Quick question for anyone working in the FTU world. Are you folks busy these days?

Yes. At pre-Covid levels.

Yes, I just recently got hired and very much so.

Yes, just as busy, if not busier then before Covid - I don't understand it Guess people think there are lots of pilot jobs available

Skymark wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:33 am Yes, just as busy, if not busier then before Covid - I don't understand it Guess people think there are lots of pilot jobs available

Plenty of people benefitting financially from our ridiculous Covid response. They have lots of free time and plenty of disposable income to complete flight training. I expect that this glut of students will dry up when the real economic impacts are felt in the new year.

Also, it would be interesting to know the number of PPL hobbyists compared to CPL professional track students.

We have a full load of students at my FTU. Honestly aside from being closed for 5 weeks at the beginning of all this nothing has changed. We still have easily over 75% of our students wanting to go all the way (CPL MIFR etc) and about 25% just for the PPL

I have found it to be a mix. We have a bunch of students who began pre covid when jobs were plentiful who have invested too much and want to now continue in the hopes that things will improve.As someone else pointed out there are also the guys who have wanted to fly as a hobby and they now have a lot more free time to do this and money does not appear to be an issue for most of them.

Wow. This is all a bit of a pleasant surprise. Do you folks mind mentioning what areas/regions you're working in? No need to name specific schools if you don't want to.

HavaJava wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:37 am I expect that this glut of students will dry up when the real economic impacts are felt in the new year.

Unforunately, I suspect HavaJava is on to something. But I hope he's wrong.

As I am wondering whether it is good idea to renew my class I instructor rating, I made a few phone calls to some FTU in Montréal.
It didn't sound good at all...

frog wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 2:32 pm As I am wondering whether it is good idea to renew my class I instructor rating, I made a few phone calls to some FTU in Montréal.
It didn't sound good at all...

Class 1? Oh yeah I would. Large shortage of you guys

Having just finished my PPL in the Montreal area, what I see and hear echoes what the other posters in this thread have said: things are at least as busy as they were before Covid. My (low time) instructor said that his workload is overwhelming him and my examiner said the same thing. I myself was prepared to train full time this summer, but the availability of planes/instructor was such that I didn't often fly more than a couple of times a week. My neighbour, who has his own small FTU, took the summer off of his day job to focus on instructing full time and from what I understand was plenty busy.

On the other hand, you have a lot of laid off junior airline pilots available to instruct in addition to newly-graduated CPL students who don't really have anywhere but the FTUs to move on to. At the school I trained at I was told that they favour hiring their own recent trainees over taking more experienced instructors from outside the school. In sum: there are a lot of available instructors and a finite number of planes, as well as new aircraft sanitation protocols which take up a bit of available flight time, so even if the schools are busy, you're not going to be guaranteed an instructing job.

I had to place my training on hold over the summer due to schedule incompatibilities with my instructor. I've been recently looking to restart my training, and it's been pretty hard finding an instructor with at least weekly availability, even harder to find something semi-weekly. And I'm in Brampton with a good number of flight schools nearby.

So my guess is, yes, they're busy currently, although I can't speak to the reasons why.

Same,as am about to finish my cpl what i see is that my school is still as busy as pre covid but the number of instructors on the other hand went up and now they told me in my school that hiring me after completing my instructor rating is not guaranteed
I know to that our chief pilot is busy training some new flight instructors and there’s a waiting list until spring from what I’ve heard ...
Am afraid that this load of students will soon start to dry up but mean while let’s pray that the industry will pickup slowly but surely !
Oh btw i noticed a lot of flight instructors hiring is going on in Ontario/ Manitoba/ Alberta area compared to Quebec

Its busy for the time being. But it feels like a bubble that can burst anytime. All existing instructors have enough students. But new instructors who just passed their flight test are kept on a waiting list. New students who come into flight training has reduced. Its just an influx of already existing students who stopped flying for some reason. But the moment border opens up for international students, its going to be flooded again.

My brother is an FI in southern Ontario and he's been as busy, if not busier than this time last year. Good for him!