PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Why cant we low timers CFIs get a job?
View Single Post
Old 8th Mar 2007, 21:35
  #3 (permalink)  
gulliBell
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Wanaka, NZ
Posts: 2,569
Likes: 0
Received 2 Likes on 2 Posts
Let's face it, 100 hours more isn't much extra time, many pilots fly that in a month alone. But it's 50% more time than what you've got at the moment, so for you it's quite a lot.

I have always wondered how CFI's can pass on their worldly experience to their students with what amounts to just a basic licence. There is a lot more to flying helicopters, and thus teaching how to fly helicopters, than what a 200 hour pilot can be expected to offer.

Take for example teaching physics (or almost any other subject) at high school level. Virtually all those teachers have College physics degrees and a teaching qualification as well before even getting back to the high school class room i.e. about 4 or 5 years experience at an advanced level before being able to teach the subject at a basic level. Because that's what it takes to become a high school teacher. Why should teaching flying helicopters be any different? Like I said before, I have always wondered about that.

Also to illustrate the point further, I have flown with a few 1000+ hour co-pilots and wondered how they ever got a licence (I'm not suggesting that they were the products of low hour CFI's, I just don't know). I would shudder at the thought of them flying passengers as PIC in a 206 even with those 1000 hours of "experience"; what's worse, of them being able to teach students to fly after only 200 hours.

Pilots with only 200 hours don't have much more than basic stick and rudder skills, and certainly don't have the operational experiences necessary to make a well rounded helicopter pilot. So that's why it might be difficult for a 200 hour CFI to find a job. It's just the brutal truth, and some would say for good reason.
gulliBell is offline