Starting my Instructors Rating Tomorrow...

[KDewald]

Hello everyone!

I am a student at a flight school in Alberta. I recently completed my CPL, and Group 1 Instrument Rating. Tomorrow I will be starting Instructor ground school.

I feel quite passionate about instructing. I want to be an instructor because I want to make a difference in my student's lives, and I enjoy teaching as well as management.

As such I want to be the best instructor that I am capable of being. I want to provide excellent teaching to my students and go beyond the minimum requirements of a flight instructor.

Does anyone have any advice, as I begin my training? What makes a good instructor?

[AuxBatOn]

Start by getting some real flight experience in a commercial operations. Then it'll be easy to teach and relate to students, and giving them some real, applicable to real life.

[trey kule]

I normally defer to Auxbats good advice, but unfortunately I must offer an alternate opinion.
The current world of flight training has evolved to a point, that its relationship to real world flying is almost nil.
Two of my former collegues retired in the last year and attempted to obtain instructor ratings. These are very experienced pilots. Both found it extremely difficult as they could not, or were not ,allowed to use their real world experience.
It is all about doing things exactly as TC ,or more correctly, their test examiner, and their class 1 want...exactly.
And both of them had class 1 instructors who, for lack of a better term, lacked much experience outside the FTU envirorment.
The emphasis today does not seem to focus on the student actually learning something or developing skills, but on teaching using TCs latest flavour of the month method. The reason it is taking an extradorinary number of hours for students to become licensed, is, accordiing to them, quite clear.
And these guy's were both ACPs and advanced instructors with their companies. Both got their ratings, and both made the decision not to persue teaching as a retirement project.
It scared me off.
And the lesson I got from it is that real world experience is only valued if it conforms exactly with your class 1's and examiners perceptions...apparently class 1 instructors know everything
So. While you are immersed in the FTU envirorment, you are probably going to find it easier if you really do not have any real world flight experience,
It is a bit sad to hear how inflexable training instructors is today. The process is the goal.

[photofly]

I'm just curious... are commercial operations what all student pilots should be learning about ab-initio?

Are the experiences gained during 25 years with a co-pilot, an aircraft with twin turbofans, up in the flight levels on "normal law", with weather radar, CPDLC, triple redundant autopilots that will fly the ILS to minimums for you, a pressurized cabin and hot meals served on request, and comprehensive support from a flight dispatch department all terribly relevant to teaching someone how to fly circuits in a 150?

[Rookie50]

I'm just curious... are commercial operations what all student pilots should be learning about ab-initio?

Are the experiences gained during 25 years with a co-pilot, an aircraft with twin turbofans, up in the flight levels on "normal law", with weather radar, CPDLC, triple redundant autopilots that will fly the ILS to minimums for you, a pressurized cabin and hot meals served on request, and comprehensive support from a flight dispatch department all terribly relevant to teaching someone how to fly circuits in a 150?

Isn't there value from commercial ops later, for teaching advanced, Multi / CPL / IFR students? (I think so).

I get the point and agree for ab initio.

I just can't help feeling that a few more young pilots flying a Ho' up north, might stay alive if they get at least some training along the way, from a grizzled veteran of flying in simliar conditions.

[photofly]

Perhaps. If the student is going on to be a commercial pilot and fly commercial IFR ops in a multi-engine aircraft. The majority of pilots don't want to - and don't - progress past a PPL.

Two of my former collegues retired in the last year and attempted to obtain instructor ratings. These are very experienced pilots. Both found it extremely difficult as they could not, or were not ,allowed to use their real world experience.
It is all about doing things exactly as TC ,or more correctly, their test examiner, and their class 1 want...exactly.

The other side of the coin is that even the youngest greenest dumbest Class 1 instructor has considerably more experience conducting ab-initio training than your former colleagues. It's a great pity they couldn't swallow their pride for just a year or 18 months and during that period try to learn however little it was that this character had to teach them. Pretty soon they'd would be able to get out from under the unbearable yoke of the know-nothing and be able to do it pretty much their own way. The wise man, after all, is someone who can learn from everyone.

[AuxBatOn]

Perhaps. If the student is going on to be a commercial pilot and fly commercial IFR ops in a multi-engine aircraft. The majority of pilots don't want to - and don't - progress past a PPL.

So the lessons you learn as a Commercial pilot are not relevant to the private pilot??

[digits_]

So the lessons you learn as a Commercial pilot are not relevant to the private pilot??

A lot of them aren't. A PPL who wants to fly once a month should not hear stories about scudrunning, approaches below minima, flying overweight, without paperwork at night without a night rating in a float plane. I heard lots of these stories from old experienced commercial pilots, not soo many from young inexperienced pilots.

If all PPLs would fly exactly as they have been taught by the "rigid class 1 instructors", a lot of them would still be alive.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I feel quite passionate about instructing. I want to be an instructor because I want to make a difference in my student's lives, and I enjoy teaching as well as management.

Good for you! My observation has been that the good instructors are passionate about flying themselves and that passion inspires students

Does anyone have any advice, as I begin my training?

Be curious....about everything in aviation. Learn how everything in a light airplane works. Understand the basics of aerodynamic theory and weather and actually read Part 4 and Part 6 of the CARs. None of this requires an instructor, there is tons of information available on line for free, you just have to put the personal effort into finding it and then learning

What makes a good instructor?

Success as an instructor is not how well you can fly or how much you know, it is how well the student can fly and how much the student knows at the end of training. Good instructors are fair but demanding and so the student takes personal pride in doing things well.

Finally I think it is vital to understand that PPL's only frame of reference is their instructor. If the instructor demonstrates bad airmanship, a lack of cockpit discipline or inaccurate/imprecise flying then that is what the student is going to emulate. You need to bring your "A" game to every flight.

Good luck in your instructor training

[AuxBatOn]

A lot of them aren't. A PPL who wants to fly once a month should not hear stories about scudrunning, approaches below minima, flying overweight, without paperwork at night without a night rating in a float plane. I heard lots of these stories from old experienced commercial pilots, not soo many from young inexperienced pilots.

And this isn't what instructing should be about. It should be about passing lessons learned and relating what you are teaching them to real life scenarios (that are within what is legally expected of a pilot). I find it hard to believe someone that has barely finished his training can do that effectively. Sure, they can knit pick on things that, in the end, don't really matter (that's most of what they know, you can't blame them), but they sure lack the bigger picture of what actually is important that will keep you alive as a pilot (private or commercial).

[Big Pistons Forever]

Start by getting some real flight experience in a commercial operations. Then it'll be easy to teach and relate to students, and giving them some real, applicable to real life.

The initial flight instructor rating is designed to prepare you to teach the PPL.

Teaching a zero hour student is fundamentally different then all subsequent instruction. With a new student you are going from:

No knowledge and skills to basic knowledge and skills.

After that all further instructions builds on existing knowledge and skills by applying what students already have an idea about in new or different ways.

The problem with some very experienced pilots when teaching beginners for the PPL is that pretty much everything they do is done with unconscious competence. They just do the right thing without even thinking about it and often can't explain what exactly they have done because the skill comes from the unconscious. This can for example make it hard to explain to a student with 3 hours how to do some of the fundamental skills

For that reason properly taught and well motivated young pilots can often be very effective with PPL students as they can relate to what the student is struggling with as they experienced it themselves not that long ago.

However industry veterans have a ton of value teaching the CPL as they can provide that real world commercial flying perspective. Unfortunately flight instructor licensing is not set up for that as everyone is expected to start out by teaching a minimum of 3 PPL's.

[AuxBatOn]

If the Instructor Rating can teach a brand new CPL why things a certain way will work best, I bet you it can do the same to an experienced pilot with an open mind. Inexperienced instructors should be the exception, not the norm. They have their place, but in a structured environment surrounded by a cadre of experienced pilots: like you said, they bring an insights of how it is to be a student (something experience makes you forget). These positions should be reserved for some of the strongest candidates on the PPL/CPL. If all you have is a room full of instructors that have never seen how airplanes are operated commercially, I guarantee you some FTU-isms will develop. And these will have to be un-learned once the students are left on their own, operating in the "real world".

[trey kule]

Are the experiences gained during 25 years with a co-pilot, an aircraft with twin turbofans, up in the flight levels on "normal law", with weather radar, CPDLC, triple redundant autopilots that will fly the ILS to minimums for you, a pressurized cabin and hot meals served on request, and comprehensive support from a flight dispatch department all terribly relevant to teaching someone how to fly circuits in a 150?

Why do you assume, or generalize that all pilots who fly heavies never fly anything else?
That type of generalization and condensation is exactly what I described. Fly a heavy for 35 years and you simply cant know anything about a 150. Isnt that what you are implying? And in the two pilots I spoke about, completely incorrect. Both of them own ( and one built his own) small aircraft. Their passion is flying, and I believe they both hold float ratings. One does aerobatics routinely. Yep. They have years on the modern heavies. But they have thousands of hours and are current on small aircraft as well. From the older generation, in particular, there is a large group who love flying, and spend their leisure time flying small aircraft.

It is not about swallowing pride. It is about being expected to teach something that has no relevance to anything remotely connected to the real world.only the flight test. .and procedures that simply do not use common sense strictly because " that is what you have to do to pass"

From personal experience, admittedly very limited, my take on most of the problems in flight training today can be laid at the feet of CFIs, and class 1 & 2 instructors who seem to think they know it all,and continually lay the fault of the 80 hour ppl at the feet of the student. They are the ones who mold and shape the new class 4s. Who mentor and supervise them. And who should have the ability and courage to analyze and question TC about procedures and methods that may be done better, or are being assessed in flight tests incorrectly.

[photofly]

If the Instructor Rating can teach a brand new CPL why things a certain way will work best, I bet you it can do the same to an experienced pilot with an open mind.

The open mind element is significant. I see evidence in this thread that a career in commercial flying leaves some pilots without an open mind, when they decide to disqualify themselves from learning how to instruct because they don't want to bend their knee at an FTU for a limited period.

I'm fairly sure that any kind of flying outside the FTU environment is beneficial to a would-be ab-initio instructor; there's plenty that's not commercial - gliding or aerobatics for instance. As far as the spectrum of commercial flying goes I suspect that the further up the food chain you get the less relevant to instructing a ppl the commercial operations become. Additionally life experiences that aren't in aviation can also benefit an instructor. But when the OP asked for how to be a better instructor I don't think he had in mind the kind of advice that he should go and be an airline pilot first, or even a crop-duster or go and work for an air-taxi operation. We all know that's not likely to happen for a bare new cpl.

[photofly]

Why do you assume, or generalize that all pilots who fly heavies never fly anything else?

I don't, and that wasn't the point I was making. I suggested that pilots who only fly heavies still need to learn ab-initio instructing. I stand by that point, and I'll go further: pilots who only fly SEPs, or fly both heavies and in their leisure time SEPs too - still need to learn about instructing.

It is not about swallowing pride. It is about being expected to teach something that has no relevance to anything remotely connected to the real world.only the flight test. .and procedures that simply do not use common sense strictly because " that is what you have to do to pass"

It is exactly about swallowing pride. If you can't bear to stoop to do it the green CFI's way for a year before you're in a position do it so very much better, it's only your pride that's stopping you. Just suck it up. Or, to put it another way, "we eat this shit with a spoon", as one vastly experienced pilot and instructor - certainly no friend of Transport - once told me.

As far as teaching people "what you have to do to pass" - if you fail to make sure your students know what they have to do pass, and as a result, they don't pass - then you're wasting your students' time and money. Be you ever such a good instructor.

[5x5]

First of all I would like to say to the OP - Good for you! Keep the positive attitude and strive to do your best continually. Don't worry about the hours, they will happen. Worry about being prepared for each student and each flight. Expect your students to always be prepared and expect the same from yourself. Hopefully your CFI will do a proper job of supervision and make sure to take advantage of them while you further develop your skills once on the job. They should be able to help a lot with suggestions relating to the handling of different situations and student attitudes that you have not encountered before. And remember, your job is to teach basic skills and initial ratings. Do that and do it well!

As for highly experienced pilots becoming instructors - I have to question the real benefit they would bring. It's a fairly well accepted fact that you can't teach experience. Entertaining stories don't help a student learn the steps in performing a steep turn. How does 25 years with an airline help you better describe the procedure of entering and recovering from slow flight in a Cessna 172? Or any of the other flight exercises for that matter?

As for the one comment about Transport's "flavour of the day" - what in fact was being referred to? I'd love to hear some examples. The same set of exercises has been covered in training in pretty much the same manner for the past 20 or more years. Likely the exact same exercises anyone here learned if you look back to your early logbook entries. Did all of you survive? Did you need an instructor with 25 years line experience to tell you stories from their past to keep you alive?

There is lots of nonsense in how TC manages their oversight and the paperwork requirements they push onto flight schools, but those don't directly impact on the information being taught.

I personally think that old, experienced pilots can in fact be some of the worst instructors because they think they know it all and refuse to listen to anything that doesn't fit within the realm of their "oh so valuable" personal experience (as perhaps evidenced in the one response above).

It bugs the hell out of me that so many pilots love to rag on Instructors while seemingly forgetting that every single one of them got their licences as a result of the efforts from the very same.

[photofly]

which of the exercises "do not use common sense" btw?

[fixedpitch]

If all you have is a room full of instructors that have never seen how airplanes are operated commercially, I guarantee you some FTU-isms will develop

Does that apply to PFT in Portage?

[trey kule]

which of the exercises "do not use common sense" btw?

I have a whole essay I wrote to newly hired CPLs regarding slow flight and stall-spin accidents years ago.
It was written as a result of their concept of recovering from unusual attitudes in instrument flight, but it applies directly to ab initio slow flight, co-ordinated turning, power management, and bank attitudes.
Particularily recognizing inadvertant slipping into slow flight and the proper recovery. We all hear about the continuation of stall spin accidents but no one in the training industry seems to ask what could we be doing differently as instructors to address this. And yes, I have an opinion on that, but I sense that it would be of little value to share it...besides being over the twitter minimum wordage.

And no, things are not the same. While the exercises are the same, the method of teaching them is different. From my understanding of chatting with others, the plan is not so much to teach, but to ask questions to engage the student, Question, question, question. Somehow the student is supposed to work out the answer for themselves. A bit of a gap here, I think. This method can work well in a very structured, full time situation, but applying it universally not so much, and I think it just might delay learning. The huge increase in hours to achieve a ppl would seem to support this.. You cant say on one hand that nothing has changed, and then explain properly why the hours to achieve a ppl has.
The FIG has also been revised if I understood it correctly to reflect this new teaching method.
Scenarios have their place in training. But the focus at the ppl level should be to develop basic flying skills. Accidents like the Air France and Colgen are perfect examples that pilots have not achieved that.

But, I did get to thinking about the OPs original post. He has a good attitude, and if he can focus on standards and results I expect he will do well.

Experience does have its place. And there will always be conflicts. The problem that arises, as photo pointed out, is that there is only one way to do it. Prostrate yourself before the masters and do it only their way, or face damnation at being to proud and a know it all. It is a bit hard to think how that will bring about any positive changes in flight training.

[trey kule]

which of the exercises "do not use common sense" btw?

I have a whole essay I wrote to newly hired CPLs regarding slow flight and stall-spin accidents years ago.
It was written as a result of their concept of recovering from unusual attitudes in instrument flight, but it applies directly to ab initio slow flight, co-ordinated turning, power management, and bank attitudes.
Particularily recognizing inadvertant slipping into slow flight and the proper recovery. We all hear about the continuation of stall spin accidents but no one in the training industry seems to ask what could we be doing differently as instructors to address this. And yes, I have an opinion on that, but I sense that it would be of little value to share it...besides being over the twitter minimum wordage.

And no, things are not the same. While the exercises are the same, the method of teaching them is different. From my understanding of chatting with others, the plan is not so much to teach, but to ask questions to engage the student, Question, question, question. Somehow the student is supposed to work out the answer for themselves. A bit of a gap here, I think. This method can work well in a very structured, full time situation, but applying it universally not so much, and I think it just might delay learning. The huge increase in hours to achieve a ppl would seem to support this.. You cant say on one hand that nothing has changed, and then explain properly why the hours to achieve a ppl has.
The FIG has also been revised if I understood it correctly to reflect this new teaching method.
Scenarios have their place in training. But the focus at the ppl level should be to develop basic flying skills. Accidents like the Air France and Colgen are perfect examples that pilots have not achieved that.

But, I did get to thinking about the OPs original post. He has a good attitude, and if he can focus on standards and results I expect he will do well.

Experience does have its place. And there will always be conflicts. The problem that arises, as photo pointed out, is that there is only one way to do it. Prostrate yourself before the masters and do it only their way, or face damnation at being to proud and a know it all. It is a bit hard to think how that will bring about any positive changes in flight training.

But I only see the products of this training, and have to rely on others more intimate with all the regulations and procedures so maybe everything in flight training is perfect and there is onlynone right way.