Oldest FI still working?
 

Anyone care to name the oldest flying instructor still working? Whoever he/she is, they'll struggle to beat John Davies of Lee Flying Services :ok:

But I heard on the radio news only this morning that the oldest man in the world is thought to be only 113 (a WW1 veteran).

They clearly don't know about Mr D, then :ok:

Wow, I wonder if he trained the Wright brothers.

Power - Attitude - Trim!

Pull back, and cows get smaller, forward, and we'll have roast beef tonight.

Pull back too far and cows get bigger again.

If oldness and boldness are mutually exclusive, Mr. D. must rank with the positively petrified!

He may well have trained the Montgolfier brothers, and he must have been already in his hundred and nineties, when they flew their first balloon.

The CFI who taught mew to fly has well over 50 years professional flying experience.

Nothing compared to Mr Davies then! :)

Nay my friend. It's just states how many years instructor experience he has. Doesn't tell us how old he was when he became a qualified FI. Maybe he's gone through evolution from a bird to man...

Must be a Dead-loss then..(Daedalus, geddit,guy who told Icarus to stay in the circuit on his first solo !) Bloody students-never do as they are told-wannabees!!

Well, seeing as the first FI ratings were only issued about 90 years ago, he must have travelled to the future for much of his instructing career. :cool:

Perhaps he instructed without a rating? :}

Cheers

Whirls

I met one at Stapleford who is in his '80s

Then again, according to the fly leaf of my edition of "Stick and Rudder" the author Wolfgang Langewieshe "first soloed in 1834 in Chicago"!

Nothing compared to Mr Davies, but one CFI in the North is in the region of 73 last time I counted and is still blitzing his class 1! He had to stop using his cane a few years ago now.

The oldest instructor I had the pleasure of flying with was Rudi Opitz, who hung up instructing for my old glider club in his early 90's. A mere 70 or so years under his belt, falls a little short of Mr. Davies but was phenomenal none the less.

-- IFMU

Evelyn Johnson Was Born In 1909
Has 58,000 Hours , More Than Any Woman, Has Given More Endorsements Etc Than Any Other Cfi And Last Renewed Her Medical In 2003 At The Age Of 94 And Last Renewed Her Cfi Ticket At The Age Of 95 In 2004 !!! She Currently Works As The Airport Manager Of Morristown Tn

58k TT, OMG. That's 6.62 years of non-stop flying time. Think the only time she used legs to 'move around' was to get to airport and doing pre/postflight.
If you consider this was probably career instructor, the time is even more mind-boggling. Those LH airline guys logging +-10h PIC or SIC for 20min hand flying and rest of it 'flight management'.

Airborne Artist - you should know this one!

It must surely have been the instructors at the RN Chipmunk flying grading course at Plymouth!:ok: