Chuck Cummins

Should be up and running by July.

firefighterplt

If you walk away from it now, it’ll be tough to break back in.

I was ready to go to the regionals when this hit. Now I’m trying to find a flying job, ANY flying job, and no one is hiring. Once you leave that CFI job, someone experienced is likely to snatch it up. With 850 hours, you’ll have a hell of a time finding something else until this economy solidly rebounds.

Choose wisely, best of luck.

Sepecat

I still believe you can fly and be safe
wear protective gear and watch your students
if they don’t exhibit any sign of illness you would be fine
lets put things in prospective guys
the virus isn’t jumping in the air looking for a new host. It’s travel by contact or aerosol vapors PPE would be fine

LoneStar32

You are not over thinking it. Those are some very valid issues that every flight student will have to evaluate before moving forward and investing in this career. It looks worse and worse every day for this industry, even multitudes more then when you wrote this post 12 days ago.

LoneStar32

I am not sure what, if anything, this has to do with this thread and why you felt the need to post this. But you did so I will post the counter argument. "Time builders" are usually fresh instructors who just went through the training you are going through. So they are more able to relate what you are going through. I found that a lot of lifer instructors have been doing it so long that they are unable to relate to the new students and are impatient with them. They also like to complain to other CFIs about their students all the time. When I instructed there was a lifer working where I worked and he would find every excuse in the world to not fly and do ground. He got paid the same either way and would rather sit in his comfy office then out in a 152 in ninety degree heat. His students got way more ground then they needed and in my year there he did not have a single student advance to a checkride.

DontLookDown

The OP should consider now to be a perfect time to start flight training- especially if they’re career driven.

This industry is cyclical. It crashes and burns every 10 years consistently enough that it is becoming somewhat predictable.

2001: 911 happened, it really sucked to be a pilot but then the industry recovered a couple years later and people were getting hired at 250 hours.

2009: Recession. Everyone was furloughed and the industry was terrible. You had to have thousands of hours of time to find a job that paid 20k a year. Fast forward to 2013 and the “shortage” became an issue. Wages skyrocketed and hiring bonuses became a thing

2020: Coronavirus. The industry will suffer. People will lose their jobs. Airlines may merge or go under, but fast forward to 2022-2023 and things will ramp up fast and stay the way until close to 2030, when everything will fall apart again.

You want to get hired at the beginning of a hiring wave. As anyone who got hired in the last year is about to find out- catching the tail end of one sucks. People just starting primary training now will be able to catch the front end of the next wave.

DontLookDown

I agree with you. Fresh CFI’s are sometimes much better than lifers.

I was using the word “timebuilder” as someone who puts the students needs second to their own.

Im not sure why I posted that in this thread either. I remember writing that in response to someone complaining about receiving poor instruction. Either that post got deleted or I got distracted and responded to the wrong thread!

tsimmns927

So as long as someone is ready to be at the regionals by say 2022 or 2023 they should be good to go then? I’m assuming give this thing a year to run it’s course and then a while for the recalls that might have to happen. Hopefully though for you pilots already out there the furloughs don’t come.

DontLookDown

Yes, exactly.

The pilots hired during the last year or current CFI’s that were planning on being hired within the next year will be the most negatively affected by this. The current CFI’s will be stuck working for low/unpredictable wages longer than they budgeted for. The recent airline hires may have it worse and end up out on the streets for a bit.

Anyone starting their training right now may very well time this next hiring wave perfectly.

Hiring should ramp up again strong by 2023 at the latest. Have your ATP minimums and your resume polished by then. Assuming we get at least 5 years of good before the inevitable suck shows up, you’ll have 3 years at a regional and then 2 years at the Legacy or LCC that you hope to spend your career at.

Two years seniority should hopefully prevent you from being furloughed when the economy crashes and everything sucks again, which will happen between 2028-2032. It happens approx every decade, give or take 2 years.

rickair7777

Lifers are sometimes odd ducks, like everything else it depends on the specific individual.

A good time-builder would of course be better than an apathetic lifer CFI.

The best lifer CFI types are usually independents, because they can keep more of the money they make. Or part-timers, who typically have other financial means and just enjoy flying... I knew a couple of those who worked at schools just to avoid the admin hassles and overhead of being an independent.

If a lifer just wants a desk job, it's usually easy to become the manager or owner of a school.