Shiny Side Up wrote:No problem! Just keeping it real for you.

As for not being familiar with your struggle in the flight training business, it so happens that most of us here are very familiar with your struggle, if only because you've posted so frequently about it. I personally find it hard to believe that three FTUs and five different class one instructors are all to blame for your woes. Time to take a bit of responsibility for your own condition.

Stop crapping on the newbies, that's my job!

Every experienced instructor went through the stage of being a crapped-upon class 4 instructor - you don't get much respect at an FTU as a class 4.

Like pretty much everything else, you work hard, earn crap, get treated like crap, learn your trade and gain seniority over time.

I'm not sure there's a way to short-circuit that - anyone here start out as direct-entry class one instructor? Even if there was, I'm not sure it would be a good idea. You might not personally like a particular class one instructor, but he probably knows a little bit about teaching someone to land a light trainer.

I had lots of hours and 27 years flying teaching tailwheel and aerobatics before I became a Class IV instructor.
The problem is that you get the problem students if you have experience and yet you get no more than the inexperienced Class IV who is given the better motivated and more intelligent easy students that would pass the flight test with little help from anyone.

I avoided the instructor path for a very long time, but in some things life steers you into. I'm still the reluctant 'professional' instructor while I enjoy teaching really motivated people.
Life is often a paradox.

I'd much rather earn a proper living and teach for the fun of it.
I taught pilots how to fly funny aeroplanes such as Tiger Moths and Jodels, I gyrated around the sky flicking out of loops in Slingsbys, and did a thousand other things, for free! British Aerospace and then the rental and maintenance business paid my salary.
I must go back to earning a living again while having fun doing what I do, teach people to fly, without the concern about my pension... $62.50c a month in Canada at 65, what a prospect!

Everyone I know who has taught full time for a long time has become miserable and yet they enjoy what they do!

I'd much rather earn a proper living and teach for the fun of it

Excellent advice. I've been instructing for 15 years now and if it was my sole source of income, I would have starved years ago!

Because the regulations allow new commercial pilots to build hours as an instructor, and they value the hours in their logbooks more than their hourly wage, that drives the instructor commodity price down to the point where part-time instruction by an experienced pilot is really a form of volunteer social work, like working at a soup kitchen for the homeless. You surely don't do it for the money!

When people complain on this forum about the low quality of the flight instruction they are receiving, well, I can only observe that every once in a while you get what you pay for.

Note that I am referring in the above paragraph to what the FTU pays for the instructor, not what the customer pays for the instructor. This may seem like an obscure technicality, but when the customer pays $55/hr for a class 4 instructor (gag), the FTU will likely only pay the class 4 instructor $18/hr or thereabouts.

You don't get much for $18/hr, except perhaps the perspective that an FTU owner is likely to make more money than a class 4 instructor

Students: free advice. You are the customer. Demand a class 2 or 1 instructor for your $55/hr - you will learn more, and faster.

Hedley wrote:

Students: free advice. You are the customer. Demand a class 2 or 1 instructor for your $55/hr - you will learn more, and faster.

Im surprised that a guy like you would make such a statement. We all know the TC Instructor Class System is garbage. I know of a Class 1 that crashed, and two Class 2's that should not be allowed near an airplane. Besides legal issues, this fella yells at students and is a very agressive individual with poor teaching skills (Class 2 to remind you) The other Class 2 likes to fly into T-storms, icing, teaches nav with a cheap handheld GPS cause he gets lost otherwise and of course bends the rules all the time. I would surely not want anyone I cared about to be taught by any of these guys.

On the other hand, I know of some dedicated and hard working Class 4's. Solid guys. Now Im not saying that all Class 1 and 2 are bad, evidently you must be good Hedley, and I have met some amazing Class 1's, but to judge someone by their Class number I think it might be misleading.

One last thing, just because someone has a Class 4 ticket, does not mean they have 230 hrs or no experience teaching. Think about that.

Sigh.

All I was suggesting is that people, given the choice, choose
a skilled, experienced practitioner, for the same price.

The class system, while not perfect, is a very simple way of
telling how much experience an instructor has at teaching - you
don't need to ask him TT, hours given, students soloed, students
recommended for flight test, etc (eyes glazed over).

Most class 4's are learning how to instruct. Ask me how I know
that. I used to be one.

I am sure there are class 4's who are natural wizards at instructing
and never needed to be taught anything by anybody, and I am sure
there are class 1's who don't have a clue. However, these are the
spectacular exceptions.

Let's say you need some surgery. Do you choose a kid fresh out
of school, who has never done it before by himself, or do you pick
his 45 year old professor that taught him in school, who has done
this operation 10,000 times?

Funny how in aviation so many people think that experience
is completely worthless. If experience is so worthless, why
do pilots maintain a logbook? Why do employers require it?

Moderator, because I made the comment on this subject could we disable this subject topic.

Thank you Shiny side up again for ridiculing me and yes I am to blame for my training and choosing the training units that I chose.

Sounds like you are/were a Class 1 and seem to know alot and that is appreciated but enough ridicule towards me and why don't we just stop commenting on this subject.

thanks to everybody that has commented and to all the flight instructors that don't give a shit on the instructing profession thank you for being in it.

This will be my last post and comment and will be merely a spectator .

This will be my last post

Bluenote: like many inexperienced instructors, you don't quite "get" the flight training industry.

Most self-absorbed young, inexperienced instructors seem to think that the purpose of the flight training industry is for them to use as a stepping stone to build time and quickly move onto "four bar" land

The purpose of the flight training industry is to make a profit while safely training pilots. That's what it is all about. It's not all about you, ok?

Similarly, when these young pilots move on to 703 flying, they seem to forget that the whole purpose of 703 is to make a profit, safely transporting people and goods. Again, the purpose of 703 is NOT to provide young pilots with a stepping stone to bigger aircraft. This little detail is again often lost on young pilots.

I do wish that economics 101 was a requirement for a CPL. It's all about the customer, ok?

It's funny that Canada is so left-wing, the whole reason a business exists is irrelevant to most.

Thank you Shiny side up again for ridiculing me and yes I am to blame for my training and choosing the training units that I chose.

If I'm mean about it, its because I care. The flight training business is something that's very important to me. I remember being in the shoes of a job-hunting pilot, I remember being a new instructor. Since I've had a commercial licence I've spent a total of five years out of work, and looking for it. I've had doors slammed in my face and there were many who told me I was un-hirable based sheerly on where I took my training. I've worked for shysters who didn't pay, Others who tried to scam me to work for free and some who wanted me to risk my life so they can make a buck. Not just the flight training world needs to change, but the whole of aviation in Canada. I've become as of late increasingly aware of where the problems lie and how the whole dream of it can come crashing down for all of us. Flying is something special, its a privilidge to turn fuel into noise and feel the joy from the process. Training people to fly is an especially important bit of the puzzle, which is underappreciated by many, taken for granted by most, undervalued by those who want it and devalued by those who have taken it.

In all frankness, there will be work for those whom can communicate a willingness and a desire to pass on that special spark. There will always be a place for those few in the realm of helping others learn to fly. Personally, I wish more would have the spark, but in experience few do.

In short, to those Class 4s out there, there is indeed hope - unless you've let that spark go out.

This notion that all class 4’s are inexperienced pilots with a mere 230 hours is not true.

I’m sorry Hedley but I disagree with most of what you have said, in particular the class system for instructors. Look at someone like MichaelP; he said he had 27 years of TEACHING tail wheel and aerobatics before he became a class 4 instructor. A student who walked into that flight school when MichaelP was a class 4 and demanded a class 2 would really be doing himself/herself a disservice by passing up on a class 4 instructor like MichaelP used to be.

I have met many class 4 instructors who worked in the bush for a few seasons before deciding they wanted to live in the city and then did an instructor rating. These experienced pilots had hundreds sometimes thousands of hours of real world experience. Personally I think a student would be better off with a class 4 instructor like this rather than a class 3 or even class 2 who only has 500 hours of teaching experience (most of which was probably in the circuit at one airport).

I wouldn’t tell perspective students to demand anything. But rather research a number of schools, go in and talk to the instructors, and pick the school they feel most comfortable with.

Bringing in your own students is key to many a position at a flying school.

So in this respect an enthusiastic instructor has a head start on the anti-social 'I do it for me' type of instructor.
I call this type a 'number one' person and I particularly do not like this type. A number one person is not there primarily for the student and that is not professional...

Everywhere I have been I have ended up taking a lot of people flying for the first time.
Enthusiasm sells flying like nothing else and this 'selling' is not directed, it simply carries people along.
So do not try the direct approach, teach by your own example, and teaching is another form of selling!

I must say that Canada is a difficult place for this business as beyond hockey most people here don't get enthusiastic about anything

Here's enthusiasm, wouldn't you want to get into the boat with these girls?:

the class system for instructors

To be an effective instructor - of any activity - you need two things:

1) knowledge and skills about the activity
2) the ability to transfer that knowledge and those skills

Do you need to take your ab initio training from a pilot whom is a distinguished graduate of the Empire Test Pilot School? I would wager not, because let's face it, it's really not that hard to fly a plastic nosewheel trainer.

Whether their instructor has the knowedge and skills of a 500 or 5000 hour pilot is probably irrelevant to most students with 3 hours in their logbook.

What does matter to most students with 3 hours in the logbook, is how good a teacher their instructor is. You might have . Yeager for an instructor, but if he doesn't have any experience at teaching, he might not be a very effective flight instructor.

And that's all the class system of instructors tells you, at a glance - how much experience at teaching ab initio the instructor has. Nothing more.

The problem with young, inexperienced people is that they don't know, what they don't know.

Get back to me after you've logged your first 1,000 hours of dual given, and honestly tell me if you think your instructor skills have improved since you had zero hours of dual given.

I would wager that you will think that you have improved enormously, from where you are now, as a brand new class 4.

I am only a class one instructor and class one aerobatic instructor that has been CFI at three different schools over the decades. I have instructed ab initio, rec, ppl, night, vfr-ott, commercial, multi, single-ifr, multi-ifr, many different kinds of homebuilts and antiques and military jet, tailwheel, aerobatic, formation and formation aerobatic at low altitude to ICAS airshow standards.

I probably don't have very much experience at flight instructing and flying compared to you, so you are free to think that I don't know very much about flight instruction.

And that's all the class system of instructors tells you, at a glance - how much experience at teaching ab initio the instructor has. Nothing more.

Probably the best description of the system that many students and new instructors would do well to remember. While there are things in the class system that could be improved, in general it works well for what its intended to. No it does not help instructors get work, but that's not what its purpose is.

The problem with young, inexperienced people is that they don't know, what they don't know.

This isn't exclusive to the young. A willingness to learn and improve is an attribute all instructors need to have. This is the big problem with a lot of instructors out there - they have no interest in improving while they're at it.

bluenote wrote:Moderator, because I made the comment on this subject could we disable this subject topic.

Thank you Shiny side up again for ridiculing me and yes I am to blame for my training and choosing the training units that I chose.

Sounds like you are/were a Class 1 and seem to know alot and that is appreciated but enough ridicule towards me and why don't we just stop commenting on this subject.

thanks to everybody that has commented and to all the flight instructors that don't give a shit on the instructing profession thank you for being in it.

This will be my last post and comment and will be merely a spectator .

I'm sorry you feel this way. But is it me or does it seem like this kind of an attitude may be the exact same reason you couldn't find a job for the last little while? I would think so. I honestly would be glad to help you think positively but I have a feeling that you're not open to advice either? I mean you're mouthing off a Shiny and taking everything he says personal, where if I would be you, I would wait for a second, and think what he has to say. Remember, every person who's got more hours than you, has been there and done that. So their stories could be of REAL benefit to you if you open your ears and have a listen. Honestly, the more I get out and meet with individuals who have been there and done that, the more motivation I get because I see that there was somebody else in my shoes not too long ago, and now they're doing what I will be doing in a few years.

Like an instructor, I completely am taking your life scenario into perspective; as I imagine it to be a tough scenario when you're 40, questioning the career you got into for the last 20 years, only to come and achieve all the licenses towards having a tough time finding a job. It sure must be de motivating; but for a change, why don't you look at this experience as a new chapter in your life? Why not make it the best experience in your life? Mental strength is a KEY asset in an instructor, and if you don't have the mental strength to take a few realistic criticisms from people on these boards, students will eat you alive ! Literally speaking, especially if you teach the cadets. You need to be that convincing, confident, and believable, where what you say is Authority, but obviously with a chill attitude so that the student feels comfortable asking you questions and spending 48/hr on you.

Like I've said before, I am open to help you out... I'm a 330 hour class 4 instructor, but I my hopes are high Would be more than glad to transfer that attitude to you as well.

Have a great day and chill my friend