CFI Workload
 

i know it varies from person to person, but in general for you all CFI's, how many hours a month/week is a good comfort zone to where you're getting enough flight time, but you're not working so hard that you're miserable?

i have a job opportunity to CFI for this school in annapolis, he's going to pay for the rest of my CFI training, but I'm not sure I'll get as many hours as I was hoping for, especially multi (at least in the time frame i was thinking)... but yet I'm not really sure if what i was hoping for is realistic...

i guess its all relative too, if i'm enjoying the job, whats it matter how many hours i'm getting.... i need to start trying to beat that mindset into my head.

what do you guys think?

I have found working 8hr days with 5hrs flying to be a good balance. I can do that for more than a week without getting too burnt out. When the days stretch to the 10+ on duty with near 8hrs flying, that's when i start to get fatigued and my quality of instruction goes down. Teaching can be mentally exhausting, especially when you're new at it.

It all depends on what you're doing too. Flying a 4 hour cross country with a primary student isn't nearly as tiring as flying multiple approaches in IMC for 4 hours.

I usually carry about 8 students, a mix of primaries and instrument students. Work about a 10-11 hour duty day and sometimes never even touch the plane. Flight training devices FTL.

Geez... I need to find a new job. I sit around here for 6-8 hours a day...waiting for the phone to ring, and occasionally get 2-3 hours in, most of the time just one+. Pay is good and better than what I would have made at the "fly a lot job", but I'm obviously not flying enough to get where I want to be when I want to be there.

Girlfriend starts grad. school at Texas Tech next semester, anybody know of a nice place to work in Lubbock?


*Edit... PS sorry for the thread jack. To answer the question I think i'd be good with 8hr. duty with 5hr. flight, after that it can get a little repetitive and why work more than 8 hours a day?

10 hour workdays with 6 hours of flying is fine 5 days a week. I can work the rare 12 hour day with 8 hours of flying, but that makes it hard to come to work the next day.

For me, the instrument students are much easier to teach than the primaries, at least in VFR conditions.

I have 8 students who all want to fly every day and several more lurking around our school, waiting for an instructor. There's plenty of work around for instructors right now, but your deal sounds hard to beat. If you need someone to pay for your training, go for it. If not, pay for it yourself and find a better job. There are plenty of schools out there now that will pay more than $40K/year and give you 100+ hours/month.

When I was full-time CFI'ing I was working 6-7 days a week. Small flight school, 2 C152's, 2 172's, 2 full-time, and a few part time instructors. Overall, my weekdays were scattered work, so I would come in when I had someone scheduled, or to help out maintenance(Extra cash, worth it!). My weekends were my money-makers, so I'd work 8-8, or later then. I had periods where I was getting burnt out, but it was mainly when I was the only full-time guy, and I was flying all 7-days, all the time. We started having our "hard-day" off once a week between the two full-timers, which really helped out.

I started out doing 6 days from 7am until 7pm and averaged 8 flying hours per day and that was overload

I settled down to 5 days 7am unil 5pm (10 hours) and did around 6 hours flying and that was alot more tolerable. There were never any lulles except weather so it was 6 logged hours and 10 worked hours every single day so even that can start to wear on you.

did you guys get your students handed to you? or did you have to go out and find them?

7 days a week was too much. I used to do Monday through Thursday, at least 8-6 and Friday Saturday was 8-whenever. Sunday I'd do an afternoon flight. I found out the Sunday thing had to go. I needed at least one day where I wasn't at the airport to survive. Right now I have 10 students (2 PVT/INST, 2 INST, and 4 COMM, 2 Intro). Since I'm at a 141 university, my students are assigned.

students were assigned..had a full load from day one.