Send Clowns, I’m, like yourself in the business of employing instructors and know they are a bit thin on the ground at the moment. To redress that I am intending to become FIC qualified in the near future, so one would expect me to proselytise getting the FI (R) qualification and put it on my own personal agenda. However facts are in my immediate sphere of operations that out of 8 instructors working for me over the last 18 months 4 went for type ratings and now have jobs, one is in progress with the type rating, spurred on by those who have successfully followed this route and the 3 remaining are still instructing, whilst pursuing, with little response, the elusive airline job. It appears that during the type-rating course the course providers recommend to airlines those who stand out during their training. Whereas as Beagle quite rightly pointed out that referees from well-known CFI’s went a long way in the past it seems it is less the case at present. Ryanair’s stance on getting prospective employees paying for the type rating training put paid to all that and the airline world has moved on and the rest now are following suit. IMHO the route of gaining experience as an FI to enter the airline market is going to diminish fairly rapidly in the future. I think, as was the point was made at the Seminar for Senior Instructors recently at RAF Cranwell, our industry will have to look seriously at the career instructor as opposed to the airline aspirant hours-builder instructors. I may be wrong, but from where I’m standing that’s how the market looks to me at the moment hence my advice on the type rating in preference the FI(R) course.
ES