Instructor leaving :(

So glad my CFI has zero desire to fly for the big boys. He is salaried with a charter company and teaches on the side. Granted it can get annoying if a last minute charter causes changes to my plans, but I know he has no plans on leaving.
 
James331 said:
You should find it offensive, my comments were directed at folks like you.

You clear your students before you go, they are your charge, you show them the way, you don't desert them.
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I had my first instructor leave shortly after I soloed. He got a better job. I wasn't happy to see him go. I really enjoyed flying with him, but at the end of the day, he has his life to live and I have mine. He made a decision about what was best for him and his career, and I completely respected that, in fact, I wished him well, and I still stay in touch with him now.

Aviation is a cut throat business. It ebbs and flows with the broader economy. That is the reality of the situation. If someone gets a better opportunity, I would expect them to take it.
 
I had 4 different instructors before I finally finished. The last one I really bonded with, but I like them all really.
 
It's also a small industry, being known as someone who does right means a lot.

I've known folks who got jobs and didn't get jobs based on their rep. With things becomming more and more corporate and HR types, the less desirable types will find it easier to get jobs, screw over a bunch of your students and as a d1ck bag, well as long as HR can check the right boxes you're still in.
 
To the OP: I had to change instructors twice during my PPL training. The first time was just after my first solo and it was a judgment call on my part, I didn't feel that the only airplane my first CFI had reliable access to was being maintained well enough for me to trust it (and it later turned out that the owner of the pilot store/flight school had stolen the thing from a deceased pilot's estate). My second CFI (different flight school) was fired because of some argument with the owner just before I began doing checkride prep and I had to finish up with a very young and very inexperienced CFI who I really didn't much respect. That was the toughest transition since the second instructor was a really great teacher and a very experienced pilot with acro experience who wasn't afraid to give me some spin training as well as some time in hard IMC.

During my instrument training I fired my first CFII for promising to find me a DPE before my written expired and then failing to deliver (it's a long story why it wasn't a trivial task), so I had to finish up with another instructor who turned out to be in some ways even better, so that wasn't a bad move either.

You'll fly with many instructors during your flying years so it's best to get used to it as early as possible. Change is never easy, you get used to someone's style and like them, think they're the greatest (I know I really liked my first instructor, still do and would recommend him to anyone), and then they're not there anymore and you have to adjust to someone new, with a different teaching style and set of skills. Such is life! It isn't pleasant, but except for my finish-up PPL instructor (and admittedly, someone where I fly now who hasn't tried to teach me anything) I've learned something from every instructor I've flown with. I don't like every one of them equally, but I've learned something from (almost) every one of them. I predict you will, too.
 
James331 said:
With things becomming more and more corporate and HR types, the less desirable types will find it easier to get jobs, screw over a bunch of your students and as a d1ck bag, well as long as HR can check the right boxes you're still in.
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James James James! You're just so wrong about this. You're just wrong. How about other industries? How about an employer who lays you off so he can hire someone he knows? All industries experience this, not jus flight instruction.
 
mscard88 said:
It really doesn't take a new CFI long to see where a student is at in his/her flying.
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So true. I've "adopted" many students and usually have a good assessment of where they're at in the first hour.
 
James331 said:
It's also a small industry, being known as someone who does right means a lot.

I've known folks who got jobs and didn't get jobs based on their rep.
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So have I...and the the only way they didn't get a job based on their rep for leaving instructing was when they just didn't show up for work one day. Every one I've known who gave proper notice and got their students lined up with other instructors were fine.
 
James331 said:
lol you know that what I said is somewhat true otherwise it wouldn't have effected your ego soo much that you couldn't mentally bear to see what I write.

I do what I say I'm going to do and believe in honor and loyalty.
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Maybe you should change your display name to Honorable and Loyal James, then you wouldn't have to condescend to explaining how honorable and loyal you are.
 
Come on James you can't say we're dishonest. As soon as I was given a CJO I gave my boss, Chief CFI and students (in that order) a phone call. I even declined a later flight so I could get home a day early from the interview to fly with students. When I got back I told my boss, Chief CFI and students I was leaving because I wanted them to tell them in person even though I already called them. I gave them 2 months notice when I could have easily have them the standard two weeks. I made myself available on all the major holidays even though the flight school was closed. I made myself available at 4am 3 times a week to fly with a guy before he went to work. I picked and dropped off my student at the train station because I wanted him to fly and not miss out. I canceled countless prior commitments to fly with my students. My "lunch break" consisted of scarfing down a sandwich in between lessons while my student pre flighted. I made myself available 6.5 days a week. Sunday's I would take half a day because I'd go to church in the morning then race over to the airport. I was always the first instructor in and the last one out. I'd say I was pretty loyal and honest to my students
 
MauleSkinner said:
So have I...and the the only way they didn't get a job based on their rep for leaving instructing was when they just didn't show up for work one day. Every one I've known who gave proper notice and got their students lined up with other instructors were fine.
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As long as you give people notice, there should be no reason to feel bad about leaving a job. Things happen all the time. People move. People have families. Interests change. People come into money. People lose money. People run out of money. People get married. Basically, life just happens.

If a CFI waited for every student to finish before he moved on to something else, he'd never stop instructing. If I was an instructor and had a better opportunity come up, I'd give a reasonable notice period, let my boss and students know, and then move on to my next adventure.

I know it's not exactly the same, but I have been working as an Aerospace Engineer for almost 11 years now. About two years after graduating, I got a much better offer from a different company in town. I thought I would be 'extra' reasonable and gave my boss a five week notice that I was leaving the company. It was absolutely horrible. After one week of transitioning all of my projects off to other engineers, I spent the next four weeks surfing the internet in my cubicle. No one wanted to give me anything to do because I was about to leave.

As much as we all want to think we are irreplaceable, we are all completely replaceable in our jobs. Be professional, give a proper and reasonable notice (two weeks is usually good), then move on to the next job. There is no dishonor in this. We can't all be expected never change anything in our lives so that people around us never have to deal with us changing.
 
You don't have to stick around forever, but once you know you're leaving telling your guys that you're on your way out and if they want to finish up with you, they got a month or so, that's fair, no where did I say stick around for something crazy like a year to get some once a monther done, or to finish up some student you only went on two flights with.
 
James331 said:
You don't have to stick around forever, but once you know you're leaving telling your guys that you're on your way out and if they want to finish up with you, they got a month or so, that's fair, no where did I say stick around for something crazy like a year to get some once a monther done, or to finish up some student you only went on two flights with.
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I did that before I left my last instructing gig for a 135 job. But, it was easy to get my two remaining late stage guys done in a couple weeks because I was working at a pilot factory that did accelerated training for international students who flew every day. The same can't be said for when I left my job before that teaching all Part 61 students who had full-time jobs and couldn't fly more than once per week (not to mention that the work was drying up for me and was always inconsistent...I had to leave if I wanted to pay my bills). I had one guy who was close to finishing his Private (he had been ready on the flying front for months, but was very slow in studying for his written) that I handed off to the owner of the school and once he took his written, he was signed off after only two flights after I left.
 
mscard88 said:
I understand where James is coming from. It's ideal to finish up a student, if you can. When I got hired at the airlines, I was able to finish up everyone but 2 or 3, and they didn't have any trouble going with another CFI and finish. One of them is at Amer Airlines and flies F16s in the ANG. But realty is most CFIs, especially younger ones, are building time so they can move on to a career, and most CFI jobs are not a career. I also understand it's frustrating for a student to have to change CFIs, especially if it's more than once. But as long as the previous CFI smoothly transitions the student to the next CFI there should not be a problem. It really doesn't take a new CFI long to see where a student is at in his/her flying.
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I was able to do the same thing. I only handed off 3 students and all were satisfied with the process. I can also see merit in judging the way some instructors handle unfinished students. But you see James is saying that no matter what you do if you leave a student before a check ride that makes you a bad, unprofessional and amoral pilot in his opinion. His posts show a kind of arrogance and egotism that I don't particularly appreciate. Just wanted to clear up why he gets the big ignore from me. He can disagree with me. But he doesn't get to displace his egotistical moral equivalence on me. What an asshat
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I was able to do the same thing. I only handed off 3 students and all were satisfied with the process. I can also see merit in judging the way some instructors handle unfinished students. But you see James is saying that no matter what you do if you leave a student before a check ride that makes you a bad, unprofessional and amoral pilot in his opinion. His posts show a kind of arrogance and egotism that I don't particularly appreciate. Just wanted to clear up why he gets the big ignore from me. He can disagree with me. But he doesn't get to displace his egotistical moral equivalence on me. What an asshat
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On the plus side, James wouldn't have a problem if you sat around and smoked pot while waiting for your students to finish up! :D (See pot thread.)
 
The whole thread seems petty once you've seen a flight school scramble to help students who are both freaked out and minus an instructor, because the instructor killed themselves in an airplane, doing stupid aerobatic things low-level, overloaded, in an experimental of perhaps questionable quality for such things, with an old buddy, who also died, after they ripped the wings off of it trying to pull out of the dive.

Seen it. Wasn't pretty.

Therefore, I couldn't care less if an instructor gives notice and hops on off to the airlines or charter or what-not.

That's a piece of cake to figure out compared to what I saw grieving friends and a club owner deal with once, long long ago. Know how many students want to come back to the airport after a well liked instructor plows himself a few feet into the ground at the bottom of a poorly planned and ill-advised loop in an overloaded and over stressed airplane?

And then there was the flight club owner who OD'd in the apartment above his slight school one night... And nobody knew where he was for a few days. And then the sign was hung up that the club was closed, and it didn't re-open for a long time.

Yeah... pretty sure a CFI leaving to go fly somewhere else isn't even close to the real world bad stuff that can happen to slow up a student... just going from memory, here.

Of course everyone knew about the crash. To this day, not many folks know about the OD. They just found the flight club closed and never heard why. Hopefully they hadn't bought any block time...
 
Were I the student, I'd hope that I'd be happy my instructor had achieved what he'd been working for, and look at it as an opportunity for me to learn something new.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I was able to do the same thing. I only handed off 3 students and all were satisfied with the process. I can also see merit in judging the way some instructors handle unfinished students. But you see James is saying that no matter what you do if you leave a student before a check ride that makes you a bad, unprofessional and amoral pilot in his opinion. His posts show a kind of arrogance and egotism that I don't particularly appreciate. Just wanted to clear up why he gets the big ignore from me. He can disagree with me. But he doesn't get to displace his egotistical moral equivalence on me. What an asshat
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Take another read on the last few posts that I made, I don't think you're smelling what I'm stepping in here. Of course you won't because your fragile ego decided to block me, and yet opine on what I say, which in it self is amusing being you can't see what I have to say. Other people's kids eh?



LDJones said:
On the plus side, James wouldn't have a problem if you sat around and smoked pot while waiting for your students to finish up! :D (See pot thread.)
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Lol, no I wouldn't, if you're taking care of work and you're not showing up under the influence of whatever, it's not only none of anyone's business, but I really have little interest in your personal life, as long as it stays in your personal life and doesn't cross over into what I'm paying you for.
 
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I flew with 3 different instructors to get my SEL, two were retired military and passing time until they found a better gig the other was working toward the regionals. I knew that up front and its no big deal. You learn a little bit of new stuff from each of them and keep going. To get my glider I flew with probably 4 or 5 different instructors (club setting) and learned a little bit from each of them as well. Be flexible and see it as a learning experience. Plus, isn't it nice when multiple instructors tell you you're doing good?
 
I was about 2-3 weeks away from my PPL checkride when my initial instructor left. My new instructor at the time turned out to be my favorite instructor though. He prepped me for the checkride and then continued to train my into instrument. So it all worked out!
 
I had 3 CFI's leave for regionals. My last one did it right, gave me plenty of notice (like 2 months), but I was getting close to finishing anyway, so no biggie, and I actually finished about 2 weeks before he left. But the prior two did not do it right. With one of them, I got a call from the school 2 days before my scheduled flight with him informing me that he had quit and to book with another CFI. The other one was even worse. I was driving to the airport for my flight when the school called saying if I want to fly with another CFI or cancel. Neither one ever personally spoke to me about it. Just bad form.
 
OP, I had the same experience. Left for a month long internship at ~15hrs and my CFI had heart issues during the trip. When I came back he still hadn't gotten his SI so I finished up with another instructor. No issues and flying with different people in different airplanes was actually helpful.

Don't worry. You'll do fine.
 
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