Originally Posted by ToiletDuck
I would do a little searching. I make around 50k a year as a CFI. I train airforce pilots. I make $25 an hour and am guaranteed all the students I can want. I train 4 guys at a time in two hour slots. So that's 8hrs a day I bill because they only get 25 flight hours and they have to pass the written before they solo. So if it's bad weather I'm still giving them their full two hours. In the afternoons frm 5-7 and 7-9 I train civilians sometimes. It gets pretty tiring but I take it while it's there. I figure with the times I don't fly are made up by those flights in the afternoon.
If I were you I'd stay away from the big places. They make their money two ways. By sticking it to the students and sticking it to the employees. Find you a local FBO somewhere. A place where their primary concern is not flight instructing. A place where their main money comes from elsewhere. Where I fly they charge $27.50 and I get $25.00 of it. Most places charge like $35 and only give $15.00. F that. Just take your time and look for a good place. If you want PM me and I'll give you my login on climbto350.com. You'll get a job if you just hang in there! I was reroofing houses when I found this one. Just give yourself 2-3 months of hard looking and you'll get that job worth getting!
Well, you are indeed in a unique situation and should consider yourself one of the lucky ones. Where are you going to find many places that charge $2.50 more than they are paying you or places that will pay you even when the weather craps out and you can't fly? They are very few and far in between.
I don't necessarily agree with the "stay away from the big places" either. I worked for ERAU for a year and a half. I started at almost $13.00 an hour with a benefits package (full time employee) and was making about $15.50 when I left (this was 4 years ago). That's over $600 a week working 40 hours, which was easy to do with 8-10 students. Good health care, life insurance, 401k, tuition assistance, and 24 hour per week disability pay (based on 60% of a 40 hour work week - which saved my arse when I needed surgery). I had 8-10 students to work with during the Fall/Spring semesters (quite a bit less during the summer though). I taught in brand new equipment. New 172's, Arrows, and Seminoles. Maintenance was top notch. They don't screw around there. I can't say the same for some FBO's and yes, I tried the FBO thing before applying to ERAU and it lasted 2 weeks before I left. There was just something about sitting around on beautiful days with 3 or 4 other CFI's waiting for a prospective customer to walk in so I could play salesman and try to land myself a student and then fly POS aircraft for $13 an hour I couldn't take. After a year and a half at ERAU, I had about 1000 hours of instruction given in the aircraft and another 200 or so in the sim.
The only downsides were: Slow summers (3-4 students to work with), no pay when a flight Cx'd for weather, lots of politics getting into the Seminole at the time, especially after 9-11, busy airport/airspace created some challenges for the instructor to provide the most efficient flight training possible. Getting in as much training as possible in the amount of time you had after spending 15-20 minutes to get off the ground and another 15-20 minutes to get back in became an art. Students got comfortable with the busy airspace and radio work though, which was a plus. Conjested airspace required you to have about 6 eyeballs around your head. Had some close calls with near midairs.