FI(A) exam - any experiences to share

I believe you are referring to the FI Assessment of Competence rather than the written CPL theory exams.

It may seem trite, but I thought my examiner was simply looking to make a general assessment of my ability to become a competent instructor. It’s not enough to be a good pilot (although you have to be safe, capable and competent) and/or know about the theory/regulatory side but also be able to present/engage and communicate with your student. The format is well described in the UK CAA Standards Document 10A and I imagine would be very similar in Belgium. You will do a long and short brief, teach a lesson from the PPL syllabus and verbally be quizzed on a wide variety of topics. If you have just completed a good and intensive FIC course, you shouldn’t expect too many issues (but of course you will learn something from it too).

You should be issued with a temporary certificate enabling you to instruct immediately (including PPL if you have the CPL/ATPL theory exams passed), with lots of paperwork to get the rating on your licence. If you don’t have the theory exam passes (which I think you do), then you should also have the examiner issue you with a CRI rating so that you can also instruct anyone who has ever had a licence otherwise you are limited to LAPL students only.

Good luck. Do you have a job lined up so you can become unrestricted?

I got one comment I would like to share: Let the student (examiner) make mistakes, and don’t correct him immediately unless it becomes dangerous. Ask questions that would lead him to the solution instead. E.g., if he forgot something after takeoff, ask him, time and workload permitting, if he has completed the checklist.

You are required to give a long briefing to the Examiner, this can be on any relevant part of the PPL syllabus. You may make some mistakes or say something that the Examiner then deceides to clarify or ask you questions on. He will usually follow that with questions on specific parts of the PPL syllabus to see the depth of your knowledge. The purpose is not to catch you out, but to extend your knowledge in areas where you might be a little weak. The questions should be practical rather than pure theory. What are the privileges of your new rating, who can you train, what are the limitations etc. What records must be kept and for how long?
The UK Standards Doc 10 provides a set of typical questions.

@Niner_Mike,

Good luck with your test! If it comes to the general format, I can’t really add much to what @Tumbleweed, @Dimme and @DavidC already wrote, but I can give you my personal account of my test. It took place in the UK, and as we all know while the rules are the same this does not necessarily mean things are done the same, but it might help. This was quite a few years ago so I can’t recall every detail, but these are the things which stuck in memory.

Overall, I would say the whole day was about teaching. The starting assumption was that I knew my stuff and can fly reasonably well, so it didn’t really feel like my theory knowledge or handling ability was tested [with the exception of the FI licence privileges].

I was given the exercises to teach the day before – they were exercises 15 (steep turns) and 10B (stalling). I had prepared my long brief – unusually for the PPL initial, I used care and feeding of turbocharged engines.

We started the FI test in the morning with the long brief, with a somewhat surprised examiner because, apparently, he had listened to and seen the same long briefs regurgitated many times and was curious what I had put together on an advanced topic. He then steered the conversation towards rating privileges (what do you need to teach this? What would you need to teach retractable? Can you do so while restricted? etc.). Once the FI rating specific stuff was done, the examiner then proceeded to check my ability to explain various things, such as the weather of the day or the airspace in the local area using the CAA chart. Other than during the rating privileges part where he was a quizzing examiner, he now adopted the attitude of a curious student. On occasion, in particular when I missed something interesting I could have taught, he dropped the role and pointed it out before going back to examining.

All of that took us to lunch when we had a quick break, and then the flight lesson part started, with me briefing the two exercises. In this instance, he played different student roles. So when I started the steep turn briefing with the expected forces he played the ‘know-it-already-let’s-get-on-with-it’ student, and he seemed to like my reaction having HIM explain steep turns to ME and correcting him. In general he wanted to see different teaching techniques (whiteboard, model, Q&A etc.) and whenever I started using one he switched character. When it came to briefing the stalling exercise he stopped that very early and said ‘look, I know you can brief it and use the model well, but I really want you to show me how you put a student at ease because most are worried about this exercise’. As soon as I had shown that he was happy and we went flying.

During the flight portion, he acted like a reasonable student. He made a few mistakes (missed a check, didn’t trim on climb-out, didn’t maintain a lookout, that sort of thing). During the actual exercise he made small mistakes I needed to correct. He never took it to a point where I actually had to take control, though. On occasion he gave a few hints on how to do things differently (“yeah, I know your instructor told you to teach it that way, here is another way”). Both exercises were flown in full, and the flight took around 1:45 minutes in total.

After landing I was told I had passed, followed by the usual debrief over tea, and together with form filling the day was finished around 4pm.

I failed my first attempt at my FI skill test 19 years ago. It was December 23rd, and I was a little extra nervous because I knew that if I failed, I would have to wait until the new year to have another attempt, and by then my TK would have expired. I briefed quite well, instructed ok when the examiner was flying, and flew acceptably myself until the last landing, a power-off precision landing, when the nerves got the better of me and I misjudged, but not catastrophically, and I did not think it was really bad.
The reason I failed was not my flying, but that when demo’ing some of the maneuvers, and especially that last landing, I had concentrated so hard on the flying that I had stopped explaining as I flew.
If I had just kept on commenting the maneuver including my own slight misjudgment, I would have passed. That Christmas holyday was a little sad, but on the next attempt I had very little nerves, and I have enjoyed instructing very much ever since.

I am amazed of the length of that exam

It is not unheard of for an FAA CFI exam to take two days :)

Good luck with your exam