mike734

I visited my old flight school at SQL (San Carlos, CA) recently. It's been taken over by a pilot mill for foreign nationals and was closed on a Sunday but the flying club next door was open. I dropped in to talk to a flight instructor there. He was pretty happy with his situation and claimed no aspiration for the airlines. He charges $60/hr for instruction and keeps all of it (taxes, of course but no flight school cut). He claims some instructors make $100k/yr. I suppose it's possible.

If I were contemplating getting back into aviation as an instructor I would move to the busiest area possible and throw myself into it. That means you have to live in an area with high salary individuals willing to fork out the kind of money it takes to get a certificate. San Carlos is located right next to Oracle and the heart of Silicon Valley. It might be the perfect place to be a flight instructor.

To succeed in any venture follow the following advice: "Show up early and often" that's it! Of course the crux of this message is that you have to show up in the right place. If you do, you will make the friends you need to network and stand a pretty good chance of achieving your goal. As you can see from these forums though, you can do everything right and still end up with a broken career.

Good luck.

FlyingKat

Yes but there is also a real shortage of CFIs because of this. Many schools are training Asian (Chinese in particular) students and are looking for CFIs. I noticed one school in Florida was offering a $2000 bonus for CFIs that stayed one year.

Pancho

I know during the a previous 'upturn' in the late 90s. Some guys who were years out of currency were getting picked up by pt 121 non-sched freight outfits. I can see the same thing happening again as alot of these pilots hit retirement age. It can be a rough sched for some though.