Flight Instructors

[Colonel Sanders]

To summarize:

Training a new class 4 instructor is a huge responsibility.
Lots of leverage there, in both directions. You screw up,
he's going to screw up a lot of students. You do a good
job, he's going to help a lot of students.

The problem is, there aren't many class 1 instructors
left, and the one's I've seen aren't very impressive and
don't have much experience at teaching new instructors.

Every class 1/2 instructor today wants to fly a clapped-out
Navajo out of some dreadful place, and these days, most
of the time, their dream comes true pretty quickly. The
inevitable result of this, is that there are some pretty
sketchy class 4 instructors out there, with some pretty
marginal aviation skills and knowledge and some pretty
weak teaching skills. This is not good for aviation, especially
because a lot of the CFI's are pretty green, too.

Weird things come out of an FTU with sketchy class 4's
led by a CFI with the ink wet on his class 2 instructor rating.

[mcrit]

Every class 1/2 instructor today wants to fly a clapped-out
Navajo out of some dreadful place...

I'd love to get back into training Class 4's, if there were a school with an opening near by.

[Colonel Sanders]

I can't imagine many civilian flight schools that
wouldn't want to have an experienced class 1
on staff, for instructor ratings.

Doing class 4 instructor ratings is one of the most
thankless and underpaid jobs in aviation - CPLs
that want to be class 4's generally don't have any
money - but it's probably one of the most important.

You've got 25 hours on the ground with the candidate,
teaching him how to teach, and 30 hours in the air,
making sure:

a) he knows how to fly, and
b) how to teach how to fly.

I like to make sure a class 4 instructor candidate is
really sharp at:

1) slow flight/stall (no surprise - I am a big high alpha/rudder guy)
2) steep turns (flying from the right seat)
3) practice forced approaches (last but certainly not least)

I have something I call Boyd's Law of Inequalities. It states
that a student, at best, approaches 50% of the proficiency
of his teacher (the actual number is unimportant).

If a flight instructor is weak at say, flying forced approaches
himself, it is extraordinarily unlikely in the extreme that his
students will ever be any good at it, either, until much later
in his career when he has successfully learned to teach himself.

As you might imagine, I hammer mercilessly on forced approaches
with my class 4 flight instructor candidates. Every time we
return to the (uncontrolled) airport, you can bet the throttle
is going to come back, and I want to see a perfect PFL to
touchdown. As he gets more practice, I try to approach from
different angles, and at progressively lower and lower altitudes -
eventually lower than circuit altitude. I love doing diversions
back to the home airport at 500 AGL and then pulling the
throttle when the runway comes into sight.

PFLs historically suck in Canada on the TC PPL/CPL flight
tests. Nothing has changed in decades. Close the loop.

[Old Dog Flying]

My take is the same: a student is only as smart as the instructor (but sometimes they actually surprise you). As for the PFLs; there has beenvery few procedures that require more work than this. We went from the "S" turns on final (deadly) to the Figure 8 on Base to the 360 Overhead..which I actually prefer. But all of the procedures require plenty of practice and more than a bit of skill.

[Shiny Side Up]

Your sarcasm is typical of the mindset of people who defend the system, "evil " is not exactly the proper description...the proper description is " dictatorship " .

You will probably never have the opportunity to own and manage a flying training business like the Americans have because you live in a socialistic dictatorship.

First, if evil isn't the term you'd use to describe something you feel is dictatorship-like, then I'm not sure we both have the same frame of reference. Second I'm not really defending the system and I'm not really being sarcastic here. Contrary to popular belief, flight training isn't that great south of the border either, its results are depressingly average. The main factors that make training cheap there aren't the regulations regarding it, though it does play a factor. Since the bar to my opportunity has more to do with the arbitrary nature of the location of where I was born, I guess I'll just have to live with that injustice.

Moving along...

Actually, there's one on this website. I won't out
him, but he's retired AC, built an RV, and just did
his class 4. I will admit that he is the exception to
the rule.

There's another guy this website that I won't out
either - he owns his own aircraft, CPL, IFR, and is
doing his class 4.

While making no judgements on whomever you're talking about, we should also enter into the problem the idea that these types of guys don't always make spectacular instructors either, another twist in the larger problem that is flight instruction. On further thought on the matter, I can now recall a couple of pilots that maybe fit this description. I'm starting to think that there maybe is a certain type of psycosis that draws people into flight training. You must admit that none of these people come to it for the money, so the idea that we would draw more experience to the trade by better pay is simply false.

The problem is, there aren't many class 1 instructors
left, and the one's I've seen aren't very impressive and
don't have much experience at teaching new instructors.

But there are certainly some of the class 1s out there mass producing new class 4s so they definitely have more leverage in the system. I have a hard time with the idea that instructors can be mass produced. The minimum 25 hours of ground time is certainly optimistic, I generally tally up around 60-70 hours of ground time with each of mine (and don't worry, I flat rate that cost), varying depending on the previous skills of the individual. If you're going to be that evil, you simply have to hand craft your minions...

[photofly]

I'm sorry, chaps, there simply aren't enough 20,000 hour retirees who are interested in being flight instructors.

we should also enter into the problem the idea that these types of guys don't always make spectacular instructors either

Tell me more about "these types" - I'm fascinated.

[Shiny Side Up]

Very simply, there's more to being a flight instructor than just being a good stick, Or having a lot of hours. Ideally the combo should make a good instructor, but not always, you know what they say about assumptions.

[Colonel Sanders]

there's more to being a flight instructor than just being a good stick. Or having a lot of hours.

No kidding. Prime example is my grumpy old fighter pilot
father. Awesome stick. Started flying tactical jets in the
early 1950's. Fairly well experienced, you might say.

But you must recall my experience, at the tender age of
10, where he shouts at me in a noisy Maule cockpit,
"If you don't do something, we're going to die!"

Great stick. Horrible instructor. Typical fighter pilot.

It's the teaching side of things, that pilots - often really
good pilots - struggle with. It's not always easy to make
that light bulb over their head turn on, and a master
teacher can do it with very few words, in a very short
period of time.

People have accused me of being a natural pilot - which
is BS, there is no such thing - but no one has ever accused
me of being a natural instructor. I had to learn to do it
painfully - on my part, and I am sure my students - over
many, many years before I was even middling at it.

[photofly]

I hope you don't lie awake at night worrying about the huge damage you did to the aviation industry during the period before you were even "middling" as an instructor.

[Shiny Side Up]

I doubt there are any "natural" instructors out there, but some certainly start the process better equipped than others.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Very simply, there's more to being a flight instructor than just being a good stick, Or having a lot of hours. Ideally the combo should make a good instructor, but not always, you know what they say about assumptions.

I think the real high time guy getting his Class 4 and then instructing PPL,s is a waste of talent. IMO You don't need to be a super experienced instructor or high time pilot to be a good PPL instructor. What you do need to be is someone who genuinely wants to be the best instructor you can be, who is trained by a very good Class 1, and is properly supervised and mentored. In some respects the new low time guy has an advantage as they can relate to the struggles of someone just learning to fly.

The high time guys have much more to offer CPL and instrument students.

[sidestick stirrer]

Shiny: my feelings are hurt!
Yes, it's me, the guy The Colonel referred to, except that now I am a Class Two after four years of part-time instructing. Got 86% on the written for that within the last year so who knows...
As the weeks of instructing turn into months and into years, on some days I do wonder why I keep doing this and on other days I wonder why I am the only one.
I'll be 63 in July( forcibly retired at age 60 before the law changed) and my motive for getting my rating was typical of an airline pilot: three of my four children wanted to learn to fly and I was too cheap to hire an instructor. They are all now licensed pilots, all can fly tailwheel and do basic aerobatics.
I found that my sole motivation and purpose for continuing to instruct was watching students smile when they finally either grasped a concept or mastered a skill. I am as happy as they are. Despite what has been posted on this thread about older instructors, I can assure you that-at least in my case-I can empathize with their struggles as if they were my struggles, I vividly remember all of my ab-initio training and can relive those moments from the Late Sixties vicariously through my students. And I think all my years as a somewhat-mature adult, husband, father and pilot have imbued me with enough patience, thoughtfulness, ability and caring to be an effective instructor. An added bonus is that I could care less about PIC time. If I feel that FTD time, or a ground briefing or tutoring, or a solo hop would be more beneficial to the student's progress, that is what will happen instead.
The only time I feel my patience slipping is when dealing with a particularly-overbearing controller but That is still a work in progress.
I admit that twenty-thousand hours of Heavy Iron flying does not bring much to the table when teaching the basic air exercises and, at times, it feels like I am underemployed in that regard.
However, much like a senior corporate lawyer that occasionally does pro-bono cases just because, it keeps a person rounded and can be just as rewarding as technically more challenging instructing can be.
As I have moved along the instructing-experience chain, adopting or evolving new techniques while discarding others that are not as effective, I find myself scheduled more and more with those that-for a variety of reasons-are struggling with their training. New approaches, different demonstrations and explanations, different emphases, one actually has to figuratively burrow down into the student's brain so that one can see what they see, think what they are thinking, stay with them through the reasoning and decision-making; it is a remarkable process and quite the challenge.
So that's the feel-good stuff that keeps me rolling out of bed while it is still dark to start another day at the FTU. The money is what it is, just like in the airline world when LO-CO operators start up, steal business and then everything becomes a race to the bottom. There's a reason that many instructors either still live with their parents or know sixty delicious ways to make KD taste like something other than KD and ride a bicycle to work.
When I half-heartedly complained about the meager wages that only kick in when the Hobb's meter does, the CFI offered to pay me his wage if he could have my pension. Rats: he's onto me!
Seriously, I know many individuals like myself, all of whom would make excellent instructors but the motivation and reward-at least for them-is not great enough.
My wife works full time for her community, I don't golf and think hell is between the handles of a wheelbarrow.
I am responding to an inner urge to pass on as much as I can, to as many students as I can as quickly as I can with the time I have left, rather than trying to analyze or temper that urge.
One final advantage of an older instructor, at least one who has a lifetime of both commercial and private flying under their belt, is that they certainly can recreate vivid, personal scenes of less-than-stellar decision making and other shortcomings when presenting material either in the classroom or the briefing room.
At my age, two things happen: we no longer care what others think about us( despite how I began this post) and-if it happened to me, even by my own hand- it will certainly happen to others and the best way to capitalize on my extremely good fortune to have survived this long is to ensure they have the tools to recognize a similar situation starting and prevent it from going any further.
Yes, when I am getting dizzy in the pattern in a 16,000-hour 152 and I hear my Snowflake teammates call up for taxi clearance, I do feel a small pang of wishing I were with them.
I am doing what I feel I should and don't look at it any further than that. Many instructors and many, many Captains took the time and put in the effort to make me who I am today and therefore I feel an obligation to continue the process.
I read several years ago that a truly-professional life has three stages: learn, earn and return. It resonated strongly with me and obviously I am on the last stage.

[Shiny Side Up]

Sorry about the hurt feelings, but its been well established that I'm evil, so don't feel too bad given where its coming from.

That said though, I try not to make too large of generalizations here. I tend to use terms like many or some or if I'm particularly irritable I might wantonly throw out a many in my lunatic ravings. I am careful never to say all or none when characterizing people so that the reader if they want can exempt themselves from the grouping. For example:

these types of guys don't always

Is not all encompassing. People unfortunately tend to follow a bell curve in ability doing anything if we take a large sampling, in other words there are going to be old experienced guys who make good instructors, and we're going to have some who don't in the possible pool. Because the pool of possibles is so small, we end up with an un even distribution of the ones who decide to engage in it. Oddly these tend to be the outliers it would seem, so we get very good and very bad ones who would fall into this type I described. On this point though.

all of whom would make excellent instructors but the motivation and reward-at least for them-is not great enough.

We must contemplate that there can be no reward great enough - at least within reason. Others there won't be any motivation. Many won't feel as strongly as you might about the whole thing, one of the main detractors of flight training. Remember that I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of qualities to make a good instructor from an old experienced pilot, but rather that it is possible that the small pool of available ones might still contain some of the bottom outliers.

[treehugger]

Sidestick: Not that it matters. I am humbled.
Before reading your post I couldn't help but think of all the club checkouts performed on 20000hr pilots... a somewhat harrowing experience. It made me cringe thinking of those guys making the transition to instructor when they clocked out of the majors. I kept thinking there's a vast difference between a systems operator in a heavily controlled environment to buzzing around at 3000' between controlled and uncontrolled airspace trying to teach some poor wretch how to fly.
What a great thread...

learn, earn and return

filed...

[Old Dog Flying]

Great post Scott! I think that you realy hit the nail squarely on the head. I instructed until age 68, giving back, or should I say giving forward, some of the things that I learned from other grizzled old farts.

The biggest satisfaction comes from the incredible smiles you get when your student parks that little machine after his/her first solo.

Per Ardua Ad Astra
Barney

[sidestick stirrer]

SSU: The more I re-read your posts the more the experience behind them and the thought that went into their composition comes to light, thank you for them, whether they are flattering or otherwise. Age makes us quite opinionated and perhaps less-tolerant of others but-if there is something to be learned and we are better for it-then it can hardly be the work of the devil.

I agree with all of your points and with Treehugger's observations as well. The most-likely candidate would be a commercial pilot who, if the nature of his employment caused an erosion in basic piloting skills, chose to keep his hand in by flying smaller aircraft on the side. When I was hired and concentrated on getting better at flying an airliner for several years, the first time I rented a little airplane was quite an eye-opener, for both myself and the unfortunate soul sitting beside me who drew the short straw. It sounds like it might even have been Treehugger himself. Unless all of us stereotypes had forgotten to use rudder instead of aileron to keep the wings level in the climb or pulled off a most-excellent flare at sixty feet and wondered what that horn was and why haven't we touched down yet and why is that young kid over there fidgeting and reaching for the controls?
After my embarrassment, I gathered up enough scratch to buy a Cub, built a Pitt's Special, moved onto a Skyhawk when two children were born and stepped up to a T-210 when another two appeared. Now we have the RV-6 for fun and a Cardinal which serves as My Bitter ( that should read: Better) Half's personal lunch buggy.
A couple of years ago, in the Eighties, there was the first ACE( Air Canada Employee) Fly In held on a private strip north of Toronto and so many aircraft showed up that they lined either side of the runway and spilled out into the surrounding crop fields. Antiques, Classics, homebuilts, aerobatic biplanes to family cruisers and amphibians; personal aircraft ownership by commercial pilots was alive and well.
Nowadays, the number of airline pilots who own an airplane appears to have shrunk drastically, either due to the costs or perhaps the type of individual who now seeks an airline career feels nothing towards this facet of aviation.
I agree with both of you that most of aviation results in a pilot becoming very, very good at a very narrow aspect of aviation, to the expense of the others, this is not restricted to airline ops.
After twenty-two years as A Nail( First Officer) I was promoted to Hammer (Captain) and, after several years of line flying in that capacity, was invited to train as an LITC, Line Indoctrination Training Captain. This involves flying with a pilot who has finished his Groundschool and simulator but not actually flown the real thing yet and, if it was a Captain and depending on the airplane type, we flew as right-seat PIC without access to nosewheel steering other than the limited range provided by the rudder pedals.
Later I was invited to become an ACP, an Approved(by TC) Check Pilot and spent six years in this capacity. These latter two positions were-as stated- by invitation only so either they couldn't find anyone else willing to do it or just maybe I had a sprinkling of the right stuff.
This long-winded career description is included to explain how my career involved those three positions and that I found the instructing to be the most-enjoyable, by far.
And yet, probably for the reasons you so succinctly listed, there were never enough LITC's on each equipment type.
I encountered my CFI in a most-unusual way. My Class Four required its second renewal flight test so I most casually selected a nearby FTU and flew with the CFI. After our brief flight, he opined that just one more student beyond my daughters( I did not train the first one) would make me a Class Three and then I wouldn't have the flight test every year. He then, as we shut down, was obviously hypoxic as he offered to let me train a student from his FTU. Cowabunga: less work and less flight tests? Where do I sign?
Well, one thing led to another and I guess that I don't suck too badly at this new endeavour. I am still amazed at the magic that happens in that little building and those little airplanes and humbled at the responsibility instructors bear. We can take a stranger with all their personal baggage who is overcome with a intoxicating blend of fright and joy and wonder during their fam flight and-in what seems like practically no time at all-stand at the fuel pumps, clutching our headset and kneeboard perhaps a little more tightly than necessary, watching their first solo. And way-too soon thereafter, watch them disappear into the distance on their first solo cross-country.
Call me brain-dead if you wish, it is one hell of a rush to me...

[Colonel Sanders]

http://www.amazon.ca/A-Gift-Wings-Richa ... 0440204321


I've always had a soft spot for:



Which describes the author flying an "antique"
biplane from 1929 ... in 1965! Perspective: in
1965 it was 36 years old. It is now 84 years old.

I have a weakness for tube, fabric, wood, tailwheel,
open cockpit, biplane and radial engine. Mix it all
together, put it on a grass field and that's really all
the aviation you'd ever really need.

[Colonel Sanders]

This is probably a little too far out there, but:



http://www.amazon.ca/Illusions-The-Adve ... 0440204887

[Shiny Side Up]

just maybe I had a sprinkling of the right stuff.

This I feel is an important bit that you hit on. In the pilot world ther's this myth that only old experienced pilots can possibly be good instructors, young guys are all terrible at it and the only reason the old guys don't do it is the pay. In reality though, few are cut out (young or old) to be instructors. In my time I've encountered both good instructors and bad instructors, their age has largely been an irrelevant factor, only incrasing the probablility that they are also experienced pilots.

In the end we really need to increase the ratio of instructors who should and want to be instructing over the portion of instructors who are doing it unwillingly and poorly. We won't be able to prevent the shouldn't be instructors from getting into the pool (mostly because there's some shouldn't be class 1s unscrupulously producing many), so we really need to work at increasing the number of should be instructors in the pool.

I am still amazed at the magic that happens

I'm glad to hear its still there for you. It is something to cherish and keep safe. If you can, avoid getting into the business of flight training, though sometimes that's unavoidable to preserve the magic and fun. Limit your exposure, that's what turns people evil like myself.

[Beefitarian]

Maybe you just need to switch to decaf shiny.

[Shiny Side Up]

Why? When you're an evildoer you got to stay keyed up.

[Colonel Sanders]

Six years of evil medical school should help with that!

[Beefitarian]

I think I want to fly some, "wood, fabric, tail wheel, radial..." Airplanes. I'd buy the coffee.

[Colonel Sanders]

I'd buy the coffee

They'd probably prefer some W120 oil, or avgas.
A spray bath of mineral spirits, and a wipedown
with old rags. A dash of MEK every now and then
comes in handy.



None of my business, but have you considered
acquiring a basket case, and restoring it? You
would learn an awful lot in the process, fly it for
a bit, then sell it and buy a bigger basket case.
Restore it, fly it for a while, then buy a bigger
basket case. You keep that up for a while, you
could be rebuilding the Spruce Goose in a few years.

[Beefitarian]

That sounds like there's potential for it to be lonely in a shed while I'm on here. Otherwise a good plan. Do you know of one for sale.