PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Where have all the instructors gone??
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Old 19th Aug 2019, 05:23
  #25 (permalink)  
Ascend Charlie
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Great South East, tired and retired
Posts: 4,373
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Is this thread aimed at somebody whose only aim is to teach?

If so, there is a bit of a worry attached. Such a person has just finished his/her basic licence, and then does a further 40(?) hrs of flight training to qualify as an instructor of the lowest grade. This instructor requires a lot of supervision from the start, and only after a number of hours, is allowed to teach with minimal supervision.

But what is he teaching? After a basic licence, all he has done is cover each flying sequence in detail ONCE, with some further revision before the test. He knows the syllabus, having seen it all in a canned situation, under the watchful eye of an instructor, and has most likely never been in a situation where some real piloting skill and decision-making has been needed.

Where is the depth of experience? It ain't there, so the partially blind lead the totally blind around the circuit or the canned nav trips or the few permitted confined areas again and again. He might build some hours, but they are not particularly worthwhile hours, and if the blind student puts the half-blind instructor into a real pickle, there might be a little whoopsie.

To be an instructor, one should first have flown in the real world, on your own, no Grade 1 watching and correcting, and where your dumb decisions have to be lived with. Do your apprenticeship properly.

There are a lot of good instructor jobs around, I was paid around $750 per hour of flight (not counting the endless hours of long briefs, debriefs, class lectures and simulator time). Only real reason to leave was my inability to tolerate the attitude of the foreign students, who had paid their money and expected the knowledge to be poured into their heads and never required to show that any of it stayed there.
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