTAR course
Start with the rules that matter before solo flight. Do not rush through them just to tick a box.
Use Transport Canada's guide as a reference
The PSTAR guide is not just an answer bank. It is a way to see which rules and procedures Transport Canada expects you to understand.
Start your aviation medical early
Medical paperwork can slow students down. Our Transport Canada aviation medical guide explains the categories and what to expect.
Ask your school for the full roadmap
Medical, Student Pilot Permit, ROC-A, PSTAR, ground school, flight training, written exam, and flight test should not feel like mystery steps.
Build ground knowledge before the airplane gets expensive
When you are ready for the full licence path, move into Private Pilot Ground School so PSTAR, ROC-A, PPL written exam preparation, and actual flight lesson knowledge fit together.
The PSTAR is not the hardest exam you will ever write, but it is often the first serious checkpoint. Treat it that way.
Start With The PSTAR
Our free PSTAR course gives students a structured way to prepare before solo flight. It is a clean first step into the rules, procedures, and habits that matter in Canadian flight training.
PSTAR And Early Flight Training Questions
What is the PSTAR?
The PSTAR is the Student Pilot Permit or Private Pilot Licence for Foreign and Military Applicants, Aviation Regulations examination. For most new Canadian flight students, it is one of the required steps before receiving a Student Pilot Permit and flying solo.
How many questions are on the PSTAR?
The PSTAR has 50 questions selected from Transport Canada's PSTAR study and reference guide.
What is the PSTAR pass mark?
The pass mark is 90%, which means you need 45 out of 50 questions correct. Weak areas are corrected to 100%, so you should expect to review anything you miss.
Should I memorize the PSTAR answers?
You can memorize your way through parts of the PSTAR, but that is not the best way to learn. The rules on the PSTAR connect directly to solo flight, airport procedures, airspace, communications, and pilot responsibilities. Understanding will serve you much better than short-term memorization.
Why do so many students struggle before they even start flying?
Because the early process is not always obvious. New students are trying to understand medicals, permits, ground school, radio requirements, flight schools, instructors, and Transport Canada exams all at once. A clear roadmap makes a big difference.
What do students seem to want most from flight instructors?
The responses pointed most strongly toward clear explanations, patience, respect, and useful feedback. Students do not expect instructors to make training easy. They expect them to make it understandable.
What should flight schools improve?
The main themes were scheduling, availability, structure, communication, aircraft availability, and clearer onboarding. In plain English: students want to know what happens next, how to prepare, and how to keep moving forward.
How does Canadian Flight Trainers help?
Our free PSTAR course gives students a structured way to prepare before solo flight. Our Private Pilot Ground School goes further by connecting PSTAR, ROC-A, PPL written exam preparation, and practical flight lesson knowledge in one place.
More From Canadian Flight Trainers
Fifty Questions, And A Lot More Than Fifty Answers
The PSTAR is often treated like a small early exam. In one sense, it is. It is not the PPL written exam. It is not a flight test. It is not the hardest part of becoming a pilot.
But students signing up for PSTAR are often standing at one of the most important points in their training: the beginning.
That is where expectations are formed. That is where confusion either gets cleared up or becomes expensive. That is where a student decides whether aviation feels organized and achievable, or mysterious and intimidating.
After reading thousands of student responses, one thing becomes pretty clear: students are not asking for flight training to be easy. They are asking for it to be understandable.
Source note: The student-response figures in this article come from anonymized PSTAR course sign-up responses submitted to Canadian Flight Trainers. PSTAR examination details are based on Transport Canada's TP 11919 PSTAR study and reference guide.
