Hi Pengiuna,
FlyingForFun is quite right in what he/she says.
I'm guessing that by this time next year will have found a lot more reasons to be "put out". In my experience a career in flying has a lot more downsides than upsides.
I've only ever worked for one school where the instructors were paid for briefs, etc. This school was in Florida. From what I remember the instructors started to earn the minute they shook the students hand and stopped once they had debriefed. There was one rate for ground time and another one for flying. Whether or not this way of billing is a good idea depends on how you look at it. The US instructors weren't being paid an awful lot. Therefore the total fee for their time may well have equalled what you or I would have expected to be paid for the flight time alone.
Your comment about instructors not wanting to waste time with briefings is a valid one. Where I work my colleague gives some of the shortest pre-flight briefs that I've ever seen. Having said that, at the start of the day he's often just about to get airborne (making money) while I'm still on the ground finishing a standard 15 minute or so brief. To make matters worse the school that I work for has a booking schedule that doesn't allow for more than 5-10 minutes of briefing time per lesson. This results in me being constantly either just in time or late for my next lesson. By limiting or eliminating briefs my colleague has more time to fly and therefore make money while providing what I view to be a lower standard of training. Not that I can blame him for the way that he operates. I'm sure that it makes his day both easier and more profitable.
When it comes to ground school I do charge for certain briefs at critical stages in the both the PPL and IMC courses. For example I always give and charge for briefs prior to commencing the navigation phase of the training. The student is charged £20/ hour. This is split 50/50 with my employer.
Good luck in the future.
Last edited by Esperanza; 21st Jan 2007 at 20:19.