Flight school funded CPL and CFI

Caramon13

Caramon13

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Romeo
Anyone ever heard of any flight schools ponying up the cash to pay someone to finish up a CPL and get their CFI and then having said person pay off said debt through instruction?

I've heard of CFI's being offered upgrades like MEI or CFII to stay on and instruct.

Let's say I'm a PPL with most all of the hours for my CPL done, just need the complex time (6 hours) the written and the checkride and I'm done. After that it's onto CFI.

That's not a lot of cash, maybe what, 5K-6K (ish)? Would there be any incentive to a flight school to just pay for that training and have you work it off (like a loan)?

I've been tossing around the concept and yeah I know, there's probably 9000 CFI's looking for work right now so why would they do it, but I'm just curious if that sort of bartering would still work or has anywhere..
 
I've heard of a school covering a II or MEI add on, but never heard of one offering to do a initial CFI, let alone finish a CPL, shy of maybe being family or the schools owner or something.
 
That would be too much risk for most FBOs ,what prevents you from ,moving on after you get the ratings. Once you get your CFI most FBOs will get you your mei .
 
Uh...no. You might get some flight time for working the line but I'm pretty sure there are no indentured servant opportunities that actually result in additional ratings.
 
frfly172 said:
That would be too much risk for most FBOs ,what prevents you from ,moving on after you get the ratings. Once you get your CFI most FBOs will get you your mei .
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Right, but if you made it formal instead of an informal thing it could be enforceable. We'll pay, you'll work for XX months to pay us back OR, if you leave you owe us XXXX dollars at the time you leave.

I'm oversimplifying of course.
 
Brad Z said:
Uh...no. You might get some flight time for working the line but I'm pretty sure there are no indentured servant opportunities that actually result in additional ratings.
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Think again...

http://www.sierraacademy.com/

This is the closest deal I've heard of. They will accept you under contract if you show up with your commercial ratings completed and get you your instructor ratings. In return you have to instruct for them for a year or 1000 hours.

A former student of mine is there going through the process right now. He's still working on his initial CFI rating then will start teaching afterward. So far his comments are positive but he hasn't been instructing there yet.
 
Yeah, but you have to live in Atwater for a year.

That airport is a cool place to visit, but that flight school is REAL busy and is full of international students with not-so-great English skills.
 
It doesn't sound like a smart move for the flight school. Not you in particular, but a private pilot in general, not a CFI yet, there's no guarantee that they would want said pilot after becoming a CFI. Unless the only requirement for employment is to have the certificate. I would want to see what kind of CFI someone was before hiring them. But that's just me.
 
MAKG1 said:
Yeah, but you have to live in Atwater for a year.

That airport is a cool place to visit, but that flight school is REAL busy and is full of international students with not-so-great English skills.
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No dispute there, I'm just posting to say that the hypothetical situation the OP proposed does exist.

From the sound of things, they'll hire just about any commercial rated pilot on the spot. They must be having a hard time keeping CFIs on staff (no surprise there). I believe the reason Sierra offers this CFI program is because they are so busy with contracted international students, which they know will be there from beginning to end, that they can afford to take a bit of a risk on speinding some money and turning someone into an instructor.
 
mondtster said:
No dispute there, I'm just posting to say that the hypothetical situation the OP proposed does exist.

From the sound of things, they'll hire just about any commercial rated pilot on the spot. They must be having a hard time keeping CFIs on staff (no surprise there). I believe the reason Sierra offers this CFI program is because they are so busy with contracted international students, which they know will be there from beginning to end, that they can afford to take a bit of a risk on speinding some money and turning someone into an instructor.
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Does not sound like good training, sounds more like fast food style instruction.

There is a place called something like IFTA in CA who works with Japanese students, they are selective of their CFIs, don't have many openings and pay quite well, they also require more of their instructors than a CPL and the ability to fog a mirror.



This slave labor for ratings thing is like the same scheme Europe uses, let's not turn our air system into a euro nightmare.

Some euro stuff is great, fashion, cuisine, yeah, flying and socialist stuff not so much.
 
I've heard of schools paying for the II and MEI but not Commercial. I'm sure if you have a good relationship with the school and plan to work there after you get your CFI they can work out a deal. I know several students at the school I teach at who got their CFI and then the owner just took like $100 out of their paycheck every week to pay back the balance.
 
I've never heard of that. Don't make the cut then what good are you to them? Then they have to pay legal fees to get their money out of you so they are actually losing money.
 
Gucci Pilot said:
I've never heard of that. Don't make the cut then what good are you to them? Then they have to pay legal fees to get their money out of you so they are actually losing money.
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Yeah, I suppose that's always a risk. The other route I was thinking of was bartering or trading professional services for flight time. I've found that a lot of these schools put almost laser-like focus on flight training and instructor credentials (as they should), but then forget about the basic stuff:

Website updating
Computer maintenance
Marketing/Advertising
and the list goes on and on...

I've been at more than a few FBO's where the leather chairs are comfortable and the coffee/water is plentiful, but the computers are so virus-ridden that you can't even find an internet browser that doesn't have 80192380 toolbars and ad's from malware.
 
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