Originally Posted by
Shaun
I have noticed that the longer a CFI instructs, the more picky he is about what airlines they would apply to. I still fairly new to instructing, but I am wondering if anyone has any input on instructing for another year and building hours vs. trying to get an airline job sooner than later. I am not talking about GoJets or Mesa, but perhaps Big Sky or another airline that will hire at 500-600 hours TT (I currently only have 40 Multi, bummer) that would be okay to work at for a few years or so. It seems like flying a turboprop would be better time spent than instructing out of a 152, and that could get the PIC turbine faster as well. I guess that I am not seeing why someone would opt to instruct for a long time instead of going to a regional. Perhaps to get on to a "better" airline like ExpressJet or SkyWest instead of BigSky?
I've known such instructors too - they meet or exceed mins for many regionals, but choose to hold out. Somebody explained to me one reason for this is because let's say you have 700 TT, get an interview with XYZ Regional, get hired by XYZ, and then class gets canceled/you get furloughed/etc etc. Then you're stuck in a bad place.. you already quit your CFI job, and don't quite have enough hours to be competitive to a whole lot of other jobs out there. So some people would rather wait until they have a good amount of hours under their belt, say 1500. A security thing, I guess.
And another small reason would be the pay.. I guess it depends on where you teach, but if you work at some large aviation universities (or even some busy FBOs), you actually take a pay cut the first year or two of getting onto a regional.