Narrative:

After a lull in flying; only two flights in the last eight months; I decided to obtain training to both regain my proficiency and to obtain experience in the C-182 G1000 aircraft. This flight was the second training flight with the instructor. And also my second flight in this area. The flight was planned as a local VFR flight with a refueling stop at a nearby airport. We departed about an hour and a half late into our three hour scheduled time. As we climbed out the instructor was talking about errors in my takeoff procedure. I don't know if the tower made any calls to us as we departed the area because I was unable to monitor communications due to the instructor's conversation. After we climbed to our cruise altitude we modified flight plans in the G1000 and performed procedures with the autopilot. Although we had not planned to fly any approaches during this training flight the instructor suggested we fly a VOR/DME approach to our refueling airport. As we flew towards the initial approach fix the instructor asked me questions about the approach. The instructor continued to talk and then said when we get to the approach fix we need to start our procedure turn. I advised the instructor we had just passed the fix and then started the procedure turn. I failed to start the one minute time count. As the instructor continued to discuss the procedure and other aircraft operational issues such as checklist use I reversed course on the procedure turn. Looking for traffic; making adjustments to the flight profile; listening to the instructor I flew past the inbound course. As I looked down at the G1000 map I may have been about a mile past our inbound turn. Realizing things were not going well I called off the approach. We landed at our refueling airport. We departed our refueling airport about forty minutes after our planned arrival at the home airport. We were now in a rush to return. To save time the instructor put a 'direct to' flight plan into the G1000. I climbed out leveled off and obtained the ATIS info for our arrival. The instructor began to raise the issue about our direct course clipping another airports class D airspace and the need to modify the flight plan to avoid the airspace. As the instructor was discussing the need to modify the flight plan we were about ten and a half miles out from our destination airport. I was starting to call the tower when my instructor stopped me and told me I needed to modify the flight plan to clear the other airport's class D airspace. The instructor had requested on our previous flight to call the tower ten miles out. My attention was now drawn inside the cockpit to modify the flight plan. Because of the urgency of the airspace issue I knew I could not do what the instructor was requesting in the time we had so I turned the aircraft away from the airspace using the autopilot heading mode. Then using the joystick on the G1000 I selected to go direct to the waypoint that cleared the adjacent airspace. I now lost my reference to our destination airport. I called the tower. The tower advised me to report a left downwind. We were inbound from the northwest. I estimate we had; with a tailwind; a groundspeed of 140 KTS. As I looked up at the city in front of me; I thought; 'ok where's the airport?' after a quick scan of the horizon I could not spot the airport. I quickly selected on the pfd the nearest function and told the instructor; 'I've lost situational awareness. I don't know where the airport is'. The instructor became concerned. As I quickly looked around I located the airport off our right wing. We were now in a right downwind a little past midfield flying way from the airport. The instructor called the tower and advised them of our new position. We landed. Before our next flight the instructor and I will have a discussion about several issues. It is important for the student and instructor to understand each other's expectations and assumptions. We will discuss these expectations andassumptions. During this flight and the previous flight we finished our flights after our scheduled time. In both flights we were in a rush to get back. We will plan our future flights to land at our destination airport a minimum of thirty minutes before the end of scheduled time. We will clarify roles. When does the instructor want to make the decisions and when does the instructor want me to make the decisions. We will have a lesson plan and discuss it before the flight. I felt the instructor was instructing behind the aircraft. If I make a mistake; fine. Point the mistake out but continue the flight. I think the instructor was lecturing about mistakes or flight issues but not staying with the aircraft. I think our arrival demonstrated that point. Yes we avoided the other airports airspace but we flew past our airport. My instructor has a professional pilot background with many hours of flight time. Despite this incident I have a lot of respect for the instructor's professionalism.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A commercial pilot on a familiarization training flight in a GPS equipped C182 discussed shortcomings in the instructor's techniques.

Narrative: After a lull in flying; only two flights in the last eight months; I decided to obtain training to both regain my proficiency and to obtain experience in the C-182 G1000 aircraft. This flight was the second training flight with the instructor. And also my second flight in this area. The flight was planned as a local VFR flight with a refueling stop at a nearby airport. We departed about an hour and a half late into our three hour scheduled time. As we climbed out the instructor was talking about errors in my takeoff procedure. I don't know if the Tower made any calls to us as we departed the area because I was unable to monitor communications due to the instructor's conversation. After we climbed to our cruise altitude we modified flight plans in the G1000 and performed procedures with the autopilot. Although we had not planned to fly any approaches during this training flight the instructor suggested we fly a VOR/DME approach to our refueling airport. As we flew towards the initial approach fix the instructor asked me questions about the approach. The instructor continued to talk and then said when we get to the approach fix we need to start our procedure turn. I advised the instructor we had just passed the fix and then started the procedure turn. I failed to start the one minute time count. As the instructor continued to discuss the procedure and other aircraft operational issues such as checklist use I reversed course on the procedure turn. Looking for traffic; making adjustments to the flight profile; listening to the instructor I flew past the inbound course. As I looked down at the G1000 map I may have been about a mile past our inbound turn. Realizing things were not going well I called off the approach. We landed at our refueling airport. We departed our refueling airport about forty minutes after our planned arrival at the home airport. We were now in a rush to return. To save time the instructor put a 'direct to' flight plan into the G1000. I climbed out leveled off and obtained the ATIS info for our arrival. The instructor began to raise the issue about our direct course clipping another airports class D airspace and the need to modify the flight plan to avoid the airspace. As the instructor was discussing the need to modify the flight plan we were about ten and a half miles out from our destination airport. I was starting to call the Tower when my instructor stopped me and told me I needed to modify the flight plan to clear the other airport's class D airspace. The instructor had requested on our previous flight to call the Tower ten miles out. My attention was now drawn inside the cockpit to modify the flight plan. Because of the urgency of the airspace issue I knew I could not do what the instructor was requesting in the time we had so I turned the aircraft away from the airspace using the autopilot heading mode. Then using the joystick on the G1000 I selected to go direct to the waypoint that cleared the adjacent airspace. I now lost my reference to our destination airport. I called the Tower. The Tower advised me to report a left downwind. We were inbound from the northwest. I estimate we had; with a tailwind; a groundspeed of 140 KTS. As I looked up at the city in front of me; I thought; 'OK where's the airport?' After a quick scan of the horizon I could not spot the airport. I quickly selected on the PFD the nearest function and told the instructor; 'I've lost situational awareness. I don't know where the airport is'. The instructor became concerned. As I quickly looked around I located the airport off our right wing. We were now in a right downwind a little past midfield flying way from the airport. The instructor called the Tower and advised them of our new position. We landed. Before our next flight the instructor and I will have a discussion about several issues. It is important for the student and instructor to understand each other's expectations and assumptions. We will discuss these expectations andassumptions. During this flight and the previous flight we finished our flights after our scheduled time. In both flights we were in a rush to get back. We will plan our future flights to land at our destination airport a minimum of thirty minutes before the end of scheduled time. We will clarify roles. When does the instructor want to make the decisions and when does the instructor want me to make the decisions. We will have a lesson plan and discuss it before the flight. I felt the instructor was instructing behind the aircraft. If I make a mistake; fine. Point the mistake out but continue the flight. I think the instructor was lecturing about mistakes or flight issues but not staying with the aircraft. I think our arrival demonstrated that point. Yes we avoided the other airports airspace but we flew past our airport. My instructor has a professional pilot background with many hours of flight time. Despite this incident I have a lot of respect for the instructor's professionalism.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.