Absolutely agree with the other guys here.
Make sure you can fly the entire flight yourself.
Try to deal with all contingencies on the ground to get maximum benefit from time in the air.
Brief, brief, brief. Discuss ground speed calc's and various wind effects etc on the ground a 100 times.
Plan alternates well before departure or arrival at destination. The student must have a faultless understanding of fuel planning. Force him or her into a diversion later in their training and make sure their first IFR diversion is with you and not by themselves. Get them to upgrade to IFR from a VFR departure and downgrade to VFR en-route as well. Thats what their first job will involve a lot of.
Allow them to brief as much as possible before engine start including RTO, LASALT's, SID etc and maybe even the first approach if its nearby and re-brief the salient points prior to TOPD.
Do the radio for them every so often in the early stages or fly while they do the radio. A lot of students can learn more from a good demo of one leg and an approach than doing it all themselves and being told they got it wrong. Believe me, you won't be ripping them off as they'll welcome the chance to watch. Make sure you do it extremely well. Keeps you in perspective and current too.
Make sure you're well enough to do the flight by yourself. Don't just think you'll be okay to sit and monitor from the right seat because you'll either have an incident or that will be the day the student gets sick and can't finish the flight.
Lastly, don't always opt for the LONG flights. Two short ones are better for the student because they gey 2 IFR dep briefs, departures and RTO briefs, 5 or mor en-route phases, 4 or so approaches, a couple of stars and much more confidence for around the same money. Also if they haven't prepared well and seem to be floundering don't be afraid to can it early and save their hard earned money. Go and do it all again when they're better prepared.
Oh and NEVER cut corners. If you can't do the whole thing professionally and legally, don't go. Have a brief and do a sim or something else.
Good luck with it. It is THE MOST REWARDING thing you can do.
GUARD
