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Why not become an instructor?

I will start my IRI course on the 19th of June. Just to fresh up my knowledge again and to work against bad personal habits.

EDDS , Germany

Inconvenience. I would have to travel to an ATO to do the FI course. Which is a 104 mile trip.

For some reason the sailplane instructor course can be done at a DTO. Which means I have the choice of doing it at 3 schools within a 12 mile radius.

And the local RTF that I occasionally self fly hire from has an FIC and FIE on staff.

Snoopy wrote:

- time, waste an entire afternoon to instruct one hour in a DA20 for a total of 30€, due to private students not always motivated or reliable according to friends that have FI. Some students take two years and 200 hours and never finish the PPL, I’m not interested in that.

Hmm I haven’t met a demotivated student who was unreliable in his schedule in my 6 years of instructing. I have seen more unreliable fellow FI, though.

Two years is somewhat normal in a club, when the student has only time to fly once every second week and many lessons get cancelled due to weather. But mostly I experience more or less sucessful entrepreneurs become pilots lately and the are very fun to fly with. They tend to be interested and are willing to learn and implement what you teach them. Seldom, those students need more than 50 hrs block time, even in a club environment.

I have had only one 200 hrs-student and I don’t know if he’ll ever learn to fly, but he is active in the club and has fun even being a student and if this is his aim, you can make an occasional “lesson”. But out of “my” 22 students in the past 6 years, there was just one of whom I’d say there is a problem with aptitude to fly. Moreover, I have experienced that the aptitude of the FI to teach is much more important to flight instruction. I have seen (and taken on) some students, who’s underperformance was directly linked to the former instructors lack of airmenship or capability to explain and teach.

I tend to agree with LeSving here, that training is needed to fit the purpose of the ambitions of the new pilots. On flight refresher training seminars, I fly with many trainees of many different flight school backgrounds. There are some commercial flight school outfits (Peter may call them sausage factories) that do a very quick and efficient training towards the PPL. Barely none of them have more than minimum hours. They are mostly trained by career ATPL pilots on a sleepy regional airport, they can do all their briefings, all their checklists, but “forget” to keep the ball centered in climb, crosswind correction by ailerons in takeoff or in low-speed-high-power-flight in general, rely on Flugleiter/ATCOs way too much and/or are not capable to prepare for a tight circuit (that you will encounter on many german airfields). Knowledge about other forms of GA (parachuters, gliders, microlights, gyros, etc.) is basically not existing. This might all be fine, if you train to become an airline capitain, but it is not the skillset needed in our typical small GA.

And if you want to, you can fit a lot into the minimum hours, that do help become a better aviator (and not just a pilot):
Including slipping



https://www.instagram.com/p/BjlBpJ_Hk17/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

and stalling






(I apologise, the stalls are a bit too low for proper training. You should have 2000ft more than what I flew in the videos)

and “partial panel” work:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgTi5I5F3sj/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet

Last Edited by mh at 23 May 09:13
mh
Aufwind GmbH
EKPB, Germany

I think the biggest reason more people don’t become instructors is because of the requirement to have CPL TK. In my view the pleasure from passing on some knowledge and the challenge and interest I would have in teaching people to fly is far outweighed by the fact I am not prepared to put in the time and work to do the CPL TK.

I know…..bone idle.

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

So I had a guy yesterday on the Tailwheel course I run. Newly minted PPL, however he told he had over 100 hours when he enquired. Log book shows different when I checked pre presentation. Young guy with airline aspirations, has just passed his night rating. It became evident pretty quickly that basic skills were questionable. Now, I know the transition from the 152 to a large taildragger is significant, but if basic handling skills are not evident it no longer becomes a conversion course. We have to tidy up tha basics first. FWIW his three mile final school taught positioning appeared fine

I find it great fun, and meeting different people, with different aspirations and skill set is refreshing.

One point though. I got a lot of negativity from Old Scroat FI, due to the CRI thing. That British thing again!!!!

Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

I see the CRI routinely denigrated by “proper instructors”.

I have no view on it, but the CRI would be the only “instructor” thing I could ever do. The 13 CPL exams would do my head in, and “nobody” in the UK is doing the LAPL and the UK doesn’t allow the “French route” where a non-CPL-theory FI can start off a PPL student (“doing the LAPL”) and then hand him/her over to a CPL-theory FI to finish the PPL where the two syllabi diverge.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

mh wrote:

Hmm I haven’t met a demotivated student who was unreliable in his schedule in my 6 years of instructing. I have seen more unreliable fellow FI, though.

Thanks for your interesting post.
Yes I take the stories of other FIs with a grain of salt, in many cases an instructor downtalking about a student is forgetting he might also be a contributor to the situation. The flight school market at my homebase is pretty saturated and I don’t have the time now to instruct more or less for free or in a club environment. Money is tight and people are not willing to pay for an instructor so they make do with those who give away their time for free. The 100 hours restriction is also a barrier in this regard.

always learning
LO__, Austria

The idea of becoming an FI starts to grow in me. I have flown with some less current pilots and I liked the fact of guessing what he was thinking, thinking of what he was missing, waiting for him to catch up or gently pointing him to what he had missed.

Most pilots here become FI either LAPL restricted like Peter described or with the training paid by the FFA (vs 300hrs of voluntary instruction in your club within 3 years).

But that’s far too time consuming with a career. I keep that in mind for the end of my career/beginning of my retirement (if it ever happens). I would go for the full curriculum : CPL TK, ideally pay for the training (to be free from my club) and take a few students I would train and mentor until they are safe and confident to do the flying they want.
Or, if I get rich or IFR gets cheaper, build some IFR hours and become IRI.
The training seems really expensive, like an IR. That’s a lot to be able to help others for free

Last Edited by Jujupilote at 24 May 06:33
LFOU, France

Peter wrote:

If you ever thought about becoming an FI
I am thinking about it. I quite enjoy being a theory teacher in my club.
Peter wrote:
what factors stopped you doing it?
As I just completed my CBIR, and none of the theory that is the same as the CPL’s can be carried over to the CPL, I am not looking forward to sitting countless week-end hours at the ATO, spending evening upon evening of reading and test exams, and passing all these exams (plus the 6 extra) all over again. For me at this time the CPL TK kills it.
ESMK, Sweden

Peter wrote:

I see the CRI routinely denigrated by “proper instructors”.

There really are two types of instructor and instruction.

The Ab Initio training to PPL does have to follow a course, with skills only introduced as others have been mastered, taught in a fairly rigid and constrained way by instructors who really know their stuff, but who don’t really need to know much besides.

However, advanced training comes from somewhere else (and please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that advanced training requires superior instructors; just the opposite is true, initial training is much harder). It is much more a question of education than teaching. And it is better suited to grizzled, experienced practitioners who can call on a wealth of real world experience.

Although I do do CRI(ME), nearly all my experience is on the IR, so I can only speak to that. The way the IR is taught and examined in EASA is a disgrace. You can get through the process and come out with an IR, completely unprepared for the reality of IFR flight. This is the result of a rigid skill set being taught in a rigid way by instructors who either know little of the real world of IFR or are constrained by the syllabus to teaching only the examined skills. We end up with pilots who can fly a beautiful ADF hold, but don’t know where to start with filing an acceptable flight plan. I fly about 200 hours IFR a year, and have not flown an NDB hold since 1993, but every IFR flight needs me to know how to file a flight plan. This imbalance is a nonsense.

So, in my opinion, IR students are much better served by experienced IRIs than by career instructors who teach the IR. But equally, sending students to an ATO to be polished up and made test ready by someone who knows how examiners think is also a great idea.

So FIs and CRIs/IRIs should respect each others’ capabilities and knowledge and use each other to turn out functioning pilots.

EGKB Biggin Hill
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