Why instructing sucks!

[Flylo]

Originally Posted by: Chronic Jetlag:

"Come back and bitch when your wife leaves you ........"



Who in the world would blame her?

 

[siucavflight]

Chronic you are an A-Hole. Incase you forgot us CFI's dont make squat. A 20% paycut is a lot and not necessary seening as how we are paid by contact hour. Which means that if we are slow we dont get paid. So a pay cut is not necessary. Shove it A-hole.

 

[Nolife]

Don't take it

Freelance.

My first job flying was flight instructing, banner towing, and giving rides for a school in New Orleans. The boss didn't care about us and tried to get as much as he could out of us for free. The pay was $10 per flight hour. After 9-11 no one was flying and the pay sucked. I started freelancing and ended up making more money flying less. I charged $25 per hour plus $15 for ground and got to keep it all.

Make flyers, business cards, and network. Be willing to drive to other airports as well. It may take a month to get up and running but being your own boss and keeping all of the money is well worth it. Also as a side bonus if you get a good reputation you can cut into your old flight school's business.

Freelancing was great for me. I flew 40- 50 hrs a month making $1500- $2000 per month. Not bad considering at my old school the most I made was $1200 in one month and that was flying 110 hrs. including ground instruction.

Aviation isn't a special industry. You don't ever have to bend over and take it. Be flexible and be willing to change and you'll end up where you want.

 

[bart]

I would recommend you quit your job and open a flight school and run him out of business. That way you could get the double benefit of raking in all the huge amounts of cash that the current owner is putting in his pocket and hire your girlfriends to "type and answer phones".

You could also jerk your CFI's around by taking their flights and calling it a stage check and then reducing their wages. If they quit, there are 100 resumes in your in-basket waiting for the new lower paying job. Hell, you may even be able to find guys who will do it for free, just "promise" them flight training or upgrades or something like that. They are out there.

No doubt you could do a better job than the clown you work for now.

Or, you could also pay flight instructors a great wage, because it is your money now. Whichever way you do it, choose wisely, because when the bills all come due, it is you and all you own they will come after... not your flight instructors.

 

[chrisdahut24]

Re: perspective

Hey Huskerfan:

You are a little whinning baby! Quit your belly aching, shut up and take it with a smile. Back when I was instructing I had to solicit my own business and get my own students because I didn't have enough seniority to get the walk ins. Besides instructing I worked as a waiter as night to make ends meet. I'll bet your new 20% pay cut is still more than I was making. I was making $10-15/hour! Getting married is the choice you made, becoming a CFI was also your choice. You think with any other job your position is not a commodity! You made your bed...so sleep in it! Judging from your total flight time you listed you haven't earned the right to whine and be bitter. Come back and bitch when you have 3,4,5, 10 thousand hours and have walked the picket line in the rain, watch scabs cross the picket line and steal your job, fly your plane, cash your paycheck. Come back and bitch when your wife leaves you because your company goes bankrupt and you can't find another decent flying job to pay for the mortgage and pay for your kids' college tuition. Come back and whine when you do your first overnight with the commuters in a cheap motel after flying 10 legs with no APU, auto pilot in 100 degrees heat trying to beat flow control while doing your own load sheet by hand because the computer is down.

I worked two jobs for two years after I earned my 4 year degree to save up enough $$ for flight school. Instructed for $10-15/hour, finally got my first job with a 135 operator after over two years of instructing; slept on my friends couch because I was too poor. Should I go on? I'm sure most members on this site who are civilians have done the same as me if not worse. Go home and cry to your fiance and have her comfort your little candy a**. Don't do it here you little emotional **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED**wreck.

What's wrong with Dominos? Is it beneath you? I have unclogged toilets when I worked in restaurants. Speaking of toilets, try cleaning the toilet in a small biz jet on a hot day with the APU inop and the stench of urine and fresh human excrement. You don't know the definition of bitter and paying dues. You have not even scratched the surface

I wipe my rear end with your commercial certificate and your CFII, and your 900 hour log book; not because you're low time...because you have no character! I was low time once too. The world owes you nothing, your employer owes you nothing. You're lucky you didn't get a 40% pay cut. You're lucky you have a job right now.

Sounds like a lot of whining coming out of that post. Seems like you are bitter and crying about every little sad experience you've had in your career.

"Your employer owes you nothing"...Surely you walked the picket line because you believed your employer did owe you something (?)

 

[Judge]

Chronic jet ass walked to school up hill both ways, in the snow, with a bag of b...s.... on his back. He sounds like my Grandfather.
Idiot.

 

[rumpletumbler]

Re: perspective

Chronic Jetlag,

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

RT

 

[aviatrix]

Thanks for all the positive words. I was just frustrated last night and needed to vent. I'm thankful that I still have a flying job and still do like instructing. I just think a pay cut sucks and don't think I deserve it. In most industries, when you do a good job, and work your butt off, you expect to be rewarded positively. I know lifes not fair but I wish the instructing industry had more equity. Looking back at my flying career, I can remember flying with disgruntled, bummed out instructors. I always thought, man you have it so good, you get paid to fly. I can at least now understand where they were coming from. I still plan to work hard and try my best as a CFI and treat my students with respect and fairness. Like I said earlier thanks for all the positive replies. I just needed to vent and thought a place like this would be understanding.
Huskerfan

huskerfan,

Just keep up the good attitude and that'll get you farther than anything! And know that almost all of us were in the exact same situation as you are! We understand, believe me! The best you can do is just try to do the very best job you can for your students and try to ignore the day to day operations of your school. It's rarely an ethical person who runs a flight school anymore!
Stick together with your other CFI co-workers and try to implement changes little by little.
Try to keep from going insane while you're at this stage in your career! It'll help build a good foundation for when you get your first 121 job and the real "unfairness" begins!
Chin up!

 

[metrodriver]

Chronic jet: right on!
siucavflight: stay longer in the cfi business and take an English 101 course.

All the replies are from people with less than 1000 hrs. You know what: come back after you have been teaching for 4 years or 2000hrs. And that might be excactly what will happen if the same early 1990's is any indication for the current times. I (and most other people that started flying in that era) had to teach for a long period back then. Now it's your turn. Another thing you might consider: the sharply rising insurance cost has already pushed many flight schools over the brink, be happy to still have a job in this cut-throat world that aviation is nowadays (at every level)

 

[Vladimir Lenin]

Re: Re: perspective

Chronic Jetlag,

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

RT

didn't take too long for the zealots to chime in...
oh, well, at least no one's burned at the stake anymore for suggesting the earth may not be the center of the universe

 

[Iceman21]

Re: Re: Re: perspective

didn't take too long for the zealots to chime in...
oh, well, at least no one's burned at the stake anymore for suggesting the earth may not be the center of the universe

Doesn't take long for the bigots to come in and scew the thread in another direction.

I wonder how it would be taken if he replied with a quote by Socrates.

 

[ShinerBocknabtl]

CFI's........I don't mean for this to sound the wrong way but you cats are at the bottom of the barrel, spent a few years there myself and it did suck a$$ but don't let it getcha down. Remember a few things though, there are furloughed pilots that would give their left nut for your job right now, guys with thousands of hours in the logbook but haven't flown in over a year. Your day will come when you get a better paying job and look back to the instructing days and remember why you did it all in the first place......because you love to fly, not because you love to get paid to fly. So many people I run across do it all for the wrong reasons and those individuals can't understand the other types. I know you've got bills to pay, probably lots of them but if the regionals called tomorrow do you think those bills would disappear? Prob not. The best advice I can give is to keep your chin up, don't turn down that extra couch in the one bedroom apartment that your living in with two other instructors, and above all.....NETWORK!!!! go to the fly-in's, hang out at the uncontrolled airports with the freight dawgs and corporate types, write down names and companies if you can't remember them, make a good impression. You guys know this routine and one day it'll pay off. A good website is RAA.org to check out operators, the equipment they fly and who's who at that company. Instructing is the hardest job in aviation you'll ever have and when you move on you'll be very proud of your accomplishments and have great wisdom to pass on. If it weren't for you, none of us would be where we're at.
Just my thoughts.

 

[wickedpilot]

Chronic Jet/metrodriver... I guess you guys (or girls) were just born Commercial Pilots?

 

[avbug]

All the replies are from people with less than 1000 hrs.

Oh really? Howdja come to that conclusion?

 

[metrodriver]

wicked pilot: no, we instructed for many years, thousands of hours, while 10.000 hr guys from Eastern, Braniff, Pan AM were trying to take our jobs. Most people who are now instructing started to learn to fly when they were shown ads that promised regional jobs almost right out of flightschool, just a few years ago.
And when you see something like that you plan your life on it. I did too. Till things go wrong and you're stuck in a job you don't like for too low a pay check. Is that a reason to get angry and start whining on a bulletin board? No. Just stick with what you've got which is better than no job at all, built up those hours as fast as you can and try to be the best instructor there is. You're next student might be your f/o a few years down the road and you'll be proud of the job he does if you taught him well.
Still don't like it? Become a courier. At least you can put a sticker on your rear bumper that says: I'm not driving fast; just flying low.

And for your info: currently I'm flying a little bugsmasher, probably making not much more than what the average cfi makes, and no I don't like it at all, but I don't come whining here that my previous boss had to furlough a couple of hundred pilots or that I didn't have a flying job for a long time. I took an $8.- an hour lousy job to pay the bills and kept sending resumes and making phone calls till someone offered me a job. Yes, that's a job that in normal times would be the next step after flight instructing. I just wish I was back where I once was, maybe one day. Then a young cfi who meets the requirements will take over my current job and a brand-new cfi will find his first job at a flight school

Avbug: should have stated: the wining replies.
I know some of you guys with higher amounts of flight time were trying to console huskerfan, and I think he realizes what some people are trying to tell him looking at his other post

 

[Huck]

Howdja come to that conclusion?

My sentiments exactly. Last time I was under 1000 was during the FIRST Bush presidency....

 

[bobbysamd]

2003 v. 1990

All the replies are from people with less than 1000 hrs. You know what: come back after you have been teaching for 4 years or 2000hrs. And that might be excactly what will happen if the same early 1990's is any indication for the current times. I (and most other people that started flying in that era) had to teach for a long period back then. Now it's your turn. Another thing you might consider: the sharply rising insurance cost has already pushed many flight schools over the brink, be happy to still have a job in this cut-throat world that aviation is nowadays (at every level)

I take exception! Not all replies have come from 1000-hour pilots. I replied earlier. Look at my profile at the left.

Now, having said that, and being a "child" of the late '80s-early '90s and having instructed for more than 3500 hours, I second your comments 100%. I also second your comments about how in 1990 we were competing with terminated Pan Am, Eastern and Braniff pilots for jobs. I was always grateful that although I was instructing I was still employed as a pilot during those years while these more experienced and better-qualified pilots were not working.

To provide further perspective, I and my peers fretted, worried and whined about needing 500 hours of multi to get commuter (regional) interviews. Therefore, it's hard for me to abide those who fret, worry and whine about build 100-200 multi hours to get their regional interviews. And, as a practical matter, I'd bet that you need at least the 1990 mins of 1500 total-500 multi and an ATP to get an interview these days.

No one likes flight school BOHICA. But, at least Huskerfan is employed while so many more experienced and better-qualified pilots and the furloughees are not. He should keep that in mind.

 

[taloft]

Instructing is fun

 

[LAXSaabdude]

ShinerBocknabtl:

Two words. Paragraph breaks. I'm trying to uncross my eyes right now after reading your post.

LAXSaabdude.

 

[slide33]

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