Part time CFI plus full time job, is it too much?

[Mdog]

I obtained my CPL several years ago but never pursued it any further, instead I went to university and got an office job. I discovered in university that I enjoyed teaching by tutoring to pay my tuition. Now that I am in a better financial position I am considering becoming a CFI. I do not want to quit my office job as it gives my family financial stability. Does anyone have experience working a full time non aviation job and being a part time CFI? If you do, did your students training suffer? Did your personal life suffer?
Thanks

[Cessna driver]

I obtained my CPL several years ago but never pursued it any further, instead I went to university and got an office job. I discovered in university that I enjoyed teaching by tutoring to pay my tuition. Now that I am in a better financial position I am considering becoming a CFI. I do not want to quit my office job as it gives my family financial stability. Does anyone have experience working a full time non aviation job and being a part time CFI? If you do, did your students training suffer? Did your personal life suffer?
Thanks

A fellow instructor is a controller and a cfi, he makes it work. Not sure if he is on here, a second job is nice while instructing, especially on the bad weather days.

[Colonel Sanders]

If you have a M-F,9-5 job and instruct evenings
and weekends, you will have no personal life.

[digits_]

I obtained my CPL several years ago but never pursued it any further, instead I went to university and got an office job. I discovered in university that I enjoyed teaching by tutoring to pay my tuition. Now that I am in a better financial position I am considering becoming a CFI. I do not want to quit my office job as it gives my family financial stability. Does anyone have experience working a full time non aviation job and being a part time CFI? If you do, did your students training suffer? Did your personal life suffer?
Thanks

Depends on your employer. If you find a flying club or flight school that allows you to only teach on saturdays or on sunday mornings, and you have students that are happy with that schedule, why not. I just don't think many employers would be very interested.

I'm doing something similar at the moment. My non-aviation job is very flexible in hours though, and of course I want to instruct as much as possible to build hours. So yes, it gets quite busy and my personal life starts to suffer a bit. And my clients from my daytime job are getting a bit frustrated when works start lagging on sunny days.

[Luscombe]

Back when I was instructing, we had quite a few part-timers who had "real" jobs to pay the bills. On the whole, they seemed to be a pretty happy lot. One was a fire-fighter, another two were flight attendants, but some had 9 to 5er jobs.

In retrospect, they were the backbone of the instructional staff as full-timers generally stay until they get their hours and split. There's something to be said about continuity.

[floatplanepilot]

Its been awhile since I was a CFI but I think there is a CAR that states the CFI of a school has to be full time... You definitely need to be full time to get issued a FTU OC, CAR 426.11(2).

Unless your referring to CFI as in Certified Flight Instructor like in the US. In Canada it means Chief Flight Instructor... If you are fill your boots with part time instructing.

[JungianJugular]

I obtained my CPL several years ago but never pursued it any further, instead I went to university and got an office job. I discovered in university that I enjoyed teaching by tutoring to pay my tuition. Now that I am in a better financial position I am considering becoming a CFI. I do not want to quit my office job as it gives my family financial stability. Does anyone have experience working a full time non aviation job and being a part time CFI? If you do, did your students training suffer? Did your personal life suffer?
Thanks

Hey Mdog,

I'm in the same boat as you, though I have more time off as I am an elementary school teacher. Planning to instruct part time and full time during summers. I enjoy teaching and want to share this passion with others.

Having talked to other people online, there's mixed messages. There's a lot of part timers out there.

[Mdog]

Thanks everybody! I appreciate the input and I'm still tossing the idea around.

I was referring to becoming a flight instructor and not a Chief Flight Instructor Floatplanepilot, my bad.