I thought the airline side was looking up, in the past month 2 of my mates have got right hand seats and one of my students a a sponsorship.
Can't come too soon if you ask me, the sooner all you hours building FIs move off to your glam jobs with the big jets and fancy birds, the sooner us career FIs who are doing it for the love of flying can really start to teach our students and also pick up an hourly rate that covers more than just expenses.
The reason that FI pay is poor is that all you airline pilot wannabes, will fly and work for near nothing, will not join an association and only have the objectives of hours building and moving on.
At one outfit I operate with, the career instructors want to make each booking a 3 hour slot not the current one and a half hour.
That way we only fly 2-3 hours a day but spend 3-4 hours TEACHING our students the facts of aviation life. So we get paid for teaching with a bit of flying not just for time in the air.
However the hours builder wannabes want to stuff the students into the air no matter what, just to pick up there £10 flight pay
I challenge all FIs to get together, to form a union or association to get together and sort this out. AOPA and the CAA wont touch it not in there interest??
Come on anybody got the GUTS to do this.
Have Fun