"career flight instructor"

[photofly]

As for the discussion about weight and balance always being necessary or not.. it's not about the skill practice, but the habit and character you're building.

I do agree with that. But apparently we disagree over what those good habits and character in a pilot should be. I think calculating my accelerate stop distance for every flight off a 4000 foot sea level runway in a C150 demonstrates poor habits, a lack of character, and an absence of aeronautical judgment.

I really hope all those people who advocate for performance calculations for every flight actually do those same calculations without fail themselves when they fly alone, every flight. And never go flying in my 1939 Luscombe, for which there isn’t any performance data provided. Otherwise it’s “do as I say, not do as I do”, the worst kind of hypocrisy in flight training.

[Bede]

waterdog,

Good posts. One of the reasons flight training hasn't "kept up" is that the intent is to train from first principles. (Teaching by first principles is the way physicians & engineers are taught. You could easily skip to the end- just calculate stress using a table, or reading a diagnosis based on symptoms without understanding the underlying physiology-, but you need to know how you got there.) Flight training is similar. You learn to navigate the old fashion way to understand it. Once you understand it and get your PPL, your free to use the latest gadget to make your life easier.

WRT to W&B. Back when I worked in the bush, and now in small aircraft that I fly, I made up a generic W&B. It consists of 4 W&B scenarios- full fuel/forward CG, 0 fuel/forward CG, full fuel/aft CG, 0 fuel/aft CG. Plot the 4 CG's on the graph and connect with lines forming an parallelogram. As long as you stay within the extreme scenarios, you're within the CG range. Laminate this and keep it with the docs. If you are ever ramped by TC, you can demonstrate that you are within the W&B range.

[waterdog]

[/quote]
Instructors are often employed as independent contractors, and paid only when they're flying or teaching ground lessons. No vacation, no sick days, no benefits, no overtime. Buy your own equipment. Few flight schools pay a salary. Time between flights is not paid. Who's going to pay for that? Nobody wants to pay for someone to watch them land.

Right, that is exactly my point. If instructors were not just on contract and paid for the Flight Time they were with a student then there is a more stable income. There are lots of pay structures where instructors could get a base salary, a stipend for ground work and a higher stipend when in the air with a student. I suspect the structure would depend on how busy the flight school is, perhaps the part time instructors then fill in and during peak weekend times.

Why are instructors not teaching with tools that have come from the last 10yrs? Foreflight, cloud ahoy etc........

Ipads cost a few hundred to $1000. Foreflight costs a couple hundred a year for a subscription. If I'm making $22 and hour, I don't have money for that. I can barely afford to pay my parents rent for the basement I'm living in.

Why are all school planes not equipped with some semblance of the same systems so that every time you change planes you don't have to learn a new gps system etc?

One again, cost. I can buy a 152 for something like $28000, and now you want me to spend another $10,000 to upgrade the radios so the entire fleet is the same? Nice to have but never going to happen.

This is not a cost I was trying to put on the instructors. Each school plane has its own ipad mini and bad elf gps and the school has a bulk subscription with Foreflight. Which Foreflight would probably do at a substantial discount as it is advertising for their product. If students are introduced to it in school , as soon as they have their licence they are that much more likely to sign up themselves.

When a customer walks into a flight school to ask about training, they are not a bother, they are a walking bag of money.....what should happen is a coffee and a tour to give the business time to separate that money from the legs it came in on. That is not my experience.

People want Walmart flight training. The first question anyone ever asks is how much will this cost? I've yet to see anyone ask how the can become the best pilot they can be.

Ok, and even Walmart has greeters at the door. The only way instructors are going to get paid what they should is if the school makes more money. I haven't heard anyone say that the schools are making off like bandits. So, that means a higher level of customer service from the school to capture more business. I haven't been into a Walmart yet and been treated anywhere close to as bad as two local Toronto flight schools. Perhaps the schools could learn something from Walmart.

Fix the system, engage the students and there will be a ton of money for the instructors who are driving the whole system.

No there won't be a ton of money for instructors. Schools typically charge somewhere between $60 and $75 per hour for the instructor, of which the instructor is paid somewhere between $20 and $25 per hour. Your coffee and a tour system will drive the cost of your $15K PPL to $20K, and the school will still get 75% of the increase.[/quote]

My customer based approach only drives up the cost if there is no increase in customers. What I am saying is that flight schools and airports are not friendly inviting places. If the schools were more inviting they would get more customers, simply as that. I went to 2 different flight schools over 3 yrs, the first 2 times no one would give me the time of day. The last time, as I was walking out an instructor saw me leaving and asked if her could help. He took me on a tour of the operation, showed me the planes and at the end of 20 minutes I was signed up and he had a new student.

I don't know what all flight schools are like, but from my experience here are some problems and ways schools could increase their bottom end.
1) Increase customer service, and get more people in the door and engaged. In this day and age this has never been cheaper and easier with social media. Have kids day, BBQ, open house....whatever, but engage that person who has always wanted to take flying lessons but just hasn't taken the first step.
2) One stop shopping, I spent over $300 dollars on books and crap for ground school, why was that not available at the flight school. Need a new paper map, oh gotta drive to Oshawa to buy one. Sending your customer somewhere else to buy items that don't have a short expiry date on them is ridiculous!
3) Plan maintenance with a little bit of forethought. If 3/4's of your fleet is has less then 2hrs before all of the planes time out and you have a week of bad weather, lets start getting those planes in to get fixed. Or, we could let them sit idle for a week, then fly them for 1hr on a beautiful weekend and then tie the plane up at 9am because it time for service. I still see this and I have no idea why operators are not looking at the long term forecast and trying to get maintenance done, when it works, during inclement weather. I have watched weeks of good weather flying get lost because the entire fleet of planes was in getting inspections done, there are times when this may not be preventable but some planning would go a long way.

But hey what do I know, I'm not an instructor and I haven't ever owned a flight school. I just the bag of money with legs that found the entire experience bewildering. I guess that means the system is working like a well oiled machine.

[photofly]

Your customer experience is interesting anecdote, but there are a lot of made up “facts” in your posts - things that you believe to be true simply because you have supposed them to be true. But in fact they’re not.

If you’re really interested you should do more research. Interview some instructors, mechanics and management at different FTUs, in different provinces and not just two schools in a Toronto, to see how things really work.

My customer based approach...

I also have to tell you that you’re not unique or even original. You’re not the only smart person to believe they have come up with “the answer” to “the problem”, so you might usefully consider why other people’s well-intentioned suggestions, mostly the same “if only...”, haven’t fixed things already.

[waterdog]

Photofly,

I never have pretended to have all of the solutions or even completely understand the problem. What I am saying is that the people who are selling the product ( instructors and flight schools) aren't happy. Agreed?

The customers are not happy. Haven't talked to one student yet who thought schools were well run.

So, either there is a lack of customers and aviation is doomed , or there are customers, and potential customers, who are not being serviced as fully as they could be.

I don't see why the business of selling flight lessons is any different then any other business. You are selling a product to a customer. Doesn't matter whether that product is a widget or a lesson, it follows that same principals.
I don't need to fly across Canada to understand something that is that basic in business.

[photofly]

I don't see why the business of selling flight lessons is any different then any other business.

That’s clear. When you’ve worked out how and why it is different, come back and tell us how to fix it. By then, someone as intelligent as you might have something worth saying on the subject.

[rookiepilot]

A few comments:

Waterdog you are incorrect, there are students -- I was one -- who were relatively unconcerned with the total #hours to PPL and total cost -- I was seeking excellence as I always have, in most anything I've applied myself to. CPL / IFR, no different. I recall wanting more night training than mandatory, I paid for additional dual time, even though I was already legal and safe.

Now on that: I'm not stupid and I had one stand in instructor who decided to do a ground brief, on the ramp with engine running. Last flight ever with that instructor.

I was, and am, very happy to pay for excellence, without nitpicking or complaint about cost, but I expect an excellent training effort.

To be honest I see flight instruction as somewhat similar to my former career long ago, sales, where I was an independent contractor for a long time. It's a people business! Duh. To be honest, Lotta laziness among most, a few who were hungry, hustled hard, treated customers like gold -- like real people -- they, like me, always did very well.

If I was to switch to flight instruction (not likely) I'd take the same approach: I'd agree to a deal with the CFI / GM that I would hustle, welcome everyone I could, do tours, all for free, but if they signed up they were mine unless I lost them through their preference. None of this "everyone gets a turn" nonsense. Not in my world. Some sales groups do that, I wouldn't go for that, either.

Bring the best excellence anyone has seen -- then use that and negotiate.

I doubt most will get it. It's easier, from what I've seen, to mentally check out and wait for the phone to ring. Or the other extreme, assume being a class 4, or 3, means you've been reincarnated as Bob Hoover. Run into that once or twice, give me a break. (After I had more X country / IFR experience than 95% of instructors).

Students who've had a ton of life experience, business experience, then are taking their PPL, don't appreciate arrogance from snot nosed 22 year olds.
Want to be successful, with different types of people? Better quickly learn respect is mutual, and earned, not entitled. And ratings don't earn that much automatic respect.

Be real. Bring excellence. Care and treat people like human, fallible beings. Money will rain from the sky, all in good time.

[photofly]

I’m fascinated that you focus on the faults only of instructors.

[rookiepilot]

I’m fascinated that you focus on the faults only of instructors.

I assume some on this forum -- likely only a few, mind you-- would like to rise to something higher than mediocrity that seems to be the low bar set these days.

I am writing to them, my thoughts on achieving "excellence" in a career, not to bash the profession.

As I said most won't get it......

[Kejidog]

I can agree with waterdog and rookiepilot. I was in my late 40's while training for a life long goal. Not much customer service going on at my school. If I wasn't so gung ho, i think i never would have stuck with it to completion. Instructors came and went, they seemed to be in it for the flight hours to get a better position. And i can 't blame them for wanting to advance their career but from what I saw they were not in it for the service of customers. But it starts at the top of any school and moves downward. The person answering the phone is as important as the guy at the top. If the Person at the top is a dud chances are the people they hire and supervise are a level or two below that.

But as Homer said, "ah, but what are you going to do?"

[photofly]

Instructors came and went, they seemed to be in it for the flight hours to get a better position. And i can 't blame them for wanting to advance their career but from what I saw they were not in it for the service of customers.

I’m trying to assess if this is a valid criticism. Are you a student that an instructor would consider hanging around for? If you were a low-paid instructor would you turn down a better position to stay and teach ... you?

Are you diligent? Do you study hard? Are you good company? Are you respectful, even of younger people who have a skill you don’t but want to learn? Are you a rewarding person to teach? To put it bluntly, do you make it worth someone’s time and energy to fly with you? What exactly, for $22/hour, do you think you’re buying?

I don’t know the answers. But you might.

I read a lot about how instructors need to bring their best. Not so much about how students need to, also.

[rookiepilot]

Photofly,

While your points about students are valid and well taken, they deserve a thread on their own.

This one (I thought ) is about success as a career instructor.

Choosing Excellence as an instructor, or in any career, is never contingent on having an excellent customer.

Having an attitude of excellence regardless, at $22 an hour, or $7 an hour, opens doors in time to $100 an hour.

[photofly]

Photofly,

While your points about students are valid and well taken, they deserve a thread on their own.

This one (I thought ) is about success as a career instructor.

Choosing Excellence as an instructor, or in any career, is never contingent on having an excellent customer.

Thread drift? On AvCanada? Never heard of it.

Learning to fly is a partnership, and the student is so much more than a customer. Being an excellent instructor is contingent on having an “excellent” student. Not excellent in the sense of high-performing, but at least in the sense of having a good fit, and engaging excellently. Never try teach a pig to sing, as the joke goes. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Be you the best singing instructor in the world.

Having an attitude of excellence regardless, at $22 an hour ... opens doors in time to $100 an hour.

Sometimes. And sometimes the door it opens is a lifetime opportunity to be excellent for $22/hour.

I went to see an endotontologist yesterday. He quoted me $1300 for a 45 minute root canal. I wonder if he started drilling, excellently, for $22/hr.

[rookiepilot]

PF,

As I said prior,

I'm willing to start in excellence for $22 per hour. I'm not prepared to stay at $22 per hour.

Negotiation is an essential part of any career plan, and be willing to change course, too.

In my former career (sales) I took that as far as I could go, and was quite happy. Then the industry changed, margins compressed, and I began working much harder for less money. As that wasn't appealing, it was the incentive to start my own business (20 yrs ago)

[photofly]

I’m fairly confident standards of flight training - particularly the customer service aspects and other stuff TC doesn’t measure - would zoom up if the government reduced the barriers to entry for those who want to start their own businesses.

It’s not clear to me that those who want to get rewarded for excellent flight training actually can “start their own businesses” in Canada. If and when they do I suspect they have to spend time managing rather than teaching.

[rookiepilot]

Im fairly confident standards of flight training - particularly the customer service aspects and other stuff TC doesn’t measure - would zoom up if the government reduced the barriers to entry for those who want to start their own businesses.

You're correct. The very best will be reluctant to stay, unless they work their way into a very specialized area of instruction where they can charge appropriately.

This is what I mean, an overall commitment to excellence will mean $$$ will rain from the sky in one way or another, cause a minority want to strive to that level.