Would you pay more for better instruction?

[SkyHog]

I agree with rob! on all but one point:

I'm not lazy (I'm fat...not lazy), and I didn't know what a wingspar is because I don't care. Same with longerons.

I ask all pilots here: How many rivets does your plane have? I mean exact number? Don't know? Well - its a piece of the plane, how could you not know??

 

[tonycondon]

my plane has zero, exactly

 

[Tim]

Would you pay more for better maintenance? a better hamburger?

 

[Arnold]

As far as a decent living..... Where is $30.00/ hour not a liveable wage?
I know people, with families that live on less than half of that, in one of the most expensive states in the nation.



No, ............you want 100K+/year??
Go to medical/law school for four years,
work for peanuts for another five or six years, and maybe.......
if you're good........................................
................become a Senator, or a Surgeon.

A Future CFI[/quote]


Geesh, I saw something in another thread bemoaning the state of flight instruction, posted an alternative and you go and get all unglued.

Chill!!!! it was a poll, it was an example of the analysis I did FIFTEEN years ago. The $ figure does not matter its the principle I am interested in. I have no intention of returning to flight intructing and your little personal attack was unwarranted.

 

[tonycondon]

i wish i ended up making an hour for what i actually charged. out of 25 bucks an hour the FBO takes half for insurance, then of course I spend at least 2 hours at the airport for every hour i fly. sometimes i think i really need to be more of a hardass on billing but i guess i try to be a nice guy and keep it as affordable as i can for the student too.

 

[bobloblaw310]

There are a few ways to find a good instructor. Reputation! Ask people around the airport who the best instructor is, not the most popular, but the best. Ask students why they chose the CFI they are with. Ask the designated pilot examiner in the area if he was going to take lessons at the school you plan to attend, who would he pick to teach him and why.

Don't rule out the new young instructor. The old and experienced CFI had to start as a new CFI. The new instructor has concepts that are fresh, and he is eager to teach you these concepts. You and the new instructor will learn together.

Time builders! I hate that name. I feel a CFI should be able to log PIC because someone has to be responsible for the flight. The airlines love the fact that you have experience of being responsible for the safe completion of a flight. This will not, and should not change. The problem with the "timebuilder" is he is getting tired of the weather or student's schedules dictating how much money he makes. As you know most CFI's don't get paid very well even though the responsibility is great. The high time CFI should not take it out on students. He should take pride in the job he is currently doing. I know I do! I take great pleasure when a student gets the concepts of landing, when he solos, when he completes training.

As far as pay goes. The flight school I work at sets the pay rate. We charge $49.00 per hour of instruction. I get the larger portion of the rate which is $31.00 per hour. I have been there for 11 months and started at $18.00 per hour and reached my current rate after 6 months. I gave my students the best instruction I could give regardless of my pay rate. For me its a pride issue.

 

[tonycondon]

im proud of my students and my instruction too, which is why i do it. it certainly isnt to get rich. I enjoy instructing and will continue to do it as long as i do.

 

[Bill]

As far as a decent living..... Where is $30.00/ hour not a liveable wage?
I know people, with families that live on less than half of that, in one of the most expensive states in the nation.

$30/hr is a livable wage IF you work 40/wk. How many CFI's actually bill 40hrs/wk?

 

[Bill]

Would you pay more for better maintenance? a better hamburger?

I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Oh wait, today is Tuesday...(grumble grumble)

 

[Ed Guthrie]

I don't know if I agree. Since the flying jobs up the food chain seem to accept PIC/"dual given" time as valuable experience they might continue to accept "dual given" in addition to PIC time for instructors if "dual given" was no longer included in the PIC column. What makes you think the behavior of the folks doing the hiring would change in terms of what they'd accept as "experience"?

Simply because they need an ATP certificate, or atleast a prayer of reaching an ATP certificate quickly after being hired. Remove the PIC time logging by a CFI and the ATP certificate moves out of reach, too.

 

[RogerT]

II'll definitely have more than 80 because I've farted around for 3.5 years now... ..

Farted? or farded?

;-)

 

[tonycondon]

Fact is that these "time building" CFIs are the backbone of most of the training done. While there are a few bad apples, most of them that I know still care about the instruction they are giving. Yes there are a few who frankly dont give a damn and thats too bad but we cant change it. Point is if you remove the log PIC rule, ALL of them, the ones who care and the ones who dont will find other stuff to do, like work at McDonalds or something, and then who is going to teach people to fly?

Its an interesting question, ive been asking myself lately, if I couldnt log it as PIC, would I keep instructing. I think i'd be OK with a modified version, saying that if I wasnt the legal PIC, then I couldnt log it. But if Im going to get into a plane with a fresh student on his first lesson, Im responsible for the safe outcome of the flight and oughtta be able to log it as such.

Problem is Ed, there just arent enough guys like you out there instructing full time.

 

[Anthony]

Farted? or farded?

;-)

Ha ha! Both! I don't care who you are, that's funny, even if you did sell a Tiger for a Warrior.

 

[grattonja]

As far as a decent living..... Where is $30.00/ hour not a liveable wage?
I know people, with families that live on less than half of that, in one of the most expensive states in the nation.

Where I have trained, they charge almost 30 per hour for the CFI, and the CFI gets 15 of that. And the CFI has to FLY or INSTRUCT to get that $. They aren't paid to sit around and drink coffee, waiting for someone to come in.

Here in PA, in the winter when training is, I swear, limited to my wife and I flying, those kids depending on flying to eat find that their belly buttons come pretty close to pressing on their spines. Among the many things that we have done to alleviate the CFI money blues, include stocking the candy dish at S37, and bringing in burger patties and buns for the barbecue in the summer, to feed those guys.

I'd gladly pay more $ for quality instruction.

Jim G

 

[tonycondon]

believe me, your CFI appreciates you stocking that candy dish!

 

[gismo]

I agree with rob! on all but one point:

I'm not lazy (I'm fat...not lazy), and I didn't know what a wingspar is because I don't care. Same with longerons.

I ask all pilots here: How many rivets does your plane have? I mean exact number? Don't know? Well - its a piece of the plane, how could you not know??

I can tell you the exact number on the Porterfield, but I haven't a clue how many are on my Baron. I agree that knowing what a wing spar is (or even how many your plane has) isn't required to be a good pilot, but I do see it as a good characteristic of any pilot to strive to learn things about aviation and airplanes that aren't "required". That said, for every pilot that doesn't know what a wing spar is, there's probably another pilot who doesn't know some other interesting but trivial bit of aircraft knowledge that the first pilot (who lacks spar knowledge) has learned. Probably more important would be information that directly relates to being able to control an airplane better. I'll bet that Tom Downey knows more about the construction of his Fairchild than Bob Hoover knew about his Shrike, but (with no offense to Tom intended) I'd put a lot of money into a bet on Bob's flying skills exceeding Tom's. So who's the better pilot of the two?

 

[silver-eagle]

I think I got terrific training. Each one of my instructors added to my overall knowlege. As one put it to me, "We can't teach everything you MIGHT see, but we will teach everything you need. "
As I recall, the price per hour was $35 (now $45). How much of that the instructor actually gets is unknown to me but I doubt it's all of it. And as one person mentioned, there are days they spend all day at the airport without flying. No flying, no money. Most of my instructors did not have second jobs. How could they live on that?

 

[Ed Guthrie]

Problem is Ed, there just arent enough guys like you out there instructing full time.

I suspect that if we dropped the CFI supply so that salaries pushed upwards toward ~$60/hour that we would all be surprised at how many old time pilot/CFIs would climb out of the woodwork--and I think the flight world would be better for it.

 

[GaryO]

I suspect that if we dropped the CFI supply so that salaries pushed upwards toward ~$60/hour that we would all be surprised at how many old time pilot/CFIs would climb out of the woodwork--and I think the flight world would be better for it.

I agree. My primary instructor has to quit instructing and put more time in his "real" job so he could make a living. I believe that he would prefer to instruct if it would pay more.

 

[rcaligan]

Let me ask this question then:

What if we did restrict CFI requirements to those who only had 1500 hours PIC time? Would it matter how those hours were obtained?

 

[kthompson2k]

I have only flown with four instructors.
#1) beginning instructor who left me in the 1st weeks of training for an airline job
#2) Tons of hours professional instructor, not as strict or by the book as some but I feel has taught me well. Likes to practice things outside of the normal student envelope, charges $20.00 an hour more than "cheap instructors"...Worth every penny, he does almost all of my real training and am working my IFR rating with him.
#3) Check out instructor for a rental company here at Addison, was kind of a joke.
#4) Club check out instructor, very good instructor, cheapest of the bunch but I assume he does it for the fun not for a living, if I was not already 1/2 way with my IFR I would change to this instructor, he seemed to enjoy causing challenging situations for me to fix.

KT

 

[tdager]

The reality of it is that most of us are already sacrificing a LOT to fly. As many have stated in other threads, flying is not only for the "rich" and many of us get angry when that is said, simply because we know we DO sacrifice a lot to fly.

So now we want to make the flying pool smaller by charging even more just to get your "license to learn"?

Yeah, right, that will work.

My instructor is a young lady that has been teaching for over two years...and I was her first "zero to finish" student. Her first.

Why? Many reasons, none of which I believe are because of her. Basically though it really came down to two factors: time and money.

Very few other endeavors require such a large up-front cost in both time and money. The wife and I make over 100K a year and have few bills, and even then it placed a large strain on us financially for me to get my license (especially since I knew, and my wife knew, that to save money I had to work on getting it done in a shorter amount of time and not a longer one, thus I did it in six months).

To actually enjoy the benefits of what flying opens up (the trips to family and friends on the weekends) then I am going to have to purchase a plane. Renting one for a two-to-three day trip is VERY expensive (three -hour per day charge minimums), if I can even get a plane for that time.

Again...I am a realist. Flying is expensive, but if it gets any more expensive there will be a major decline in participation by the public. Heck that was the whole reason behind the Light Sport rule (though in reality it is not working out quite as planned).

I just do not see a way to change the way the system works without severely impacting the ability for "normal Joes" to be involved. Rease the CFI rate and watch new pilot starts tumble.

 

[Areeda]

I've really enjoyed this thread. I notice a couple of things:

It seams the more experience people have the more they are willing to pay for quality instruction. Perhaps those of us who have seen and paid for everything from very good to **** poor instruction would do anything to avoid the latter.

It is unfortunate that the price of the instructor is not a very good indicator of how good the instructor is, rather it seems to correspond to how good we think we are and the market we operate in. I've met some very good instructors who have little time in their logbook and charge low rates. I've flown with some very expensive instructors who ..well.. aren't worth the extra money.

As I've gone through a few ratings I've come to believe that the overall cost to get to the skill and knowledge level I demand depends on the equipment that I fly and the effectiveness of the instructor. The cost of the instructor is almost inconsequential compared to the number of hours of equipment rental. For every hour of dual I've had from a PoS 172 to a T-28 to a JetRanger the aircraft was significantly more per hour than the instructor.

These days when I look for an instructor I go by their reputation (talk to people who've flown with them), a trial lesson to talk and fly with them and my feeling on how well we will work together. I will fly with at least 2 before I start. The price of the equiment and instructor does enter the equation but as I said the deciding factor is the estimate of how effective the training will be which determines how long it will take.

Joe

 

[Arnold]

I've really enjoyed this thread. I notice a couple of things:

It seams the more experience people have the more they are willing to pay for quality instruction. Perhaps those of us who have seen and paid for everything from very good to **** poor instruction would do anything to avoid the latter.

It is unfortunate that the price of the instructor is not a very good indicator of how good the instructor is, rather it seems to correspond to how good we think we are and the market we operate in. I've met some very good instructors who have little time in their logbook and charge low rates. I've flown with some very expensive instructors who ..well.. aren't worth the extra money.

Joe

Ineresting observations. There seems to be a correlation to age. Older pilots more willing to pay for instruction than younger ones. This could be a financial thing or perhaps the realization that we are only mortal that comes as we age.

 

[tdager]

Ineresting observations. There seems to be a correlation to age. Older pilots more willing to pay for instruction than younger ones. This could be a financial thing or perhaps the realization that we are only mortal that comes as we age.

I think it is a combination of both. The feeling that the best teaching is worth the price (sometimes) and having the finances to actualy afford such training.

 

[Capt Kirk]

Professional costs $70.00/hour

Arnold,

I voted yes but it won't work. Even at $70 per hour you can't earn enough to support the middle class life style you describe. Not as a sole CFI with no other revenue generators for the business.

At a busy school the average full time CFI that hustles might fly 1,000 hours a year. If I add another 250 hours of ground school the gross is $87,500. It is all down hill from there.

You are going to be an independent so you need some instructor flight insurance, that is going to run you a few thousand (if you can get it and you have to have it 'cause you've got assets - the nice house in the good school district).

You have a family so you need medical insurance, with kids and in the age bracket for having kids figure at least 10K (probably more unless you can find a group plan - might be hard since there is no CFI union). You could go with the new High Deductable Health Care Plan which wuold be cheaper but you have to be prepard for the chance that you'll need to pay for the first $5K or so of medical expenses each year.

You really should put something away in a retirement plan and you have to pay your taxes. There is also the mortgage, heat, electric, food and all that stuff.

If you are charging that much for ground school you need at least a small office with a training room for your class. A telephone (at least an hour of flight time a month). A computer (internet connection is another hour of flight time a month). A copier and other various office stuff including some nice furniture (need to keep up the professional appeal).

A simiulator of some sort would be nice (might let you generate some revenue when the weather is bad too). You need teaching materials, marketing materials (you have to explain to prospects why you are worth twice what the other FAA certified flight instructor gets).

It is also a service industry...so you have to be available when your clients are off from work. That means Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays.

Of course when the weather is nice you'll need to fly more to make up for when the weather is bad so there is no time to cut the grass, trim the bushes, paint the whatever needs painting this year. Forget about vacations 'cause when school is out for the kids its summer and people want to fly, beside you wouldn't be able to aford it.

That said...I've flow with some really good, young, flight instructors that knew their stuff. Sure they were looking to build hours to move on to the next job but I think they also liked instructing. Of the CFIs and CFIIs I'm thinking about they all had attended aviation college programs. I think that really gave them the knowledge and the ability to pass it along.

Len

 

[Chache]

As far as a decent living..... Where is $30.00/ hour not a liveable wage?
I know people, with families that live on less than half of that, in one of the most expensive states in the nation.



No, ............you want 100K+/year??
Go to medical/law school for four years,
work for peanuts for another five or six years, and maybe.......
if you're good........................................
................become a Senator, or a Surgeon.

A Future CFI


Geesh, I saw something in another thread bemoaning the state of flight instruction, posted an alternative and you go and get all unglued.

Chill!!!! it was a poll, it was an example of the analysis I did FIFTEEN years ago. The $ figure does not matter its the principle I am interested in. I have no intention of returning to flight intructing and your little personal attack was unwarranted.

Ummm.... Sorry, Not "Unglued !!" No need to chill.

If you expected the poll to NOT elicit peoples comments, you might have stated so.

No matter what the dollar figure, the principle remains the same. 40 years ago, I paid, $15.00/hr and the rental was $25. But (average) people weren't making $50,000/year.

$10,000.00/yr, ($200.00/wk) was considered "doing VERY well"
so the amount was "exhorbitant" for that time too. A brand new Ford Mustang, Cobra, or Chevy Super Sport was being sold for under $5K.
A PIckup, could be purchased for $2K. A nice house could be had for Fifteen thousand.

The only thing that has changed, are the $ numbers.

 

[Henning]

The reality of it is that most of us are already sacrificing a LOT to fly. As many have stated in other threads, flying is not only for the "rich" and many of us get angry when that is said, simply because we know we DO sacrifice a lot to fly.

I just do not see a way to change the way the system works without severely impacting the ability for "normal Joes" to be involved. Raise the CFI rate and watch new pilot starts tumble.

The CFI cost is only a small fraction of your costs in aviation. If it strains you now, it will only get worse.

What's been interesting in this thread is that those with little experience put a small value on instruction, while those with more experience put a higher value there, and the key difference is experience. As one gains experience, more things happen. Those of us who have faced our mortality in the cockpit up close and really personally and come out the far end in tact, we've had the opportunity to view our training in retrospect and realize that the path through was lit by the instructors we had and their own experiences that they passed on to us. The sad thing is, there are many who didn't come out of the tunnel and we can only guess at what they were thinking, because they'll never be able to tell.

When I speak of instruction, I don't mean written test stuff, heck, I did all that myself as well, that's easy. I don't mean control manipulation either, that's easy as well. In reality, if you're halfway sharp, it wouldn't be that difficult to teach yourself in a 152 from a book, me and my friend did in Eipper Quicksilvers when we were teenagers. What I'm talking about is decision making and observational abilities. It's about foresight and what to look for and notice. The problem is that to develope foresight, you pretty much need hind sight. There's basically only two ways to get that, through surviving your own experiences, or learning from experiences that others have survived. Any animal can do the former, the later is what sets humans apart. I've had the great fortune to have some excellent instructors with probably half a million hours between them, and have flown many miles with other very high time pilots. I have also had low time instructors who were very good at what they did. They could teach you how to fly a plane and pass the test with flying colors. They could teach you what you could and couldn't do. What they weren't really able to get across though was what you should and shouldn't do, because only experience teaches that. It's not the black and white that kills us because we can see the line. It's the grey that sucks us in because we can't see far enough to see the outcome until we reach the other side.

Would an extra $15 hr instruction fee really be a greater burden on your wife and family than your funeral?

Aviation is not about pilot numbers. Aviation is about getting a job done safely.

 

[rcaligan]

I posted the following on the red board and thought I'd post it here, too. Maybe it's a solution for the 250 hour CFIs:

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/730-full.html#193499

Sidenote: I think it was Tom who said that LSA training wasn't working out. The quickest way for a profitable FBO to become unprofitable is by renting airplanes. Insurance costs simply eat you alive. Sad, but true.

 

[Arnold]

Arnold,

I voted yes but it won't work. Even at $70 per hour you can't earn enough to support the middle class life style you describe. Not as a sole CFI with no other revenue generators for the business.

At a busy school the average full time CFI that hustles might fly 1,000 hours a year. If I add another 250 hours of ground school the gross is $87,500. It is all down hill from there.

You are going to be an independent so you need some instructor flight insurance, that is going to run you a few thousand (if you can get it and you have to have it 'cause you've got assets - the nice house in the good school district).

You have a family so you need medical insurance, with kids and in the age bracket for having kids figure at least 10K (probably more unless you can find a group plan - might be hard since there is no CFI union). You could go with the new High Deductable Health Care Plan which wuold be cheaper but you have to be prepard for the chance that you'll need to pay for the first $5K or so of medical expenses each year.

You really should put something away in a retirement plan and you have to pay your taxes. There is also the mortgage, heat, electric, food and all that stuff.

If you are charging that much for ground school you need at least a small office with a training room for your class. A telephone (at least an hour of flight time a month). A computer (internet connection is another hour of flight time a month). A copier and other various office stuff including some nice furniture (need to keep up the professional appeal).

A simiulator of some sort would be nice (might let you generate some revenue when the weather is bad too). You need teaching materials, marketing materials (you have to explain to prospects why you are worth twice what the other FAA certified flight instructor gets).

It is also a service industry...so you have to be available when your clients are off from work. That means Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays.

Of course when the weather is nice you'll need to fly more to make up for when the weather is bad so there is no time to cut the grass, trim the bushes, paint the whatever needs painting this year. Forget about vacations 'cause when school is out for the kids its summer and people want to fly, beside you wouldn't be able to aford it.

That said...I've flow with some really good, young, flight instructors that knew their stuff. Sure they were looking to build hours to move on to the next job but I think they also liked instructing. Of the CFIs and CFIIs I'm thinking about they all had attended aviation college programs. I think that really gave them the knowledge and the ability to pass it along.

Len

Thanks Len,

As I mentioned in another post, I did the analysis 15 years ago and determined then that it was not possible. I have no desire to return to flight instructing as I can do much better financially with what I am doing now and afford to fly for fun and more importantly want to.

I really wanted to get an idea of the sentiment of the group.

Thanks for taking the time to do the analysis, I think it is spot on.

Arnold

 

[Arnold]

I posted the following on the red board and thought I'd post it here, too. Maybe it's a solution for the 250 hour CFIs:

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/730-full.html#193499

Sidenote: I think it was Tom who said that LSA training wasn't working out. The quickest way for a profitable FBO to become unprofitable is by renting airplanes. Insurance costs simply eat you alive. Sad, but true.

see: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20061500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2006/janqtr/14cfr121.437.htm

there is no equivalent U.S. magic number for the f/o position. It is simply the requirements of the carrier so long as the individual has the commercial/instrument in the appropriate category and class.

So the only reasons they don't allow 250 hr pilots in the right seat are a)insurance and b) self imposed reasons such as limiting the pool of applicants.

 

[tdager]

Henning...the problem is geographic differences in flight training prices.

An increase to $70 an hour is NOT a $15 dollar increase for me. It is a $40 dollar increase. That is a chunk of change. Not too mention, most places I know that start to charge "professional rates" for their CFI's also start charging it for their planes.

So my $99 an hour wet, 1969 172 starts running $120-$140 an hour.

I do know what you and the others are saying...and I think your are correct. Age (hopefully meaning experience as well) does allow you to judge the value of the training a bit better, but it also, generally, allows you to pay for that training.

Trust me....talk to most people about spending $7-$10K for flight training (and 6-12 months of time) and they simply freak at the cost. Hell I could by the motorcycle I want for a bit more than that and it will last me forever (of course flying is better than even riding!).

I hate to sound melodramatic, but I do think that the middle class is doing worse off now than before, even with the booming economy (and that pains me as I am a fairly strong Republican). Thus trying to convince people to spend that kind of money is difficult and raising anything just makes it more difficult.

 

[Arnold]

Let's recap.

1) I was not proposing this as a business model for me as I rejected it sometime back.

2) To date slightly more than 80% say they would pay more for better instruction.

3) Some folks took better to mean older or higher time, that is understandable as my example implied that, but the question was not about the correlation between age/time and quality of instruction. I admit and agree that there are many excellent young instructors and I admit and agree that there are some truly awful old instructors.

4) Some folks rejected my premise that better instruction would lead to quicker completion. Their general thought seeming to be that any increase in hourly pay for the instructor would result in a corresponding increase in total cost. My premise was that with better instruction the total cost would go up only a fraction of the increased instructor cost, but that is just a theory.

5) Some folks implicitly make the point that experience can't be taught, it must be gained, and so the "better instructor" which they presume means older/more experienced would be unable to contribute significantly more than the minimally qualified instructor. This is seen in posts that point out that it is only necessary for one to meet min. FAA standards to be a pilot. I have no argument with that.

6) People for whom it is a struggle to pay for flying make the point that any increase in total cost would drive away trainees and they imply that it is not good to do that (especially if they are driven away). I think that is true, higher cost will mean fewer student starts - at first, but if the accident and fatality rates decrease significantly then perhaps student starts would increase to a level higher than they are at now.

I thank all who have participated, I had fun reading the posts and while this is a non scientific poll, it has some value as anecdotal evidence. I'll not close the poll all should feel free to add to it.

 

[Henning]

I hate to sound melodramatic, but I do think that the middle class is doing worse off now than before, even with the booming economy (and that pains me as I am a fairly strong Republican). Thus trying to convince people to spend that kind of money is difficult and raising anything just makes it more difficult.

Well that's what Republicans get you, but then, so do the Democrats, but then this isn't spin zone, so I won't go there.

Thing is, I didn't come up with $70hr, I came up with $15 over the low dollar rate for your region, because in my experience, that's pretty much the difference. Another thing I found though, is a lot of the older guys who charge a bit more for themselves, don't charge as much for their airplane. Granted, you probably won't be flying that shiny new bird with new avionics, but that not what instruction is about anyway, that's what ownership is about. The best instructor I had charged me $30hr wet and that included him. I did however also kick in all the labor on his annual and since he was buddies with my boss, ended up with his annual for free and since I was on my time and making $15 hr, there was another $150 worth so call it $33.75 an hr. Regardless my deal, he was charging his normal students $60 hr wet with instruction at a time when the FBO were charging $72hr for the same 172 only with better radios (his had a single Kx-170B) +$25hr for a low time instructor. Quality instruction doesn't have to cost more money. What it typically costs you is convenience because these guys usually have a job as well, so it's scheduling that gets difficult, plus it takes more effort to seek them out in the first place.

 

[Capt Kirk]

I really wanted to get an idea of the sentiment of the group.

Thanks for taking the time to do the analysis, I think it is spot on.

Arnold,

I've always thought that a certain segment of post private license pilots would pay a premium for a premium service. I think both location and message delivery would be key. The product would include advanced training methods for instrument ratings, multi engine, training in owner's aircraft, seaplanes, helicopters. Only grey eagles as instructors. I've been thinking about if for a long time too.

Len

 

[Chache]

Where I have trained, they charge almost 30 per hour for the CFI, and the CFI gets 15 of that. And the CFI has to FLY or INSTRUCT to get that $. They aren't paid to sit around and drink coffee, waiting for someone to come in.

Here in PA, in the winter when training is, I swear, limited to my wife and I flying, those kids depending on flying to eat find that their belly buttons come pretty close to pressing on their spines. Among the many things that we have done to alleviate the CFI money blues, include stocking the candy dish at S37, and bringing in burger patties and buns for the barbecue in the summer, to feed those guys.

I'd gladly pay more $ for quality instruction.

Jim G

OK, perhaps I'm jaded.....

My school, doesn't pay the CFI's. The student's do so, directly.
So they, are earning the full amount charged.
..........and they (The "full timer's" ) are billing close to 35 / 40 hrs weekly, most weeks. They are also, retired from other professions.
The part timers too, are paid separately, by the student. They choose to limit their flight training time, to suit their lifestyles. ...and there's no problem with that.

maybe it's just that.......... I have a good Alma Mater??

I don't understand why anyone would work at a place, that skims 50% of their money from them.
In my eyes, that's unjustifiable. In other circles, it's called "Pimping" !

Maybe I need more edjuhmakatin???

 

[OnlyAnEgg]

Arnold,

I voted yes but it won't work. Even at $70 per hour you can't earn enough to support the middle class life style you describe. Not as a sole CFI with no other revenue generators for the business.
<snip>
That said...I've flow with some really good, young, flight instructors that knew their stuff. Sure they were looking to build hours to move on to the next job but I think they also liked instructing. Of the CFIs and CFIIs I'm thinking about they all had attended aviation college programs. I think that really gave them the knowledge and the ability to pass it along.

Len

Oh, I think that one could feed the family on $50 -60 an hour if the costs were controlled, and some other steps taken. But the TRUE distinction, which has been nibbled around but not truly attacked, is in your last sentence. The 300-hr wonders right out of the Hoo-Haa Academy may be well versed in the facts & procedures; but they are not trained to be skilled in teaching. There is a whole panoply of skills involved in (a) conveying information or ability, then (b) evaluating the degree of accurate reception of that conveyance, and (c) analyzing the cause of the deficiency so as to (d) develop a remedy for that lack. Oh, and do this while scanning for traffic and prompting his next radio call.

I have been a professional educator for (thirty-mumble) years, and it took a long time to become proficent in the classroom. Then I moved into the smaller classroom of a cockpit; I think by the third or fourth year, and 10 or 12 successful sign-offs, I was feeling competent (not yet proficient). But those early students got the benefit of a good teacher, and an adequate pilot as a role model. The pay scale for this experience was about 25% of what I had been earning as a public school teacher (and who has ever called that an overpaid occupation?).

. It seems to me that there should be room in the world for a cadre of adequate instructors who can show a newbie the fundamentals at a bargain rate, and also to have some more experienced instructors of proven ability who command a more up-market price. I'm not there yet, but I have hired some for specialty work. Got your Gold Seal? MCFI ? Those should be worth a premium. Been twice regional distance champion in the soaring finals? Charge accordingly. Can you show a ham-fisted clutz like me how to do graceful rolls? Name your price!

A CFI should be like a tool for the job: you want cheap, you can get it - you want quality, it'll cost you. They both might work, for now. But one will do you better in the long run, if you can afford it.

>>>>>>>>>OK, off the soapbox, boy.

My $0.02 :yinyang:

Jim