Flight Schools - How normal is this?
Hey everyone,
Keeping this anonymous for extremely obvious reasons, but recently, the new Chief at my flight school has been making me extremely concerned, and I'm trying to determine what's normal for this industry with all its big personalities and what's abnormal here. Basically, here's some of this Chief is doing that's worrying me:
-Making lessons go flying in convective SIGMETs and reprimanding instructors when they resist
-Bragging about their prior history of being in jail (for DV I believe)
-Sexually propositioning me to jump the waitlist for my multi-rating
-Prioritizing the hiring of instructors who they want to sleep with, primarily young 19-20 year olds who have little prior work experience.
-Excessive drinking OUTSIDE of school, but enough for me to think they're an alcoholic and they habitually drive (not fly) drunk (but again, not at school).
-Focusing their time/ attention/ lessons on students they want to have sex with (and have outright vocalized this).
-Students state that they're physically afraid of them
Currently, a lot of the rank-and-file instructors were hired under the old management, who focused on quality. They're fantastic and they always go to bat for us against management. But now, I'm getting scared that as those old CFIs get their hours and leave, they'll be replaced by the new ones hired by the new Chief that don't really stand up to them. It's for these reasons that I feel safe finishing up my ratings at this school for now, but I'm becoming less and less sure that I want to work there as a CFI with each passing day.
The deal with this Chief is that they're great at maximizing profits for the owner, so as long as that's going on, I don't believe the owner will be inclined to change things. The school is transitioning currently from mom-and-pop operation to full-blown pilot mill.
So this is basically my question - how common is this with flight schools? If I get a CFI job with another school, is it highly likely I'll encounter the same type of person in leadership? Or, is this more of an abnormal situation and I should get the hell away from this place as soon as I get my ratings? Since I'm still pretty new to aviation, I just don't know what the norm is.
Sorry if this sounds stupid. I appreciate any thoughts on this.