How employable are Instructors?

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Originally Posted by almostthere!

I am just curious. What is a "charter frame of mind?" I see basically that a flying instructor deals with customers every day, their students. They need to get them to their destination (their licence) in the shortest period of time (cheapest) and at a time that suits them (when they can come in for training). Why do you need to do single engine charter to be able to do multiengine charter? What difference does it make if your multi hours a logged up by doing IFR teaching? When you are trying to get your required lesson plans synchronised with ATC requirements and other commercial pressures of the flying school. How is that different to charter pilots getting their pax from A to B when they want to? There seems to be so much "my d k is bigger than yours" syndrome between the two groups when quite simply there seems to be stuff all difference between the two!

Charter frame of mind, its hard to explain. But I will give it a shot, well as you said its all about customer service, getting them from A to B in the cheapest (for your boss), most efficient way. Its different to instructing, as getting a student to their "destination" does not depend on you (well in a way it does, in terms of your teaching method and how well the student reacts to it), it depends on the students learning rate, adaptability and the amount of money they have to spend (i.e. a student PPL that can only afford 2hrs every fortnight, as opposed to a full-time student CPL that can fly 5hrs a week). With a charter you get the PAX there regardless if there is a personality clash, a student will not learn if there is a personality difference in the learning environment (cockpit and classroom),

My point was that some META IFR instructors want to go for the larger charter gigs, yet they seem to get declined most of the time. Due to "lack of charter experience", so if you cant get those jobs, why not start off at the bottom, or close to it, doing basic charter, gain that experience and then move on to larger charter gigs. If there was a position advertised for a job that needed 500hrs multi for a charter gig, then the pilot with 500hrs multi charter time will most likely get it as opposed to the IFR instructor with 1000hrs multi instructing. Plus the argument goes for instructors telling the boss where to stick it in "marginal" weather. I remember a time when I was doing my ME_CIR and we flew into a cloud and got very mild icing as a result of it, the instructor was crapping themselves, "Oh my god, we are icing up!" this resulting in a decent to LSALT, for most of the flight we were in and out of ST cloud and it was no more than SCT on the day, so it wouldn’t be long until we were out of it, didn’t really see a point in descending (in my opinion anyway)

And with being synchronised for ATC, im not too sure what that means? You decide to go flying, so you put in a flight plan (both charter, if CTR and instructing). Give ATC as much notice as possible and then you go flying, they are there to help you out?

This isn’t a stab at you almostthere, just elaborating on my previous post.

And as for my d*ick is bigger than yours, I guess im in the middle as I did both??? But I do see the difference in ego's and frames of mind from both sides of the coin. Instructors think they are king sh1t, flying those C152s and all! Charter pilots think they are kind sh1t too, flying those mighty C210s. At the end of the day an aeroplane is an aeroplane. Both C152 and C210 time gets logged in the same column (SE), both pilots will most likely have the same long term career goals: Airlines. Finally, both pilots are doing their bit for Australian aviation...making the boss money and working their arse off to keep food on the table and a roof over their head.

Keep up the good work boys and girls; there is light at the end of all tunnels (even if its a train for some of you!)

Gidday

CMN