Heyas Guys,

I was a CFI during the lean years of early 1990s.

Yes there were some airlines that were pay to play. I remember Kiwi, where you had to own a 50k or so stock stake.

The pay for training thing had gotten rolling as far back as 1988...I remember an article in Flying magazine talking about the Flightsafety program that TWExpress had going for Metroliners.

Times were a bit different. %99 of the pilots paid their dues CFIing until 1200/200, then then flew checks for a year. Then they went to a 135 commuter job flying metros, jballs or 1900s, usually based in places like East Butthole, Minnesota. Times to get on at a GOOD commuter, like Henson, or Horizon were 3000/1000 with at least SOME previous 135 time, and time to upgrade was 4 years, but they had a great contract (A-fund, crew meals, etc).

I see a lot of problems going forward. The era of the medium sized mom-n-pop flight school, where they might have had 15-25 CFIs and a decent sized fleet, where you could log 65-85 hours a month is done.

The age of the small commuter is done. Who flys turboprops these days? Great Lakes and very few others. Anyone remember GP Express? Air New England? Crown?

Air21 and the collapse of the big 3 has laid waste to the piston overnight market, and many of those aircraft will be disposed of and no one is building new piston twins or light twin turboprops (Conquests, etc).

Tough times ahead...

Nu