misguided CFIs

[WrongWayCorrigan]

Just canvassing opinion on this one: what would you think of this scenario?

A well established flying club employes a CFI. This flying club is run by a volunteer committee and the members club pays the CFI's wages (good salary). The flying club introduces 5 new cocky AFIs who are members of this committee which pays the CFI's wages.

The CFI changes the rules so that all ab initio flying instruction may be given only by these AFI's (who pay his wages) and that experienced FI's in the same organisation may only fly trial introductory flights or recency checks.

Runway incursions start to happen, communications standards disintegrate. And that's only the stuff we can see. God knows what's going on in the briefing rooms.

Am I wrong in thinking this is a bit odd? Anyone have any experience with this kind of stuff?

[Say again s l o w l y]

Do you mean experience of flying club politics? I think we've all probably been on the recieving end of that at some time.

It does sound a bit odd however. FI's are there to teach everybody, if you don't think they are capable of teaching your students, then why hire them? I can't imagine that the students would be particularily happy.

In fact if this is what has happened, I'm not sure it's even legal. How can you stop employees from actually being able to earn a living? I assume that you are paid by the flying hour and are not salaried.

Is this policy written down anywhere? If so that wouldn't be a very smart move on his part.

How do they justify this change in policy? Surely they are accountable to the membership as a whole, not just the committee.

(One pedantic point, they're FI(R)'s now not AFI's.)

[mad_jock]

It sounds like a standard empire build after the new CFI has been taken on.

The excuse will be that the new FI(R)'s need to get experence to become unrestricted so they can operate solo.

The next phase will be some nonsense that all the new guys have been standadised and the old FI's not, so he will want all the training done by the new ones so its done his way with no input from the local experenced FI's.

After the summer season the empire will have been half built and he will say that there isn't enough work for the others because its winter and he has to keep his core instructors payed so no trial flights either. And after the winter there will be some changes to the training provider becoming a seperate entity. Usual excuse will be liability reasons and "for tax". When this happens you will just not be taken on at all. And there will be additional clauses put in that the old members will have to do there 2 year check with a club instructor not the original FI's. And the old FI's will be told that they arn't on the list of instructors for the club with the caa so can't instruct in there planes.

The empire will then have been built the prices will go up, usually maintence standard will drop to fund the new empire.

[trilander]

The new AFIs cannot operate at all without the supervision of a FI and the CFI remains in control, no CFI of FI no stude gets to fly period!! and the committee can go back to arranging the bar functions as they normaly do.

[Rotorbiggles]

Look on the bright side.. they won't get to do much instructing as most of the planes are down for maintenance and the others only have one wing....

:oh:

Wayne

[WrongWayCorrigan]

Right-on Rotorbiggles!

Nice to know that we all share similar experience of flying club politics. Jock's cynical input very apt.

I like to think of them as Assistants to the Flying Instructor, in "Ricky Gervais speak".

(One pedantic point, they're FI(R)'s now not AFI's.) - where we are we still call them AFI's. Point taken, though.Tthe restricted bit is a key issue which unfortunately, in our case, seems to have fallen by the wayside.