Instructor Rating First Or Ir

[gd123]

Im due to start my cpl with John Dale in next couple of weeks and wondering to follow it with an instructor rating, do six months instructing then do IR or do cpl/ir straight away, any offers?

[igarratt]

John Dale (ocean sky I guess ?) brill instructor flew with him back in the 90's when he was ATC at manchester, he's a hard task master tho !

cpl is ok but it's the IR that can be twice the work of CPL, when doing your IR you could really do with doing nothing else, would even say don't instruct at the same time.

Only other thing is though your IR will prob be twin to get the unrestricted maybe find yourself a nice pa28 thats full IR and get your ILS approaches so you can do it second nature, know too many people that have lost it on IR approaches, sometimes with silly small errors (expensive ones !).

Ian

[DB6]

Depends on your intentions. If you want to go to the airlines ASAP you can't do that without a CPL/IR so do that first. Then do the instructor rating as you can get applications out while you do that. I would say it is good to do the instructor rating though, for two reasons; the outlook for airline recruitment is not great at this very moment and you can build hours while you wait, and it will make it easier to become a training captain in the long run - or at least instructional experience will.

[portsharbourflyer]

Your chances of getting employed are going to be better with 700 hours than 250 hours. I would say the recruitment boom of 2007 is now starting to decline.

I wouldn't set a time limit I would say instruct until you hit 650 to 700 hours total time then do the IR. If you do the IR then instruct it is likely that you will have to do another renewal before getting a flying job somewhere. You will easily aquire these hours within a year of full time instructing at a busy school so no problems with the 36 month limit on the exams.

I am not sure on your financial state but if you taking out any loans to fund training then it is easier to live on instructors wages if you haven't got to make rapayments on a loan used to fund the IR.

[HN1708]

I'd say get the IR done before the FIC for the following 3 reasons i did:

1) You never know when you're going to be offered a job out the blue one day on an airfield and the chances of you getting hired if you need to explain that you need 2-3 months to do an IR first are not going to help.
2) You are already eating into the 3 years after your last ATPL exam to get a CPL/IR.
3) On an instructor's wages it's going to be hard to save or get finance for an IR, you will need to give up work and go without a wage for a few months for the IR into the bargain.