Originally Posted by
mooney
Some CFI's are the worst airline pilots I have flown with. 1000 hours of day VFR around the pattern doesnt do much in a jet shooting an approach to mins in a blizzard.
Sometimes its a matter of being in the right place at the right time, without having to buy your flight time. Then you wont need a CFI and can have just as good quality, if not better flight time doing things besides instruction.
Before I get accused of CFI bashing, I'm not....just showing another side of the story. There's more than one route to quality flight time, some are just harder/luckier to find than others. But a blanket statement that a CFI should be required for an airline job is a little too far out there..
I agree with your statement. However, it depends on the CFI background really. If a CFI wasn't inhibited by the SOP of a large 141 school then he/she might have taken students into the soup for instrument training. I did this as much as I could, but in FL, it was like chasing rainbows by and large.
You've got to be pretty sharp to fly IMC with a new student, stay on top of everything and teach at the same time.
But, by and large, most instruction, especially in FL is hours and hours of flying the circuit. I did 22 touch and gos one afternoon in one flight back to back preparing a student for solo. Thats more like the kind of flying you get.