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CFI

Tom Maxwell

Well Known Member
Not RV related but I am curious how CFIs are doing financially. My gut feel is that there are probably not enough students to go around to make it very lucrative financially. The intangibles are pretty good, but are you CFIs making money?
 
He he he...I'm currently a CFII at a large Part 141 flight school, and can tell you that, unless you're fortunate enough to have a salary position at a large flight education department, you're probably going to not be making much $$. Sad fact of life for most CFI's...
 
One of the biggest problems in aviation. We are not retaining our expierienced instructors. An instructor job has never paid well in relation to the liability and responsibility that goes with it and as a result very few stick with it. I did it for 2 yrs and enjoyed most aspects of the job but had to move on for financial reasons alone.

I applaud those who do it for a living.

Ryan Dickensheets CFII/MEI/Gold Seal
 
About a year ago I retired from the Air Force and tried to make a living as a CFI. Needless to say I am back working for the Air Force as a government contractor in the space business.

Bill Murrish
CFII
 
No one I know makes enough money as a CFI to live except those that work in EXTREMELY ritsy places like Santa Monica and Van Nuys CA...
 
My last CFI hourly was $12-$15 hour

I was lucky to bill 30 to 60 hours a month. I was really part time and full timers where hard pressed to bill over a 100-120 hours. Many months I billed more than full timers. This was all in the late 80's and early 90's.

Remember when you pay a FBO $35 an hour for a CFI, the CFI only gets part of that. I was last payed $12-$15 an hour and the FBO charged $25 I recall. I started at $10 an hour.

So lets say the highest payed CFI was $15 x 1200 hours/yr (ground and flight), that is $18,000 for the year. In the real world CFI's don't bill that many hours every month, some do. Depends on the location and part of country. Chance is the annual salary is closer to $10,000, way back when. The sad part is I don't think the economics have changed much in 10-15 years. As you become more senior, FBO's will pay the CFI more, but the FBO still "pimps" you out and takes a cut. What was the academy awards movie song of the year, "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp" or CFI. Its not like the FBO's are making the big bucks either. I have friends that owned a FBO.

Independent CFI? Not common. You need the shelter of a FBO for equipment to rent, insurance and maintenance.

I guess even if the going rate today was $25 (what the FBO pays the CFI) and the CFI could bill 100 hours a month, that is $30,000. I believe that the typical going annual income is half of that even today. However people do it to get the hours. Instead of paying $60-$140 an hour to fly a single/twin, they are making a few coins and building hours. I did it and so did many pilots. Right of passage I guess.

I was going to "pimp" myself and my RV-7 out for training, but after thinking about what I would have to charge, how many hours I would need to fly to pay the extra insurance premium, it turned out to be a wash. Also having a stranger abuse my personal plane (that I have a emotional attachment to) is a little like torture. I would love to help and love teaching, but it is just not worth the liability, I am sorry to say.

Car mechanics make $80 an hour and your kids piano teacher makes $60 hour. A CFI who has your life in his/her hands and gets $15-$25 / hr.

I loved ever minute of my 1800 hours dual given and have great memories of students jumping up and down or hugging me after solo or passing their check ride. That's cool thing to be a part of.

George, still have my CFI (inst/me)
 
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Love or Money

All of the money I made as a part-time CFI went back into flying. It was a highly sporadic career amounting to only 1400 hours, mostly in the 70's and 80's. After 40 years I'm still an instuctor, but currently my wife is my only student (she gets it for free). If you find a good instructor who is not looking to move on to the airlines, consider yourself fortunate. Chances are they're doing it for love, not money.
 
Flight instructing was the most enjoyable job I have ever had. I did it full time from 1999-2003 and continue to do it part time today. I worked my butt off at a fairly busy part 141 school and made $13,000 in my worst year, $22,000 my best. I also flew charter and sold aircraft, which netted an occasional commission. I had to quit and get a real job when we had kids.

I gave nearly 2000 hours of dual, and really felt like I was an effective instructor about the time I quit - it just takes that long to get good at it, like anything else in life. Knowing what I know now, I cannot BELIEVE the FAA allowed me (or anyone else) to become an instructor with 300 hours total time. Frightening!

JP
 
Insurance Cost

I find that the insurance cost for a current CFI is a problem. I don't know how many CFI's get insurance to teach, but I find that it is a must. Liability these days is no joke. I have a full time job to live, the rest of the income from training goes to insurance and maintenance of the RV6. I use a set of tires in 40hs of training, mainly touch and go's.
We will see what the insurance comes out to be for Training in the RV-10.

Alex De Dominicis
CFII
 
I have a dream job for a CFI

I work for a FAR 121 airline as a flight ops instructor. I get to be a CFI and I get paid a living wage while I do it!

The best of both worlds.
 
gmcjetpilot said:
Car mechanics make $80 an hour and your kids piano teacher makes $60 hour. A CFI who has your life in his/her hands and gets $15-$25 / hr.

Many years (decades) ago I had an older friend (to me anyway, punk kid that I was then) that had a saying on the back of his business card (front showed his baby, a J3) that said something like:

"Being an airplane driver is a lot like being a prostitute. It's hard to make a good living doing it when so many people are willing to do it for free."

Guess we just enjoy what we do more than other people?

Dave
CFIG
 
Steady Work

This looks like it could be an opportunity for a few CFIs to get some steady work for a while if they can handle living and working in beautiful Colorado.

COLORADO FLIGHT SCHOOL TO TRAIN AIR FORCE CADETS
Doss Aviation of Colorado Springs, Colorado, won a 10-year multi-million-dollar contract with the Air Force through which it will provide flight training and screening of Air Force pilots. Doss will administer a 40-day, 25-hour flight-screening course for up to 1,700 cadets per year. The program includes ground school, flight operations, and maintenance, as well as cadet housing and dining, and will be operated out of a single facility in Pueblo. Cadets will train with a fleet of up to 45 Diamond DA20 C1s. Frank Hunter, president of Doss Aviation, said the DA-20 C1 combines excellent high-density-altitude performance with a proven track record at the Air Force Academy. For more information, see the Web site.
 
CFI Problem

A problem I see with the CFI industry that was alluded to in the post above (that it is hard to make a living at it when so many people will do it for free) is not to be understated. And a root cause of that is that the FAA is willing to certify an instructor with little to no practical experience and 290 hours TT.

Think about it. A golf instructor doesn't take up golf one spring day, play a few courses over the next 60 or 90 days, and then charge $80 an hour for lessons at the end of the season to would-be players. Same thing for a piano teacher. Instead, these people have years of EXPERIENCE - something very few CFI's have.

And the reason for that is that CFI's often view it as a stepping stone to a better job, and the FAA promotes this by allowing initial candidates to apply with 290 hours. What would happen if the FAA started raising the minimum hours for an initial CFI candidate to 1000 hours? 2000 hours? 5000 hours? The price of instruction would have to go way up in order to attract these professionals, but so would the quality of instruction.

Many CFI's that I worked with had never held a job before of any kind, or if they had, it was at Subway or the Gap and were making $7 bucks an hour so $13-15 was a windfall to them (I was different - I left a professional career to flight instruct - big financial shock.) These people had no interest in teaching, and would do anything just to get the hours needed to move on, including working for free (heck, some of them still lived with their parents - what real expenses do you have then?)

I lost an instrument student one time because the instructor at the next desk over had approached the student without my knowledge and offered to teach him for free since that instructor wanted instrument time for the airlines. I lost another paying customer flying along as a safety pilot in the right seat of King Air because another recent multi-engine instructor approached the owner and offered to fly all his trips for free because he wanted the multi time. In both cases I approached these instructors and tried to explain the effect their "whoring" has on the industry, but I just got blank stares in response. Neither one could understand that what they were doing was wrong.

What would happen if all the flight instructors at a particular school stood up one day and said they wanted $50 an hour take home or they would quit? The school would say go ahead and quit, and then the school would go hire a bunch more 300 hour CFI's and it would be business as usual.

As I write this, I also cannot escape the irony that I myself was a 300 hour instructor, and I too used the system to build hours. However, the difference was that I wanted to BE an instructor, not just use it as a stepping stone. 2000 hours later, I realized how difficult this is and I am back to a desk job.

As I see it, until the FAA raises the requirements to become an instructor, or the flight schools of America start requiring instructors with experience, or the flying public start demanding instructors with experience, the problem will persist for the forseeable future.
 
I too think CFI's are woefully underpaid. I also think CFI's with more experience probably have more potential to be better instructors. At the same time, I had a fantastic instructor who was recently out of school and was building hours. He was a great teacher and a good pilot. He now flys P-3's in fire suppression out of CA, but I still fly with him whenever I can. I don't think I could have done much better with a more experienced CFI. I hate to see young instructors get knocked just for being young and (relatively) inexperienced.

Further, while I would not use this argument to rationalize paying CFI's as poorly as we do, how many of us would have ever learned to fly if the CFI's hourly rate was $35-40, let alone $60-80? Look at other countries. The future of our "hobby" depends on enough pilots being financially able to learn how to fly so that we have enough of a constituency to protect our interests.

I'd love to quit my day job and instruct if I could earn a sustainable living but, as with the rest of capitalism, for good or ill, the market prevails. Just my thoughts.
 
What the other instructors was doing was NOT wrong. That's the nature of a free market... people can offer a product (service) at whatever price they are willing to accept. If someone else is willing to sell the same product for a lower price, that's called competition and is good for everyone. What you are really saying is that you want the government to step in and protect your prices by eliminating some of your competition. That is exactly the sort of short sighted thinking that has all but killed general aviation.

The reality is that there are not enough students. If half the moms in the country wanted their kid to know how to fly a Cessna (the way so many want their kids to be able to play a piano) then there would be a better market for flight instruction. If flying a piper had the appeal of playing guitar, there would be more money in being a CFI. If being flying a Cirrus was as important as driving a honda to getting and holding any sort of real job in this country, there'd be a lot more money in being a CFI. But the fact is that only a few people learn to fly.

Making flight more exclusive, or less likely to be financially rewarding, will not increase the number of people who want to fly. All it will do is marginalize flying further until the only people who learn to fly are a few trust fund babies, a few scholarship kids, and retirees. At that point, the market for CFIs will be really abysmal. And the pay will be abysmal. And more schools will close. And more airports wil close. And flying will be even less valuable... and fewer people will be able to work in the industry... and our influence on lawmakers will be even smaller... and general aviation will die. The only way to improve the lot of CFIs is to boost the number of people flying. Perhaps the sport pilot license will do that... it's the only real hope that's been offered recently. Otherwise, expect CFI pay to stay embarassingly low.

Of course, a good CFI with a good reputation should be able to charge a nice premium, because some people (like me) are willing to pay more for a better teacher.
 
Right on the head Jon!

You hit it right on the head, Jon! The problem is too many instructors and not enough students - period! Try to raise the prices and you end up with even more instructors and even fewer pilots.

The objective of MOST new students is not to find the very best CFI possible. The objective is to find a CFI for the cheapest price possible. Sorry, but I think it is a fact in most cases there is not enough perceived differentiation between CFIs to drive new students to only the very best. The fact that a CFI is a CFI implies that he/she is qualified to teach. And by definition he/she is. We can get all romantic about wanting to learn from only the (often self-proclaimed) Top Guns of GA, but the fact is that there are a relatively large number of CFIs out there who do a da*n fine job. I don't want to put anyone down, but I think most CFIs would be hard pressed to objectively and quantifiably convince a large number of new students that he/she is somehow the guru of CFIs and worth 4 times the price of the average CFI. It is simple econonmics.

There are theoretically two resolutions to this economic problem: 1) More students, as Jon indicated, 2) fewer instructors. Either one of these will resolve the problem IF we are dealing with a large market. But because the cost of flying is cost prohibitive to the masses, and because there are so many pilots willing to become CFIs for whatever reason, we end up with too many CFIs fighting over too few students.

If I read Van's article correctly, he believes that light sport will not resolve this issue. Yes light sport may bring some new students into aviation, but the majority of light sport pilots will come from the current ranks who fear losing their medical. Then it becomes a situation in which we cycle aging pilots into light sport to replace those who retire or pass on. So it becomes a new market, but it will largely be created out of the ranks of the old market.

The only way to mitigate this issue is to grow the market. If anyone has the answer to this problem they will become very wealthy along with a lot of other folks. My answer is cheaper aircraft. If we can find a way to make aircraft certification cheaper for the manufacturers, we can drive down the price of certified aircraft. Cheaper aircraft means lower rental rates and more purchases which means cheaper cost of productions and so on and so on and so on. So my answer is one I really believe in, "Get the government off the backs of business (within reason to maintain safety) and turn the market loose to drive new growth."

I knew I would find a way to blame the government for this thing. :)
 
Tom Maxwell said:
If I read Van's article correctly, he believes that light sport will not resolve this issue. Yes light sport may bring some new students into aviation, but the majority of light sport pilots will come from the current ranks who fear losing their medical. Then it becomes a situation in which we cycle aging pilots into light sport to replace those who retire or pass on. So it becomes a new market, but it will largely be created out of the ranks of the old market.

I'm an example of someone brought to aviation by the LSA rules. My decision to get flight training, and to build an airplane, started because the LSA rules were "all but certain to pass". I was going to build a Zenith 601 or 701 (waffled back and forth daily). That's why I sought out a CH2000 trainer for my first training... it was as close as I could find to a CH601 at a flight school. Of course, once I had a medical and started seeing flying as something more than, well, extreme off-roading, I started looking at Bearhawks, RVs, Glasairs, Cozys, and other non-LS aircraft. Even some certified aircraft I'd never even thought about owning before.

I was 30 when I went through that transformation (last year).

I'd bet I'm not unique. I know I'm not unique... but I also know the light sport news hasn't spread outside of some fairly tight circles. About a month ago I found myself telling someone I met at a business meeting about the light sport rules. He had not heard about them at all. He was totally surprised (and excited) by the prospect. It was a new possibility for him, which he'd totally dismissed because the whole "medical" thing was strange and scary to him.
 
Jon

Jon, welcome! No doubt there will be some others come into the fold as a result of LSA. Now if we can find about a million other Jon's we will be moving in the right direction.

I am curious, though. What does LSA provide for you that a PPL does not? And what kept you from jumping in with a PPL?

I for one am completely underwhelmed by LSA. The only positive I see is it allows people with medical issues to fly (which is a good thing) -- provided of course they recognize the medical issue and act before their flight surgeon recognizes it. On the other hand, a pilot is still responsible for flying safely. If a pilot knows of a medical issue that might affect a safe flight, he/she is required to ground himself/herself anyway.
 
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Yep, about a million more would be a good start. :)

As it works out, the light sport license itself didn't provide me any real benefit. That's why I'm still a PPL student though I've met all the requirements for an LS ticket..well, actually I took the PPL knowledge test which probably doesn't count but you get the idea. I could get the LS cert within a week if I chose to do so, but on the PPL front I've got more cross countries to do.

It was the accessibility in a sense. The combination of aircraft and training costs to do what I wanted to do, which was daytime sightseeing flights in moderately remote (but not true wilderness) areas.

There are quite a few "advanced ultralights" e.g. the Challenger II, E-Z Flyer, Chinook, etc that are very inexpensive ($18K USD with engine), quick to build (350 hours to air) and very appealing to me. For a total of maybe $25,000 including plane and training you can have a two-seat fun plane that can be trailered around to interesting sights, flown off short fields, and do basic (slow) cross country flights. That's about what my first sailboat cost by the time I was done.

Beyond that, there is a growing selection of fun factory-built airplanes in the $80K range. If I didn't enjoy the building process I'd say my -8A will have a labor cost of over $100K... which is to say that if I spent the build time working, I'd be able to pay for a pre-built LSA faster than I'll have my homebuilt -8A.

As for why no PPL...I was avoiding it because I saw aviation as too expensive to justify. The image "outsiders" see is $500,000 and up planes... and security gates everywhere. Where I grew up the two nearest airports were the USMC air station and a major (C) airport that was very visitor-unfriendly.
 
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