Career Instruction - where to begin?

[AJ1990]

I am looking for any advice regarding what qualifications would be most beneficial to commence a career in instruction?

I am a PPL holder with ATPL Groundschool completed and currently looking for a flight school to progress to FI(R). There are several schools which seem to have a fantastic reputation for training instructors, in particular I am drawn to Andrewsfield which is fairly local to me as well as several others further from home.

The issue I have is that these schools (the ones most commonly recommended) generally only offer CPL+FI. I am undecided on whether I wish to pursue an IR currently but general advice suggests that CPL+IR+ME should be taught at the same location if I decided this is what I wanted to do.

If in the distant future I wanted to work outside of PPL instruction, would it be prudent to achieve a CPL+ME+IR before pursuing an FI rating? I have no intention of going to the airlines but wouldn't want to close any doors by the decisions made now. More importantly, if a career in instruction was possible, would it be wiser to become IR ME qualified before my FI rating?

Any advice is welcomed - thank you!

[DC3freightdog]

Instructing is very rewarding. When you see a student making progress it is like a father seeing his child grow. However to be a effectife instructor you need paitiance and social skills. (Do you have them?) Your instructor skills can be used in many areas e.g. training production workers or in a college environment.
First determane what your professional goal is.
Than select your activities.

[RTN11]

If you want to instruct cpl in the future, you should get the cpl done now.

You could then do the fi rating and start instructing, but beware that if you don't get your cpl and IR within three years of your last exam then the exams will expire, so better off taking the hit and doing it when you can than have to retake the exams when you finally need an IR.

To instruct multi IR you will need 30 hours pic on multi piston aircraft. This will be very expensive, but there will be a shortage of decent IR instructors in the future, so perhaps a school will fund or discount some of this. I know a couple of people who managed to make a deal with the school they already worked for.

[Whopity]

To instruct multi IR you will need 30 hours pic on multi piston aircraft. and 200 hours under IFR; probably another £30,000

[AJ1990]

Which would be the more sensible plan of the two:

1) CPL + FI at flight school A, then if I decide to do an MEIR in the future do it at flight school B

or

2) CPL+MEIR+FI all at flight school B

The IR is such a considerable amount of money just trying to make as informed a choice as possible...

[Whopity]

If you want to be a career instructor rather than an airline pilot, option 1 is more appropriate. An IR will be of little use as an instructor as it will still not qualify you to teach instrument flying without the 200 hours instrument time. Clearly, none of the EASA experts ever considered anyone being anything other than an airline pilot!

[Trim Stab]

If you want to make a career as a flying instructor you are better off going down the microlight route. You will have the same satisfaction from teaching, but will be able to make a decent living too.

Instructing on aeroplanes is a dead-end career at the moment - it is not possible to earn enough money to justify the training costs.

[Whopity]

Trim Stab

A very valid point.