Freelance instruction hookup website?

[Cat Driver]

Freelance instructors are not exactly rare or exalted creatures.

Quite true.

However good freelance instructors should be paid for the quality of their teaching.

As I have said so many times.

Being a top notch flying instructor is the highest achievement that a pilot can aspire to in aviation.

Once one reaches that plateau one can then ask for and receive the level of pay the position demands.

And once one reaches that plateau clients will hire you based on referrals from satisfied clients.

When I retired I generally made at least a thousand dollars per working day plus all expenses including international airfares.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I

"request for freelance instruction"

As in, Dear God-like instructors, please consider my humble beseechings as a possible client who'd like to throw money your way if you consider me worthy of your attentions"? I can see that being a great hit. Don't you think that people offering money for tuition would like to have at least a semblance of feeling that they're the customer, and they're choosing the service provider? Freelance instructors are not exactly rare or exalted creatures.

Who knows, but I bet the private instructor forum would have fewer sarcastic, unhelpfull posts, like this one........

[Cat Driver]

Who knows, but I bet the private instructor forum would have fewer sarcastic, unhelpfull posts, like this one........

Especially if such a forum was only open to instructors who post using their real name and qualifications.

[photofly]

Who knows, but I bet the private instructor forum would have fewer sarcastic, unhelpfull posts, like this one.......

Alright, fair call. I apologize.

Once one reaches that plateau one can then ask for and receive the level of pay the position demands.

One can indeed, just like, for example, looking for a piano teacher, varying from the lady next door all the way up to private mentoring by a current or former international concert pianist. When you're at the point where you name your own price, students will seek you out by name and reputation, and you're unlikely to be looking for students who put in a "blind" call on an internet forum.

[photofly]

BTW do (you) have an instructor rating and are/have worked as a flight instructor ?

No, not yet. Might be looking to do so in the not-so-distant future though. I don't presently feel that I'd ask anything in an instructor's only forum that I wouldn't ask in a public forum.

[mmartin1872]

As someone who is looking for a freelance instructor, to teach on my own aircraft... This would be a great website. I'm looking to get a PPL in the lowermainland, Chilliwack area. But I'm looking to do it on my Tailwheel aircraft. I've thought of going to the flight schools, but I don't want to 'learn' how to fly tailwheel, with an instructor, that is learning how to fly tailwheel at the same time as me. It just doesn't seem right. I'd like to find someone that 'grew up flying tailwheel'.. preferably still mainly flys tailwheel, and teaches, because they want to teach, and not because they want to get 1000hrs.

[Shiny Side Up]

When you're at the point where you name your own price, students will seek you out by name and reputation, and you're unlikely to be looking for students who put in a "blind" call on an internet forum.

That being said though there is a large range of people instructing below that level as well. While the prime help will be to owners looking for help, there are also a large range of instructors of varying want to do instruction. If you're too busy, too high up the chain or otherwise indisposed no one's saying you have to list yourself - the site would be there for those that want to for whatever reason. Keep in mind an instructor who is in high demand or very busy might still want to make use of it. I doubt someone looking for say a PBY check out would use something of this sort - word of mouth works fine. Someone looking to maybe do some IFR brush up in his 182, guys needing a tailwheel check out, mountain experience, insurance check rides and all sorts of smaller term freelance work are the target users.

One might set up a search engine so one could say check off IFR training, single engine, availaility fridays in which area and it would come up with a list.

[photofly]

A searchable list of freelance instructors, with filters (as suggested) sounds like a good idea. I'd guess that the more bars to entry and the more subjective they become (flight instructor tests with existing members etc) the less likely it is to work on a practical basis, and the more hot water the organisers would be swimming in, when it comes to challenges from both aggrieved students and aggrieved wanna-be instructors.


The point I made (badly) before is that I'd rather be able to browse a list of instructors and contact the ones I felt might suit, than submit my name to an anonymous forum and hope someone would contact me.

[Cat Driver]

guys needing a tailwheel check out, mountain experience, insurance check rides and all sorts of smaller term freelance work are the target users.

Of the above list the best paying is insurance check rides.

But only if you are doing it directly for an underwriter.

[Louis]

May I suggest simply creating a sub-forum under the "Flight Training" forum, a little like the "Hire me" subforum?

Require that freelancers advertising list their location and the types of training given in a thread header, and have a post with more info in it.

[gaamin]

I love this idea.

I wouldn't need it for myself yet, enough people want to fly with me at the FTU I teach at, and this FTU treats me well.

I'd be happy to set the database/website up, free for everyone, and progressively built features around it as seem fit. Basic domain and hosting are cheap. If we get so much traffic that we need to move to something expensive, there'll be ways to make it pay for itself (advertising, or minimal fee from instructors, or anything that people think is best).

I'm no pro at webdesign, I don't have a lot of free time, but I would be able to do something basic within a few weeks. If anyone else here wants to do it, say it and do it. If nobody else does it, I'll start in the coming days.

[ctmorawetz]

I agree, great idea! I thought of something like this last summer but I'm also not a web designer by any means. I'm a Class 3 instructor that works at a flight school and is interested in freelancing on the side. If something like this was created, I would hope that you wouldn't set the minimum hours at 1000 - as I have 800

[DaveC]

Wouldn't be hard to setup.

Lets do it. I could provide the forum setup as well as the hosting resources. I'll even pay for the domain name

I'm a web-designer/ IT jack-of-all-trades and PPL. I wouldn't mind providing a service such as this.

Would require a decent crew of volunteers to maintain it for this project to work though - aviation is quite the niche as it is.

Send me an email, dave@davesnetwork.ca and we'll get a more organized list of people together so we can do further brainstorming and get the ball rolling.

** EDIT **

Thought I would re-phrase this. If the OP would like to go ahead with this, I would not mind helping from the technical side (I am an experienced web programmer.
Don't want to jack anyones idea here.

OP, your call. My resources are at your disposal if you'd like My message was directed at you, should have /quoted you. My mistake!

[ctmorawetz]

Wouldn't be hard to setup.

Lets do it. I could provide the forum setup as well as the hosting resources. I'll even pay for the domain name

I'm a web-designer/ IT jack-of-all-trades and PPL. I wouldn't mind providing a service such as this.

Would require a decent crew of volunteers to maintain it for this project to work though - aviation is quite the niche as it is.

Send me an email, dave@davesnetwork.ca and we'll get a more organized list of people together so we can do further brainstorming and get the ball rolling.

I'm in!

[Big Pistons Forever]

It is great to see guys volunteering to put their time and energy towards making flight instruction better. I recommend the site start with an information page.
Among the details that it could contain are.

-The CAR's regulations governing freelance instruction,

-Insurance considerations

-What the student should expect from the instructor,

-A recommended experience matrix for each type of training

-A recommended salary scale


-

[Cat Driver]

Amazing........

Simply amazing.

We have pilots working with each other.

I may live to see such a miracle after all.

. E.

[cdnpilot77]

Amazing........

Simply amazing.

We have pilots working with each other.

I may live to see such a miracle after all.

. E.

Agreed, its great to see people working together, but here is a pm I just sent to a poster

Hey man, take a little step back and see what you are doing here. The op had an idea and maybe one that he would like to make a little money on and you are jumping in and taking HIS idea. Tread very carefully!

Lets have a little courtesy and at least allow the guy that had the idea decide whether he wants to do it or not.

[Av_Av]

Lets have a little courtesy and at least allow the guy that had the idea decide whether he wants to do it or not.

+1. It's Shiny's idea. Shiny should get first refusal on whether he/she wants to move it forward.

[gaamin]

I agree that Shiny should decide on what he wants to do.

IMO a for-profit website would be counterproductive. Free competition would arise, instructors and users would split their attention between two locations, making each potentially less efficient at connecting a pilot with his/her instructor. Also, the moment it is decided that the website will be for-profit, some will hold back on their ideas that would make it a better website.

On the other hand, having a website generating enough revenue to pay for its hosting/domain seems a good idea in the long run, and I'm sure there can be excellent ideas on what do to with any extra money that would benefit flight instruction as a whole.

Here is an idea of a volunteer's aviation website benefiting its community : http://womenofaviationweek.org
Mireille does an amazing job of promoting this, not just on the website.

Dave already offers his technical resources, so cost of operation would be just the time of volunteers. Dave, would you also volunteer your webmaster skills if it turns out a Joomla website is what is needed?

As an instructor myself, I wouldn't mind creating the website, so that it's made for and by instructors to provide a service to potential students.


I like BPF's suggestions for the content. Guidelines on what to look for in an instructor and how to choose one would be good too.

I also agree that there should be some minimum set for instructors listed on the website. Whatever the minimum is, is should be enforced. The idea is just to weed out fresh instructors looking to build up hours. How do we check that? Do we need to?
Each instructor can have a more detailed page as to what specific experience he has and what he does, helping the student find out more about his/her potential teacher. With the help of the guidelines, the system could work ok I guess.

Student feedback is certainly an important feature to implement, IMO a system similar to the one on TripAdvisor (the instructor can reply to a comment made about him) would be good.

Real names. Is that legal? Instructors, students, should have no anonymity, perhaps using only first name and initial of last name. "Jean-Baptiste L." seems okay to me, and hopefully wouldn't create trouble for anyone. How do we check that?

[DaveC]

I believe a for-profit website would sink. No one uses pay-per-use or pay-for-subscription websites anymore. Ad-supported is the way to go, just like AV Canada is.

I am willing to cover the hosting and domain costs as the business I own (www.davesnetwork.ca) allows me to provide these at minimal cost (even if it gets huge).

As for my webmaster skills, its not a problem. I am a PHP/MySQL guru (I use Joomla or WordPress on simple sites).

Love the suggestion re: trip advisor. This makes sense, but they would need to be moderated.

As far as accreditation goes, perhaps there could be an overseer that verifies the identify of an instructor (and their ratings).

I agree that Shiny should decide on what he wants to do.

IMO a for-profit website would be counterproductive. Free competition would arise, instructors and users would split their attention between two locations, making each potentially less efficient at connecting a pilot with his/her instructor. Also, the moment it is decided that the website will be for-profit, some will hold back on their ideas that would make it a better website.

On the other hand, having a website generating enough revenue to pay for its hosting/domain seems a good idea in the long run, and I'm sure there can be excellent ideas on what do to with any extra money that would benefit flight instruction as a whole.

Here is an idea of a volunteer's aviation website benefiting its community : http://womenofaviationweek.org
Mireille does an amazing job of promoting this, not just on the website.

Dave already offers his technical resources, so cost of operation would be just the time of volunteers. Dave, would you also volunteer your webmaster skills if it turns out a Joomla website is what is needed?

As an instructor myself, I wouldn't mind creating the website, so that it's made for and by instructors to provide a service to potential students.


I like BPF's suggestions for the content. Guidelines on what to look for in an instructor and how to choose one would be good too.

I also agree that there should be some minimum set for instructors listed on the website. Whatever the minimum is, is should be enforced. The idea is just to weed out fresh instructors looking to build up hours. How do we check that? Do we need to?
Each instructor can have a more detailed page as to what specific experience he has and what he does, helping the student find out more about his/her potential teacher. With the help of the guidelines, the system could work ok I guess.

Student feedback is certainly an important feature to implement, IMO a system similar to the one on TripAdvisor (the instructor can reply to a comment made about him) would be good.

Real names. Is that legal? Instructors, students, should have no anonymity, perhaps using only first name and initial of last name. "Jean-Baptiste L." seems okay to me, and hopefully wouldn't create trouble for anyone. How do we check that?

[Cat Driver]

As far as accreditation goes, perhaps there could be an overseer that verifies the identify of an instructor (and their ratings).

How else can the site offer a high quality of instructors.

Remember there are many areas in flight training where an instructors rating is not needed.

[Dagwood]

Like many have said, this would be an excellent idea.

Some issues though, that may arise:
#1. Why would someone looking for a PPL instructor go for a $70/hr guy instead of a $50/hr guy? Even if the higher rate instructor is more experienced, many students would find it hard to justify the extra cost when the perceived benefit would be small. Maybe the solution would be to set rates for different training or aircraft i.e. PPL $50, CPL $65, MIFR $75, Aerobatics $100 ect. Instructors who sign up would agree that this is the going rate and there would be no "undercutting" by more junior guys.

#2 The feedback system. The ebay feedback system works, but it is hard to leave anything but positive feedback. The vendors will not tolerate a negative or neutral feedback very well... positive feedback is king! Once an item I ordered via ebay arrived, but the item's case was broken (the item was undamaged). I was going to leave neutral feedback, as he should've packaged it better. The ebay system said "did you contact the vendor to resolve your issue?" I figured it would be too much hassle for such a small problem, I just left positive feedback

[Av_Av]

Why would someone looking for a PPL instructor go for a $70/hr guy instead of a $50/hr guy? Even if the higher rate instructor is more experienced, many students would find it hard to justify the extra cost when the perceived benefit would be small.

That's a good point. It's difficult to quantify "high quality". But there are customers who are willing to spend the extra cash for the better instruction. Besides this, the hourly rate isn't the only thing that determines price. If I charge $75/h and can get a guy finished his PPL is 50 hours, but a nearby school charges $50/h and has an average time to finish of 75 hours, the savings are clear.

Maybe the solution would be to set rates for different training or aircraft i.e. PPL $50, CPL $65, MIFR $75, Aerobatics $100 ect. Instructors who sign up would agree that this is the going rate and there would be no "undercutting" by more junior guys.

This might be a good idea. But as a counterpoint, it's been pointed out already that simplicity is key in making this work. Every time we add more rules, or more if's-and's-but's, we run the risk of turning people away. Having said that, a little bit of complexity will liklely be unavoidable if we want any level of quality control. The key is to find the right balance -- easier said than done.

[gaamin]

Why would someone looking for a PPL instructor go for a $70/hr guy instead of a $50/hr guy?

To get instruction from someone who is better, who will bring him/her at a better level in less time.
I don't see it being a problem, someone who already has an aircraft and needs training generally understands that training with a more efficient instructor who charges more, costs less in the long term than a cheaper instructor who takes more hours. Also, the service might be used more by people who are in an area where there are very few instructors, and the website is the only way they could hear about/find someone close to them to teach them. Shiny also gave some pretty good examples where fairly priced instruction would be acceptable : viewtopic.php?p=674603#p674603

A $50/hr minimum is twice what an ordinary instructor earns at an average FTU, from there each is able to set their own rate, at or higher than this minimum. Different minima for different types of training sounds fair too but not great to implement on a website as a hard bottom line. Guidelines, though, no problem.

The feedback system. The ebay feedback system works, but it is hard to leave anything but positive feedback. The vendors will not tolerate a negative or neutral feedback very well... positive feedback is king! Once an item I ordered via ebay arrived, but the item's case was broken (the item was undamaged). I was going to leave neutral feedback, as he should've packaged it better. The ebay system said "did you contact the vendor to resolve your issue?" I figured it would be too much hassle for such a small problem, I just left positive feedback

The feedback system I have in mind is the one at TripAdvisor which seems to work well, where a service user can put a comment, and the service provider can reply to that comment. Ebay is more geared towards sellers of goods than buyers of services, paypal being the way sellers are f***ed.
With that and the fact that real names are used, I think it would work fine. I haven't found a feedback system that does a fairer job that the one on TA (yet... but we're all open to ideas).


BPF's comment as to the website's content (besides the listing of freelance instructors) raised something else in my mind. Few junior instructors (Class3/1000hrs is still somewhat junior, and so are many Class3 with many hours, who come from another field in aviation before instructing) know precisely the first two points : CARs for Freelance Instruction and Insurance Requirements.
A potential student needs to be really well informed on all that and will have to see that these requirements are understood and met by his/her instructor too before he embarks on his/her training.

The risk I see is : if this website works at hooking up student pilots with instructors (including not-too-experienced ones) and some of these instructors screw up the CARs, TC might change the regs and make them tougher on freelance instructors, perhaps requiring something similar to an OC to be able to do freelance instruction.

[Shiny Side Up]

As far as accreditation goes, perhaps there could be an overseer that verifies the identify of an instructor (and their ratings).

How else can the site offer a high quality of instructors.

Remember there are many areas in flight training where an instructors rating is not needed.

The purpose of such a site isn't to guarantee the quality of the instructors. From a purely business standpoint the website would merely offer a contact resourse, not offering flight training as the website's product. There are multiple problems with setting it up to offer any kind of guarantee on quality. One would be moving more in the direction of setting up a FTU if that was the case. Something of this sort might work on a localized basis where one can keep tabs in person of the instruction services that one was offering through the website, but not on a larger area basis, or nation wide one, to which such a resource would really shine. For example: Being based in Calgary I wouldn't be able to reasonably maintain any sort of quality control of what goes on in say Regina or Vancouver - not without expanding a network of people working under the website in which case your overhead to run said enterprise jumps up dramatically. In reality to guarantee on my behalf such quality of the people working through such a set up I would need to make them standing employees, they are essentially not freelancers anymore. One has to keep in mind that quality of service in the eyes of the users of said website, isn't just limited to quality of instruction.

That all being said, it weighs heavily on my mind on how said website could work. All in all, I won't pursue the idea further - so if anyone else wants to take it up feel free, I'll applaud any effort in that direction.