Flight Instructor Rating
 

Good evening all.

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I was wondering, once you have a fATPL and an instructor rating, what additional training would you have to do to be able to teach at CPL level. The reason I asked is because it's instructing that I would like to do full time, but from what I've been told (feel free to correct me) the pay at PPL instructing is not really that brilliant. If I'm honest, I don't really know what the CPL instructing pay scale is like.

Thanks in advanced.

Having achieved everything you have mentioned in order to teach at a CPL level the minimum exp you will require is as follows from CAP 804, Section Four, Part J, Subpart 1, Page 1,

https://www.caa.co.uk/application.as...detail&id=5000


"...at least 500hrs of flight time as a pilot on that aircraft category, including at least 200hrs instruction."

The pay scale at PPL level is pretty poor, when i did it, it was approx £7000 per annum plus £20/hr flight pay. However from speaking to many others this is probably on the high end of the pay scale Other places can be much worse.

On the CPL side things are better, I can only really speak for myself teaching on an integrated course but £27k per annum, teaching CPL, IR & Night. I have no idea what king of pay you might receive teaching on a modular basis.

Hope that might help, good luck.

Thanks for that! Please excuse the grammar - I was half asleep when writing that. I just want to be able to make a living out of it.. I guess it's like most things in life: start from the bottom and just persevere.

its not as easy these days because of the experence requirements to teach both IR and MEP.

Most people will hit a block on progressing away from SEP training and onto IR training due to the precourse experence requirements.

Wow, that's a good deal.

Most places these days just pay the £20 an hour, no retainer, if you don't fly you don't get anything.

Retainers are a thing of the past, there are far too many instructors on the market who are willing to work for next to nothing just to build their hours. I've heard of schools paying £10 an hour for trial lessons, getting restricted guys in who will do it on the days off from their other jobs as they just can't afford to instruct full time at the peanuts people pay.

Of course once you get some decent experience, some schools do still pay well, but fresh out of school these days must be a tough place to be.

Not sure there are many places even paying £20 per hour, 15 to 20 is far more typical.

The other thing to note the minimums to teach CPL are not necessarily the experience you will need to actually start teaching CPL, with the stagnation in recent years with many instructors not moving onto the airlines at the rate they once did, then there are plenty of high hour instructors out there; so you are not going to get looked at for CPL instructing until you surpass some way in excess of the minimum requirements.

Pay rates for teaching single engine CPL, I have heard are around the 25 to 35 pound per flight hour. If singe engine vfr instructing is really what you want to do you many find better pay rates teaching on fixed axis micro-lights.

Seriously? Is this how bad things are getting? I used to get £25/hr for SEP PPL training, £30 for night or IMC, and paid for student solo time at those rates too.

If that's all CPL instructors are getting, there really isn't much draw to move on to that. I guess there are still a few salaried guys out there doing the job, who are relics of long ago, but I don't see it going back that way anytime soon. Such a shame that ultimately the customer gets short changed by getting low hours guys in cheap rather than paying for the quality.

RTN11,

I don't think it is even a case of getting low hour guys in cheap.

Where I currently work part time I was looking into getting my no applied instruments restriction lifted, but it would only get me an additional £2 per hour over the rate for teaching PPL, considering the cost of renewing my SPA IR ( I only keep an MPA IR current these days) and doing the 5 hr course it was questionable if it was worth it.

For the small modular schools teaching CPL on the side of ppl training then yes I would be very surprised if any one was getting more than £35 per hour for the singe engine CPL training.