Originally Posted by toeman9

I started flight school in early September and have been at it now for about a month. I fly 3 days per week, each flight averaging 1.5 hours, and have a total of 17.1 logged hours. My CFI likes to spend about 3 flights per lesson and that is why I am only on Lesson 7 in the Jeppesen PP Syllabus. Is this pace fairly typical? I feel like I should be more advanced in my training. I am aware of the cost of flight school and estimated $5000 for my PPC. But only being at Lesson 7, I have already spent $2700 and have 19 more lessons to go. I am not a slow pilot. I know my maneuvers and I do them well. My TO and LND are decent and my radio communications are clear and concise.

Often times I get stuck with refueling the plane and because I don’t have a solo endorsement my CFI is required to accompany me. He logs our fueling time as instruction even though he doesn’t help me fuel. Instead he justifies the instruction time by rambling on about fuel grades and clouds. During our pre and post briefings he seems to chatter about stuff that I already know and I nod my head and say, “Yes, I know I read about that” but he continues on and eventually I get billed for instruction time. During my CFI’s summer vacation, I flew with two other CFIs who didn’t talk nearly as much and who I had really good flights with. My maneuvers were better and my landings were way better.

I liked the teaching technique of the substitute CFIs better than my primary CFI. The S-CFI would ask me to perform a maneuver and then wouldn’t touch anything or say anything. When I said “maneuver complete” that was when he would critique me and have me do the maneuver again. My primary CFI likes to give me a maneuver and talk throughout the maneuver about what I could be doing better. Then he gets his hand all over everything to “show” me something and I never really get a chance to complete the munuever correctly and independently. Plus he never uses the check list and when I do, I feel rushed because he then says, “Here, just do it this way”.

I’m feeling very frustrated about my very expensive flight training and am seriously considering switching instructors. My primary CFI says I can switch anytime, but it would be best after my solo endorsement. But it seems like the darn endorsement is just another carrot on a stick that allows me to linger in some refueling limbo while my CFI racks up instruction time.