There is quite a shortage of instructors over here, both for PPL and ATPL. I’m thinking of renewing my FI rating to help out a little but don’t want to make a real job out of it.
Is the shortage all across Europe?
Anyone fancy helping out? Prob30 to become a billionaire any time soon but Mallorca is not a bad place to live, albeit housing is expensive. If not yourself, anyone in your circles?
Hi @aart it is such a paper chase these days, that the pool of airline pilots putting something back into the industry has become vanishingly small
At the moment we are pretty lucky/ unlucky. We have 3 FIs dealing with a diminishing number of PPL students. We have no one going LAPL. AFAIK we have not had an LAPL student. When we had more students, just after Covid we only had one FI who instructed in between a day job as a commercial pilot.
We have 4 ULM instructors and a reasonable balance of students spread between them as all of them have other occupations as well.
RobertL18C wrote:
the pool of airline pilots putting something back into the industry
Don’t count on them for sure… most have little to no interest in light aviation, and of the few that would, availability is a major issue.
FWIW, there are more than enough FIs around here.
There used to be a French FI here who also said nobody was doing the LAPL, and that was about 10 years ago.
RobertL18C wrote:
the pool of airline pilots putting something back into the industry has become vanishingly small
And at my local ATO one such pilot stopped instructing after getting nicked for infringing an ATZ in Class G airspace. As a second such offense may result in license suspension.
The very same local ATO is having to be inventive due to the lack of FI’s. All night ratings are now done by LAPL FI’s and at one point a proportion of their students were having to do a LAPL initially.
Instructors who can teach for the CPL are also in chronically short supply due to the need, and often the cost, to hold a class one medical. And here the ex airline pilot wanting to put something back often hasn’t got the required 30 hours on MEP’s either.
There’s definitely a shortage around here. The Corona effect is all gone by now, and all the FIs with them.
I split my time between Mallorca and Norway (And Switzerland.). Right now I am at LESB with my DA42. Maybe this is the motivation I need to start training to be a FI…
It was my intention to go back into instructing/examining as i had done previously when I left the airline flying.
But as RobertL 18C said, the paper chase made it all too difficult, and the CAA recent changes on maintaining a class 2 was the final straw!
I’ve been considering going for and working as an FI in the UK, as I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to flying.
If I wanted to make enough to live on it seems I’d need to do CPL instruction and/or ME-IRI.
I may be wrong, but it seems to be easier from where I am (ATPL TK, IR, class 1 med, soon-to-be CPL) to qualify for RHS in an airliner.
Still thinking about it…
