MAYBE IT'S TIME TO FIRE YOUR FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR

摘要

Many primary flight training customers come to training with the assumption that all instructors are pretty much the same, and training success is determined almost entirely by the talent of the learner. But it's not true. CFIs come in a number of varieties. Many become CFIs to build needed hours for their next flying job, and often those follow-on flying jobs are dictated by airline hiring. If the major airlines are hiring, they draw from regional carriers, and those companies hire, in turn, from the general pilot population. The number of flight hours you need varies with different carriers and is significantly influenced by the number of seats that carrier needs to fill. I can remember an era when you needed 3,000 flight hours, an ATP certificate and a type rating to even submit an application to a major airline. If you made it through the interview, you would be subjected to a physical exam by its company doctor that would rival one a NASA astronaut endures. I can also remember when you could apply with some regional carriers if you had 300 hours and a commercial pilot certificate and could fog a mirror. Then, as now, the place new commercial pilots start building those hours is flight instruction. This means that for many pilots, flight instruction is an entry-level job. These folks are building hours on your dollar and may not have developed the skills they need to be good at the job.