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.

This is illegal, by FAR u are require to have a 24 hour break every 6 days.

yeah see this is another thing I am worrying a little about.. I'm getting the impression that I will fly as much as I'm willing to find my own students, the harder to "advertise/recruit" the better off I'll be... I'd rather just be able to pick my students off a platter if. If I want more, I can have more, if I want less, I'll take less... meh

That's actually my retirement goal. I took my current job because it is an opportunity to learn and teach and help me to the next level. But I hate the bureaucracy and paperwork. When I get done with the big stuff, I want to go back to being a CFI and teach who I want the way I want, all legal of course.

I worked at an assembly line school. Students from overseas came for three weeks to get a PPL. They flew twice a day, everyday, so they rarely had the same CFI for more than about 1/3 of the dual.

The full time instructors were scheduled 4 on, 2 off; but we usually worked one of our off days. On average, we worked 25 days a month. A typical day was 8 hours in the plane over about 9 1/2 hours of duty. Additionally, we spent about an hour either opening up in the morning or tying down the planes at night.

Out of the 15 months I worked there, I broke 200 flight hours per month three times.

It didn't take us long to get the 1000 yard stare.

Which FAR is that? I would love to have a full day off once in a while.

Yeah, I'd like to see that too. I just decided not to schedule flights on Sunday unless either Friday or Saturday is out for weather AND my students really need to fly. That's what happened this week.

The only hour limitation is 61.195 (a) Hours of training. In any 24-consecutive-hour period, a flight instructor may not conduct more than 8 hours of flight training.

When I was instructing at Riddle I typically had 6-8 students, though often in the fall when we were swamped I'd stretch my limits and that would go up to 12-14 at times. Usually worked 6 days/week. Obviously some people were not flown as often as they'd like in that case, but we were short on CFIs at the time. 8 is a good number though if you want to fly your students often enough, but not exhaust yourself. Maybe find a few more if some of those are part-timers that fly on the weekends, etc. One good thing about working your butt off though when you CFI...if you move on to the airlines, the schedule seems easy!

That sounds like a Part 135 scheduled op's FAR to me, not 141 training, but I don't know the 141 rules either.

.

Thats no rule in 141 either. I currently have 5 hard students, and I wouldn't mind a couple more. Here, they assign us some students, but we can request more. It takes forever to get more, however. We can pick up students on the fly as well (Their instructor is sick, or on vacation, or they haven't been assigned an instructor yet, etc.). I'm enjoying the job, its more mentally stimulating that flying divers, and less actual work (I love flying, but 7.8 hours a day in a 182 in 90 degree weather, climbing at Vy to 11K over and over got tiring after a while).

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!