Hi all,
I have long been interested in getting the FI rating and doing some instructing. So far the high cost (around 10k EUR) has put me off but it will not get cheaper anyway.. Has anyone recently added the FI rating to their license and cares to share the experience?
Maybe some of you have some information on EASA approved schools in the US (if any) that offer such a course?
Thanks a lot!
Hi Snoopy,
Depending on your goal. If you want to teach and dedicate time to a low paid profession, then ok. Do it, is a nice rating to do and course.
If your goal is to go for Airline or Corporate, you will be wasting your money, the FI rating is slightly cheaper than a Citation TR or a B737-A320 TR and as hour building it wont be good.
Broadly agree with Airgus – a couple of modifiers.
Some airlines give 80% or even 100% credit for FI hours which helps in terms of roster seniority and getting to senior first officer – so if you are aiming at the airlines and want an aviation related job while waiting for an assessment being an FI may be worthwhile.
It seems a cyclical matter, but there was a phase where the airlines prioritised integrated frozen ATPLs and FIs came off second best – that seems to have changed, and FIs seem once again to be in demand. For Part 121 where you need an ATPL, the main route is still being an FI followed by Part 135 when you have sufficient hours.
Finally the other FIs are comparing notes on assessments at various airlines so there is an element of inside knowledge from being an FI.
While being an FI on the advanced training programmes is not highly compensated relative to white collar manager type jobs, it can compare favourably with FOs or some corporate jobs.
Hello!
In difficult times, having an FI rating and the extra hours associated with it can make the difference for getting a job (bizjet or airline) or not. Like it was during the last five years or so in Europe. Right now it seems that there are some job vacancies, so what counts more now is age. They rather take a 21 year old rookie with 200 hours total time than a 25 year old with 1000 hours instructing. Adding an FI rating to beef up your CV can actually have the opposite effect right now.
But in my experience (and for me personally), instructing is the best thing aviation has to offer. Commercial flying just plain sucks (show me one professional pilot who is not constantly complaining about his lousy job, his lousy pay, his lousy company, his lousy private life, his lousy roster, his lousy hotels, his lousy expenses, his lousy career in general). If you don’t believe that just spend two hours in any crew lounge of any airport and eavesdrop. I am so fed up of these conversations, I really can’t say how much!
So if you think that instructing is something you really like to do, go for it. No matter how much it costs. If you want to instruct in Europe get your ratings here. Going to the States will save some pennies initially, bit the extra cost and paperwork and lost lifetime (we don’t get an infinite supply of that!) is not worth it. Money comes and goes, lifetime only goes. You can always instruct beside a flying job. Not for the money, but for the personal benefit it gives you.
I have just (as I call it) successfully completed my second ph.d. – so to say – by teaching a hairdresser to become a commercial pilot over the last half year. In the beginning I really thought this was an impossible task to achieve (she is one of the nicest persons I ever met but has zero, or rather sub-zero, knowledge, or interest, of technical, physical or mathematical subjects). But I stayed focused and she stayed focused and on Monday this week she passed her ATPL checkride on the first attempt. So well, that the examiner, who flies a corporate Citation, offered her a job in his company right on the spot. Type rating paid and everything. I have not felt such pride often in my life and that moment alone was worth the money and effort I spent on my instructor ratings.
Two thoughts on doing the instructor course “elsewhere”.
A lot about the instructor course is doing / developing the briefings, and the “patter”. I am bilingual, but I would not be able to instruct in German, my native language, since I learned to instruct in English; not an insurmountable obstacle but could be a bit tricky when you come back to Austria and fly an assessment with a school, and have to think hard about what to say.
Also, starting to teach at the school where you learned is a tried-and-tested route to then actually getting a job; even if not the schools, more likely than not, will call up each other and ask “hey, how is this Snoopy chap”, which can help.
Of course if there is an instructor shortage at schools in your area, and/or you do the training elsewhere with their support when they don’t have an FIC instructor, the above does not apply.
Instructing is great! I love it!
Snoopy wrote:
Has anyone recently added the FI rating to their license and cares to share the experience
I’m not sure exactly what you want, but here is how this worked out for me:
I had a bit of a time off flying (too much work, two years in Japan which isn’t the most GA-friendly country) and decided to take time off and instruct for a year or two. So I resigned, lined up the FI course for January. at that point I had 700-ish hours, 200-ish of which IFR, but not flown for two years.
At the suggestion of the prospective FI instructor, I did my renewal flying (one sortie to get back into the groove, a few circuits, and then the renewal test) in the right hand seat, this also was my assessment flight.
The course itself was done as follows:
(the instructor was a lovely gentleman in his seventies. Very British, too)
This was leapfrogged, so for example in the morning, I would give the briefing for climbing, receive the briefing for descending, when we went out and I was teaching the climbing, being shown how to teach the descent. Two sorties on a good day, one if the weather was iffy (it was January/February and quite snowy that year).
This went on until we got to the cross country stages; then we went spinning (FUN!) and covered how to teach the cross-country techniques, different navigational items, etc, both on the map and in the air.
In the run-up to the skill test, I wrote two long briefings (I chose VP prop and turbocharged engines, much to the surprise of the examiner who reviews them – he said that was a first for him); the skill test took almost a full day – a lot of dicussion, briefing, very much like a good FAA oral, he was getting me to explain many practical things including where/how to get NOTAMS, weather, how to interpret it; then we did the flight test. He gave me steep turns to teach, which went well, and then he got me to teach the stalling exercises and an engine failure.
Ideally, you would have a buddy, who sits in the back and observes, and takes the same course, but in my case it was 1:1.
After that, I joined the school as an instructor, built up my own students, finally got the restriction removed, and once I had a couple of students passing their skill test (including one chap who bought his own arrow after first solo, and I had to solo him again in the Arrow and he finished his PPL in it – they gave all the crazy ones to me…) I had done what I wanted, and move back into boring office jobs.
I also believe that the FI has to be for a long commitment… my impression is that you are constantly learning and improving yourself for the first 1000 or 2000 hours.
To do it as a touch and go or a bridge as a jet it will consume you time and money…
If you want to do it as a profession, it is a very rewarding and enjoyable job (because you are living those great times when you started flying again). But (there is always a but)… the first months the salary is quite low for the investment (in the long run, if you want to grow as a FI with other privileges, it is a well paid job and enjoyable).
I decided to go for the FI because I want to build a career into it, my next plan is to get the twin CRI and so on… by then you can start getting nicer results financially.
if you decide to do the course, try to do it in the same place that you can get a job afterwards (so you know them well enough and they shaped you to their ways).
Well, I can add my experience too. I did it last year with an ATO here in Southwest Germany. However, for me it’s not a career thing, it’s a hobby. Maybe many years from now, once I will retire or partly retire, this might change to some degree, but I really don’t know.
Currently I have my first student at our club’s ATO, where I had been a member before. Of course I only enjoy restricted privileges at the moment. Our head of training is an experienced FI and assigned a young guy with an engeneering background to me leaving the harder cases to the more seasoned FIs. My student never tried to kill us so far and I’m very confident he well go solo and get his license quickly.
It’s a new experience to me and I can’t tell how I’ll feel about it after doing it for some years but for now I really enjoy it. I find it rewarding to see how the skills of my student improve with each flight. Last not least, I’m sure, I’ll become a better pilot myself.
Airgus wrote:
If your goal is to go for Airline or Corporate, you will be wasting your money
I broadly disagree. I’ve only known about half a dozen instructors who haven’t progressed onto airline or corporate work and all of them were useless eg couldn’t turn up on time, never used a bar of soap etc. Frankly regardless of the job they were unemployable.
The real question in the present market is why would you bother getting an FI rating? I’ve not checked my local ATO employment statistics lately (genuine statistics not the hyper inflated integrated ones) but I guessing 40% are dropping straight into jobs within 6 months. There is even a guy who fits the useless criteria who managed to get employed last week.
I always say give it a year if you haven’t got a job do an FI rating. It certainly opens doors. Training captains need to base their S-2 Pitts somewhere 
