The Savvy Flight Instructor: Secrets of the Successful CFI

Opportunity Knocking: Be a Flight Instructor

Wanted—enthusiastic, knowledgeable pilots for part-time, full-time, or freelance professional flying. Lots of fun and adventure, highly respected position, and great learning experience. Age no factor. Travel as much (or as little) as you like. Get paid to fly!"

Me? An Instructor?

Do you enjoy teaching and encouraging people? Get your kicks recruiting others to aviation? Would a full- or part-time flying job interest you? How about owning your own flying business?

If your answer was yes to any of these questions, you should consider becoming a flight instructor. Opportunities are growing for a new generation of pro CFIs. You know, folks like us who delight in sharing the joy of flight. Aviators who’d love a professional flying career, but don’t necessarily want to live life on the road. And those who delight in professional piloting even while sustaining other full-time careers. Here’s why becoming a flight instructor is a worthy mission for you to pursue.

First, the old adage, the best way to master a subject is to teach it, is most certainly true. As an active CFI your knowledge and flight proficiency will rapidly exceed your greatest expectations. By teaching others you will truly learn to fly as a pro.

Next comes the reward of setting goals and achieving them. Many of us find ourselves sitting at home on a given day, thinking, Gee, I wish there was a reason to go flying today. Well, there is! Start working toward that CFI and you’ve got a meaningful personal and professional objective to justify the time, effort, and investment in continuing regular flying.

Then there’s the contribution to be made to the aviation community. Not only do CFIs impact the safety and proficiency of pilots they train, but they’re critically important in recruiting new blood to aviation. The vast majority of new pilots sign up through the direct or indirect efforts of active CFIs. Want to increase the number of pilots while lowering flying costs? We need your help carrying the flag!

Perhaps best of all, here’s your opportunity to become an honest-to-goodness pro pilot, even if airline or corporate flying doesn’t fit your plans. Almost every aviator harbors dreams of flying professionally. But for various reasons—age, family, and lifestyle considerations, success in another occupation—only so many people are in position to pursue, say, the captain’s seat in a Boeing, or a Learjet. Well, here’s your opportunity to fly professionally under schedule and conditions more or less of your own choosing, and get paid to do it.

What Does it Take to Qualify?

Hold on, you say, becoming a CFI takes years of study, and thousands of flight hours, right?

Not at all! With dedication and concentrated effort, one can become a competent CFI with less than 300 total logged flight hours. After earning your Private Pilot certificate, it takes only three more steps to become a primary flight instructor: an Instrument rating, the Commercial Pilot certificate, and then the Flight Instructor certificate itself. That’s certainly not a long path.

Regulations allow new Private Pilots to begin training for the instrument rating as soon as they like. Earning your Instrument rating is roughly comparable in effort and hours to earning your Private Pilot certificate. (All CFI applicants must be instrument rated, even if they never plan to fly IFR. However, instrument proficiency need not be demonstrated on the CFI-Airplane Knowledge or Practical Tests.) As with the Private certificate, FAA Knowledge (written) and Practical (oral and flight) Tests are required. But once earning your instrument rating, the advance to flight instructor can be rapid.

For your Commercial Pilot Certificate you’ll need from 190 to 250 hours total flight experience by checkride time, depending on the nature of your training, including some minimum cross-country and pilot-in-command (PIC) time. Commercial training itself goes quickly compared to the Private or Instrument—often achievable in fifteen hours or less. Again there are Knowledge and Practical tests to pass, and then you’re ready to pursue your Flight Instructor Certificate.

There are no minimum training or aeronautical experience requirements for the Flight Instructor certificate itself, but it will probably take you fifteen to twenty flight hours to earn, plus a good deal of ground instruction. Along with Knowledge and Practical Tests there is an additional FAA written addressing, Fundamentals of Instruction. (Qualified school and university teachers can often bypass this FOI test.)

The oral portion of the CFI Practical Test is notoriously challenging, but what’s covered there is largely material you’ve seen before. Keep sharp on your Private and Commercial Pilot knowledge, and you’ll have little trouble mastering the CFI tests. Of course teaching technique is an important component of the tests, too. If there’s one certificate where you should seek out a truly outstanding flight instructor to learn from, it’s the CFI.

Flight instructors fall into the most favorable medical status of almost any professional pilot. Only a third-class medical certificate is required, so if you qualify physically to be a student pilot, you can instruct. What’s more, some instruction can even be conducted without a medical.

Finally, there’s no age limit for flight instructors except that you must be eighteen to earn your Commercial and therefore CFI Certificates. This is one activity where experience and maturity are valued. You’re a sixty-year-old student pilot? Fine! Move right along and earn your CFI!

How Quickly Can I Become an Instructor?

Now for a few tips to speed you along.

Many people don’t realize how easily they can become Basic Ground Instructors—teaching ground school and signing off applicants for their written Knowledge tests. Just pass two FAA written tests and head over to the nearest FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) to collect your certificate. You don’t even have to be a Private Pilot to qualify! Not only will teaching ground school help pay for your flying, but it’s great preparation for flight instructing, and may allow you to deduct some flight training expenses from your taxes.

Speaking of written tests, the airplane-category Knowledge Tests are nearly identical for Commercial Pilot, Flight Instructor, and Advanced Ground Instructor. Study for one and knock off all three at once! (Instrument rating, Instrument Flight Instructor, and Instrument Ground Instructor Knowledge Tests are also similar to each other.)

For those who plan to knock off their Commercial and CFI certificates in short order, here’s a little trick to accelerate your progress. After completing the very similar Commercial and Flight Instructor-Airplane writtens, arrange with your CFI and pilot examiner to train for and take your Commercial Pilot Practical Test from the right seat. That way your right-seat flying skills will already be nailed when you dive into CFI training—could save you five or even ten hours of training.

What Should I Expect in Flight Instructor Training?

In training for your flight instructor Practical Test, you will first master flying all private and commercial maneuvers from the right seat (if you haven’t already).

Next, you will learn to write and apply lesson plans to teach every required Private and Commercial maneuver both on the ground and aloft, along with key aeronautical knowledge subjects. Through this process, you’ll get the opportunity to review the required knowledge for each subject area in the course of teaching it. So other than keeping sharp on your flying and aeronautical knowledge, and becoming familiar with the FAA’s Aviation Instructor Handbook, there is little additional preparation required to start flight instructor training.

You’ve likely heard that the initial pass rate for first-time flight instructor applicants is lower than for other pilot certificates and ratings. One reason is that there’s little room for laxity. As a CFI you’ll impact the safety of others outside your own cockpit, and habits you teach will inform other pilots’ operations far into the future.

Also, for the first time you must demonstrate the ability to effectively explain concepts to others, in addition to mastering them yourself. Therefore, applicants who have experience teaching literally anything in- or outside aviation are more likely to pass the first time. This can benefit older CFI applicants, for example, who most often have educated others in the course of life experience.

Here are two preparation tips to increase your chances of passing the CFI checkride on your first attempt. First, volunteer to assist student pilots with their ground school training, either by teaching topics to an organized ground school class (preferred), or through private mentoring. This will not only reinforce your knowledge of the material, but will help you organize your thoughts into logical presentation techniques.

Finally, shortly before taking the Practical Test, I encourage all first-time CFI applicants teach at least one real lesson. Find a friend or relative interested in becoming a pilot, schedule an airplane, and teach him or her an entire first lesson including ground briefing, preflight, first flight lesson, and debrief. Of course you can’t charge for this lesson or log it as dual, but your experience in teaching it will be invaluable in sensitizing you to the teaching level required by your students, and will thereby help prepare you to satisfy the examiner or FAA inspector conducting your checkride.

What Are the Privileges and Benefits of Being a CFI?

Your initial Flight Instructor certificate will authorize you to train Private and Commercial pilots, give Flight Reviews, Wings Program training, and various other endorsements. (Imagine, you giving flight reviews!) You’ll also qualify for many other duties including intro flights, aircraft and renter checkouts.

Additional instructor ratings, such as instrument, multiengine, and other aircraft categories like glider and helicopter, are easy to add if you have journeyman skills in the ratings sought.

But wait—there’s more. Did you realize that as a CFI you can log most of the time flown with your students as pilot-in-command? And that instrument instructors can often log approaches flown by their students toward their own currency? What’s more, each rating you earn in the process of becoming a flight instructor—the IFR, the Commercial, and your CFI—counts as a flight review. That’s the money-saving bureaucratic stuff. The important part is that you’ll be sharp far beyond what flight reviews could do for you in themselves, and it all comes in the course of business without the need for lots of currency flights.

Other not-so-obvious instructor benefits include aircraft-rental discounts, lower insurance premiums for aircraft owners, and broader insurability in the planes you fly.

Now for the most compelling reason to become a flight instructor—people! As a CFI you’ll meet individuals from all walks of life who share your dream of flight. It’ll be you who introduces them to the special fraternity of aviators, you who delivers the key to piloting on their own, and you who teaches them to fly safely and enjoyably with their thousands of future passengers. Your words will ride with them forever, and will be remembered when they’re needed the most.

Get Paid to Fly

Given today’s demand for flight instructors, you can be assured of employability in most locations the moment you earn your temporary CFI certificate, and you’ll likely have your choice of whether to do it full-time or part-time, or in some cases, as a freelancer.

I Already Have a Full-Time Career. Is it Feasible to Instruct Part Time?

A great many CFIs choose to join the many part-timers and freelancers around the country who ply their trade in a professional manner, and contribute beyond their numbers to the well-being of general aviation. Many of those folks work other jobs, flying and non-flying, and instruct strictly for the fun and personal reward of it. When you look at instructing as a part-time activity that supports your flying and that of others, it’s a pretty darned good deal.

First, instructing gets you up in the air on a regular basis at a price anyone can afford—free. Many part-time CFIs reinvest their instructing income to fund personal flying, yielding both professional and pleasure rewards.

Instruct well and charge appropriately for your services, and you can generate some pretty good part-time income at this business. There can also be tax benefits to becoming an instructor. Talk to your accountant about possibility of deducting many flying expenses from your income taxes, including charts, headsets, recurrent training, additional instructor ratings, your flight physical, and some or all flight training expenses.

Opportunity Knocking!

Join the illustrious ranks of flight instructors. Whether you’re eighteen, or beginning a new life after retirement; whether you’re a schoolteacher with summers available, or looking to change careers altogether, we need you! No one cares how old you are, or whether you wear glasses or not—the skies are yours to own in everything from ultralights to jets.

Just bring along your passion, your life experience, and your dedication. Here’s your big chance to experience the ultimate thrill of flying, all from the seat with the world’s greatest view—and the spectacular high of opening doors of flight to yet another generation of pilots. Carpe diem! Become a flight instructor!

Flight Instructor Professional Opportunities

Plenty of pilots love instructing enough to make a career out of it. And if you’re one of those people who enjoys teaching in aviation, the market for your services is growing daily. In fact, pilot training is probably the hottest aviation growth sector. Expanding domestic and international aviation, plus a flood of pilot retirements, and ever more sophisticated aircraft add up to exponential demand for pilot training.

Where pilots could make do with a simple instructor checkout in the old days, the insurance industry now requires extensive professional training before they’ll cover technologically-advanced private and corporate aircraft. Pilot education isn’t limited to flying the airplane, either. Today’s glass cockpits and flight management systems require specialized training. Then there’s the emphasis on CRM, crew resource management training for multi-pilot crews. The latest development is aircraft-upset training: how to recover from unusual attitudes in transport category aircraft. As the number and depth of required pilot qualifications continue to grow, so does the need for specialized training professionals.

While traditional general aviation flight instruction jobs continue to present professional opportunities, the foundations CFIs build early in their careers can set the stage for countless future opportunities.

Beyond teaching at the local flight school, flight instructors work as university and college instructors and professors, at airline and corporate type-training departments, as professional staff at aviation industry associations, for regulatory agencies such as the FAA and TSA, and for academic material developers and providers such as ASA, Gleim, Jeppesen, and King Schools.

Earnings are highly variable for full-time flight instructors, depending on location, employer, number of students and other factors. But with a CFI shortage once again upon us, instructor pay and benefits are rapidly going up. If you want to pursue a full-time instructing career, excellent positions can now be had around the country, and around the world.

Flight Instructor Career Employment Positions

Given that flight training requirements are so clearly defined by federal regulation, it’s interesting that specific CFI jobs can vary so much in character. Among the most common instructor employers are airline "ab initio" programs (see below), college and university aviation programs, large private flight academies, and smaller private flight schools. Each type of position offers specific advantages and disadvantages for instructors, so which you choose should be based upon your personality and professional objectives.

Ab Initio Flight Academies

Many foreign airlines, several U.S. regional carriers, and a variety of large private training providers operate "ab initio" flight training academies. Ab initio means from the beginning, and refers to programs that train flight students with no prior piloting experience from their first flight lesson, through all the ratings up to entry-level professional qualifications. These programs are sometimes run by air carriers themselves, and in other cases operated under contract by American flight academies. U.S. programs are generally located in Florida, Texas, the Southwest, and California, where the weather is favorable for efficient flight training. A growing number of airline ab initio programs offer professional instructing opportunities overseas, particularly in the Middle East and China.

Ab initio programs tend to be highly regimented, since their objective is to train large numbers of students quickly, with good standardization. The result can be a rather high-pressure instructing environment. Training schedules must be rigidly adhered to, meaning long work days are sometimes required to keep all those students on track. Each lesson is highly structured, so there’s a good deal of repetition. Procedures and performance standards are established by any affiliated carriers, and are often different from those of the FAA. For instructors, these differences mean extra study, but CFIs often benefit by learning multi-pilot crew coordination more thoroughly than in other instructional settings.

Ab initio flight academies tend to offer excellent full-time pay and benefits; instructors can build flight experience rapidly; the equipment is generally first class; and opportunities often exist to move up into twins and even turboprop aircraft. Most require contract periods of service in the position to offset instructor training costs and minimize staff turnover. A year or more of single-engine primary instruction may be required of new CFIs before they can move into more advanced aircraft and ratings.

Opportunities to make career contacts at private flight academies are usually limited to affiliated airlines. Since most foreign airlines hire only their own nationals, U.S. flight instructor employees may need to network outside work to make longer-term career contacts.

One unique employment consideration with flight academy programs is that you may need to learn and apply regulatory and procedural standards of a foreign airline’s home country. Another is that the first language of your students may not be English. Some CFIs find such language barriers hard to manage; for others, it’s a welcome challenge. Working with non-U.S. citizens offers opportunities to get to know people from other cultures, expanding not only your pilot experience, but also your international connections and knowledge.

If you’re the sort of person who prefers a regimented job with clearly defined work parameters, a flight academy position could be for you. Since ab initio programs tend to be rigorous on scheduling, they are also ideal for instructors who prefer to work hard for normal hours on a fairly regular shift, and then go home.

University and College Professional Programs

University and college professional programs also offer top-notch instructing opportunities where CFIs can build flight experience rapidly. These programs are also quite structured, and feature similar scheduling and standardization pressures to the large flight academies, often with good employment benefits, but typically less pay. However, the many graduates of college and university programs can later provide their instructors with excellent career contacts around the country and the world.

University programs tend to be a bit more democratic in operation than the big flight academies. Research opportunities sometimes arise in the course of instructing, and there tends to be more interest in experimenting with new teaching methods.

One potential benefit of instructing at collegiate programs is the prestige of teaching at an institution of higher learning. Although flight instructing at a university may not be so different than what goes on at the private flight school down the road, it has far more cachet on a resume. When the time comes to apply for your next flying job, you’ll have impressive experience to show for it.

University or collegiate instruction can also offer long-term career opportunities. While line instructors deliver the bulk of flight instruction at such institutions, experienced CFIs often advance to lead-flight-instructor positions, professional staff, or even professorial positions. (As a faculty or staff member, you’ll likely get the opportunity to earn any required advanced degrees at a discount or tuition-free.)

Along with delivering flight training, many collegiate instructors also teach aviation-related ground courses as a part of the school curriculum. These can range from private-pilot and instrument ground school courses to specialized topics like crew resource management, accident investigation, and aeromedical considerations. CFIs who start at colleges or universities and then move on to fly professionally somewhere else, often return later in life to collegiate environments. These positions are usually stable, offer prestige and research opportunities, and allow instructors to hone specialized skills and knowledge. Long-term academic career options are well worth considering.

Other Large Scale Training Providers

Other large scale flight training providers include big companies such as Aerosim, American Flyers, ATP, and Flight Safety International, which offer specialized training out of multiple nationwide locations to thousands of customers per year. Instruction in this environment is typically highly structured and very condensed, with emphases on accelerated and advanced training, aircraft type ratings, and recurrent training required by pilot employers and their insurance companies.

As with flight academies, such programs usually closely follow established syllabi and curricula. The customized structure of these training environments typically features mentoring by senior staff to help new instructors master specialized knowledge and type-specific aircraft instructional skills.

Some CFIs may find such environments repetitive and lacking diversity of experience, but for others, the generally excellent pay and benefits, consistent student loads, and speed of gaining flight experience are highly sought after. They often feature close industry relationships and sometimes flow-through agreements for trainees seeking professional piloting careers.

Instructors for such operations gain experience very rapidly, and are often targeted for hiring by contracted airlines and corporate flight departments.

Smaller Private Flight Schools

Traditional FBOs and smaller private flight schools are much more variable in the ways they operate, and therefore in the opportunities they offer instructors. There is generally (but not always) less flying at such outfits than at the big flight programs, often less money, and generally fewer if any traditional employment benefits. Positions are as often contract and part-time as full-time.

However in many cases a good FBO instructor can look forward to moving up quickly into bigger equipment in the charter department. There also tends to be more CFI interaction with the larger aviation community than university and academy programs, increasing prospects of making career contacts in the course of the job. Finally, many of your clients at smaller private flight schools will be successful professionals and business-owners who can offer additional flying and career opportunities.

As you might imagine, small to mid-sized private flight schools are ideal for entrepreneurial types, since they tend to operate in more freewheeling manners than bigger outfits. Sales skills for student recruiting are especially important for CFIs at such businesses, as is flexibility in performing tasks in addition to instructing itself. And smaller-flight-school instructors tend to operate with far greater independence than their counterparts at the big academies.

With flexibility and independence comes responsibility. Smaller-flight-school CFIs are often responsible for developing their own curricula, identifying suitable syllabi and instructional materials, and ensuring all pilot training requirements are met. These less-structured environments can sometimes be challenging for new CFIs, if there’s limited senior staff available to provide mentorship. But for ambitious instructors, the independence of smaller flight school environments can offer opportunities to really shine: expanding one’s training experience, and developing new training and business techniques through personal initiative.

Flight Training Managers/Chief Flight Instructors

All but the smallest owner-managed flight schools, from medium-sized operations to private academies and collegiate operations with large staffs and multiple locations require flight training managers. Not only does the FAA require Chief Flight Instructors to meet certain experience qualifications for every Part 141 approved flight school, but even those not seeking FAA-approved status require quality training professionals to serve as check airmen and manage their programs. Working in any of these hands-on instructional environments will help qualify you over time for flight training manager positions. Given the number of pilots who move into other areas once they gain experience, training management positions are often quite available for qualified CFIs.

International Opportunities

Impressive as the U.S. aviation market has been over time, it pales by comparison with aviation growth elsewhere in the world. Commercial aviation in Asia, for example, is expected to outstrip all other parts of the globe for many years to come.

However, most of the countries projecting the greatest future growth have virtually no indigenous pilot populations, nor programs for training them. As a result, contract pilot training for foreign countries and carriers, performed both here and abroad, offers tremendous growth and career potential for those who are interested.

Over the past decade many countries have begun working to develop local training capabilities. For CFIs willing and able to work overseas, opportunities to instruct for, or help develop and establish training in other countries are almost unlimited. Our U.S. pilot training system is generally considered to be the best in the world, so instructors proficient in our training practices can be quite marketable in helping develop other countries’ programs.

CFI pay in international training programs can be significant, with generous benefits often including housing, several long vacations annually with paid tickets back to the U.S., and additional compensation to help offset income taxes.

Pilot Proficiency and Type-Training Companies

The days of pilots training many hours aloft in sophisticated aircraft are long gone. Nowadays virtually all advanced-aircraft training is done in flight simulators, and the number of companies offering such services has proliferated accordingly. (Among the best-known are Flight Safety International, CAE SimuFlite, and SimCom.)

Not only is most airline and corporate flight training now done in simulators, but employer- and insurance-mandated requirements are growing rapidly at the same time. Such training requires instructors to be highly proficient in specific aircraft systems, and to operate complex simulators to reproduce a wide variety of operational environments. Accordingly, many of these positions pay extremely well and offer excellent benefits, not the least of which is being able to stay in one location and not commute to a flying job. They also offer excellent opportunities to develop connections with their client companies, which can lead over time to further career advancement.

Airline Training Departments

Have you ever thought about who does the training at the airlines? Sure, experienced line pilots serve as check airmen in the aircraft, but who teaches at the training center?

Those people come from a variety of backgrounds, but a significant number are flight instructors like you and me, who have been hired directly into airline training departments. If you have several years and several thousand hours of flight instructing experience, ideally with some classroom teaching along the way, airline training departments can offer rewarding teaching options to investigate.

Benefits of such positions usually include flight discounts and jump-seating privileges on the employing airline, discount travel on other airlines, and sometimes, potential to eventually transfer to a regular line pilot position.

Working for the Government

Many state and federal governmental agencies hire pilots and instructors. Some government piloting opportunities include FAA Flight Check pilots who test and verify instrument approaches, law enforcement flying, piloting for fisheries and wildlife organizations, and executive transport pilots for state and federal agencies. But many governmental positions require detailed pilot instructional knowledge.

An obvious example is the FAA, which employs CFIs for everything from Aviation Safety Inspectors staffing local FSDO operations, to writing for safety magazines and working as part of the FAA Safety Team.

The Transportation Security Administration employs instructor-trained pilots to help manage and monitor the Alien Flight Student Program, and to establish and monitor Temporary Flight Restriction areas.

Instructor credentials are also valued for the National Transportation Safety Board staff members who investigate and analyze aircraft accidents.

Governmental jobs generally come with more paperwork than some other positions, but they also typically feature good benefits, job security, and predictable work schedules.

Association, Advocacy and Non-Governmental Agency Work

Many individuals with flight instructor backgrounds serve aviation professional and industry organizations, and other non-governmental agencies. Examples include instructors who work for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the Experimental Aviation Association (EAA), the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), and other related organizations.

Such CFI staff members work in a variety of roles ranging from regulatory advocacy on behalf of association members, to collecting, creating, and disseminating member resources, to coordinating seminars, forums, and conventions. They also serve as technical consultants for organization members, leadership, and the overall aviation industry.

While industry association positions don’t open regularly, they can offer terrific CFI career opportunities when they do. Among them are prestige, high visibility in the aviation industry, management-level aviation contacts, travel opportunities representing their organizations, and stable work environments with reasonable pay and benefits.

Going it Alone: Independent Flight Instructors

A good many CFIs practice in the broad category of independent flight instructors, which includes everyone from self-employed freelancers, to flight school part-timers who line up their own students.

Perhaps the most obvious independent flight instructors are those who are self-employed. Many of these CFIs promote their services to aircraft owners, offering checkouts in aircraft new to them, advanced ratings, and recurrent training like flight reviews and instrument proficiency checks. Other independents offer training in aircraft they own themselves, sometimes with professional objectives such as building multi-engine time in a personally-owned twin.

As you might imagine, making a full-time living as a self-employed flight instructor can be challenging; it requires a sales-oriented personality, an established reputation, and perhaps most importantly, a busy aviation location. Some self-employed CFIs find it valuable to affiliate with flying clubs. Larger clubs, especially those allowing primary training in their aircraft, can often keep one or more instructors busy pretty much full time. Other independent CFIs practice part time on the side, while working regular, non-flying jobs for their main income.

Freelancers must carefully address business and legal matters, such as carrying adequate liability insurance, and ensuring that the local airport allows independent flight instruction. As you’d expect, many are people who enjoy being in business for themselves; sometimes it’s also possible for them to set and collect higher hourly fees than they could as employees.

Odd as it may sound, the largest number of independent CFIs can probably be found on the payrolls of local flight schools. Part-time instructors often recruit their own students and set their own schedules, but deliver and bill their services through the flight school. These independent contractors enjoy the benefits of flight school affiliation, including access to aircraft, facilities, and potential students, but must do their own marketing and manage their affairs much like a self-employed instructor. Even full-time flight school instructors sometimes find themselves scrambling for business like their independent counterparts, when times are slow.

Despite all the variety, flight instructors share many common opportunities and challenges when it comes to keeping their instructing schedules full. In that respect there’s a bit of independent flight instructor in most CFIs, whether self-employed or not.

CFI Fred Gibbs debriefs a lesson with student pilot Tyler Allen.

There are many reasons why flight instructors choose to fly solo in business. Sometimes it’s a means to an end, say earning experience independently while seeking a permanent position. For others it has to do with living in an area with few flight training employment opportunities. Retirees and part-timers from other careers sometimes prefer the flexibility of freelance instructing. Then there are the entrepreneurial types who simply prefer to do business as independents.

Whatever the reasons, independent CFIs most often find themselves integrating flight instructor professional skills with flight school business and marketing abilities to succeed. It’s not an easy road, and yet some CFIs excel at it.

Among areas where independent flight instructors often do particularly well, is in offering specialized training to fulfill targeted customer needs. For details, see Jason Blair’s Chapter 14, Instructor Specialization.

Positive Rate of Climb:

Getting Your Career Off the Ground

It’s all too easy to pigeonhole the role of flight instructor in the world of aviation. A step-up job, or paying your dues; we hear these sorts of derogatory remarks all too often. The fact is, at least in the United States, the flight instructor is the single most influential individual in ensuring the long-term availability of civilian pilots, and therefore the health of civil aviation as we know it today.

Along with our primary mission of training pilots, CFIs operate at the grass-roots level of aviation, attracting people to join the aviator ranks, and instilling in them the confidence and enthusiasm to continue flying, be it for pleasure or as a career.

This long-term view is important for the future of our own livelihoods in aviation—not only do new pilots finance flight training, but those who remain active invest in additional certificates and ratings. They rent aircraft, patronize aviation books and magazines, support manufacturers and retailers of aviation supplies and equipment, and ultimately buy airplanes. Think of it: where would general aviation be without those thousands of flight instructors who attract new blood into our pilot ranks every day?

Promoting aviation means attracting others to invest their hard-earned time and money in learning to fly. In a broader sense, there’s also the need to sell general aviation to others in the public who may themselves never learn to fly. Accordingly, each of us must take every opportunity to spread the good word about pilots and airplanes, how airports contribute to communities, how flying impacts the economy, and how the vast majority of pilots go to great lengths to be good neighbors.

Our mission in the coming chapters will be to examine how you, as a flight-training professional, can be most effective in recruiting, training, and retaining flight students.

Landing Your First CFI Job

Congratulations! You’re in the home stretch toward qualifying for your first professional flying position. It’s every pilot’s dream—getting paid to fly!

Exciting as it may be, polishing off the instructor certificate is also a bit scary for most pilots. The magical transformation from flight student to flight instructor takes place with the simple stroke of an inspector’s or examiner’s pen. Just a moment ago you were the struggling, respectful student, soaking up wisdom from your own revered flight instructors. Now you’re supposed to be the expert.

Can I do it? Will I be good? Will my students trust me? And even if they do, should they? These are healthy questions, ones that will be answered only with experience, and with mentoring from others you respect. The first lessons you give, your first intro flights, the first solos you authorize…all will be learning experiences for you as much as for your students.

Then there are the hard-knocks questions. Okay, so I’m a Flight Instructor. How does a newly-minted CFI line up a job? Why would any flight school hire someone with few flight hours and no teaching experience? And with that in mind, how should I pursue my first professional position?

Let’s start with the good news. Whatever your friends at the airport may tell you, there really is a developing pilot shortage, and the first manifestations are at the CFI level. In many parts of the country, flight schools are experiencing difficulty finding good flight instructors to hire. I emphasize the word good, because the complaints are never so much about a shortage of warm bodies with CFI certificates, but rather, the challenges of finding and hiring quality people.

Gone are the days when training departments were bombarded with tens or even hundreds of resumes per week. Instead, with their more-seasoned CFIs consistently being hired away by the regional airlines, most flight schools are struggling to keep up with turnover. With more openings and fewer applicants it’s harder to be selective.

In short, if you can convince flight schools that you are diligent, professional, customer-oriented, and a good communicator, you are most certainly hirable. That being said, what are the tricks for getting hired? Let’s lay the groundwork on what makes a person desirable to employers, and then cover a few valuable tricks for closing the deal.

Employability

In the simplest terms, there are at least three basic criteria for getting a CFI job: qualifications, character, and contacts. From a qualifications standpoint, you probably figure that flight experience is the key, right? Not necessarily. While a comfortably-full logbook certainly implies experience, other credentials can be equally valuable. Graduating from a good flight program is certainly worth points. So are good professional and personal references.

Additional CFI ratings are always a good investment for those seeking an instructor position. Even for pilots with low total time, numerous ratings reflect additional training and skills. Perhaps most importantly, they show that you’re trainable. In many cases additional ratings will substitute for hours to meet employer insurance minimums, allowing you to attain some jobs you might otherwise not qualify for.

A good example is the CFI-Multiengine rating. The extra five to ten hours accumulated in earning a Multi-I represent a little more flight experience and a lot more know-how. Many instructors wait a long time before pursuing their multi instructor ratings. Accordingly, most flight schools have only a few Multi-I’s to handle their multiengine students. Since the Multi-I’s are usually the most senior instructors, they often top the list as next to be hired out of the flight school. You want to be waiting in the wings to take over those multi students!

Speaking of additional flight instructor ratings, the Instrument Instructor rating is important to you for longer-term employment reasons. We all know the importance of multiengine experience for those planning to eventually fly the heavy iron. However, the skills you’ll most need for your someday Gargantuan Airlines interview sim check are instrument flying skills. Teaching IFR tremendously improves your own instrument skills, which will be hugely useful both for instructing and for most any other future piloting career.

Specialized skills and experience can also differentiate you from the herd of instructors competing for jobs. Depending on where you’re applying, actual-instrument experience, tailwheel proficiency, mountain-flying skills, specialized aircraft or systems credentials such as Cirrus Standardized Instructor Pilot (CSIP), or Garmin 1000 avionics expertise can make you more marketable to potential employers. Increasingly, steam gauge instrument skills can also be marketable in areas where most students learn to fly on glass cockpits; many will need back-training to fly round-dial airplanes, and you’ll know how to do and teach it.

Now for character, the part about being diligent, professional, customer-oriented, honorable, and a good communicator. In considering what makes a good CFI, flight experience is just one of many factors. I’m sure you’ll agree that plenty of experienced pilots are mediocre instructors, while at the same time many low-time instructors can excel due to good analytical and teaching skills. Employers recognize that even the newest CFI can be an expert in the eyes of a new flight student, and that professionalism is conveyed more by character than logbook. So make the effort to look sharp, do your homework on prospective employers, and make sure your resume and application are free of typos and grammatical errors.

A key and underrated factor in differentiating yourself and advancing your career is verbal communication skills, where there’s been a fundamental shift in recent years. It’s well documented (and perhaps more importantly, popularly believed) that many individuals have become so accustomed to functioning in today’s online world that they can’t readily initiate and sustain conversations with real people. Mastering verbal communication skills is key to getting hired, to being a good instructor, to building business, and to advancing your career. If you can present your ideas clearly and effectively to others, you’ll be in high demand. Not as sharp as you’d like, in that regard? Then take a speech course, or join your local chapter of the terrific Toastmasters, International. It may take some time and effort, but polishing your speaking and presentation skills will accelerate your progress all the way up the career ladder.

Now for the third item on the employability list, contacts. Anyone who has read my books knows I’m a fanatic on networking. That’s because knowing people inside your target companies, and good referrals are worth their weight in gold to a job-hunting pilot. Think about it. Who gets the job, a flight instructor nobody’s ever heard of with a thick logbook? Or a sharp new CFI who knows the chief flight instructor? Like it or not, just about anyone would rather hire the known quantity, and that’s why you should start as early as possible getting to know the folks at your preferred employers.

Still in training for your CFI? Start making contacts now, because beginning your search early tremendously reduces the pain of getting your first aviation job. Research flight schools in the area where you plan to work, identify several good employers, and get to know people at each of them. In today’s market, it’s only a matter of time until each of them needs to hire more CFIs, and by knowing someone there you’re on the inside track for a job.

One can also make valuable job contacts through part-time and summer aviation jobs. Go after a counter or line position while you’re finishing up your flight training. That effort fits right in with the job hunting you’ll need to do with CFI certificate in hand. Not only will you make career contacts while pursuing and working part-time positions, but you’ll improve your personal communications skills and gain valuable interviewing experience.

Before we leave the topic of contacts and referrals, remember that a first class performance on your CFI Practical Test can lead to opportunity in itself. CFI examiners and inspectors are usually glad to spread the word about CFIs who impress them.