Re: Flying Instructor or Airline Pilot????
Not all that much to add to the previous posts, except that I am a little further down the road of career instructor, so thought I might relate my experiences so far.
First of all, do take note of all of the posts about instructor wages. As a PPL instructor, you can expect an absolute maximum of 10-12K - much lower than that in winter, when shorter days and bad weather stop you from doing so much flying. As a married man with a child, are you sure your family can support themselves on that kind of wage? Also, would your family be happy moving around the country? There are around 100 PPL schools in the country, and around 20 CPL/IR schools - with numbers like that, you will have to take any job offer which comes along, regardless of where in the country it is, if you want to make a living out of instructing. I was single when I started out on the flying instructor thing, with no kids. I am now engaged, but my fiancee has always known from the day we met what my career aspirations are, and is more than happy to support me through it, financially if necessary as well as in other ways, but if I had a partner or kids before I started out, I don't think I would have done it.
As others have said, the only way of making money out of being a flying instructor is to teach CPL/IR. In order to do that, you will need a CPL/IR yourself. The training path I took was this:
- ATPL exams, CPL, FIC, then start work to build up experience. Whilst working as an instructor, then you can do the MEP course, then an ME IR. As soon as you start working as an instructor, work on removing the supervisory restriction from your license, and also do the course to remove the No Night Instruction restriction from your license. Once you have the supervisory restriction removed, do the course to remove your No Applied Instrument Instruction restriction. That's where I'm up to right now.
Along the way, make sure you take every opportunity to log multi-engine P1 hours - you will need 30 of these (not 100 as Luke SkyToddler says), including 10 in the last 12 months, to become a multi-engine instructor. You might also consider getting an IMC rating during your hour-building, and doing a fair portion of your hour-building under IFR.
If you decide to go down this route, it is a long hard slog, but extremely rewarding if it's what you really want to do.
Hope that helps,
FFF
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