Are CFI Jobs Becoming a Pyramid Scheme?
 

I must admit I'm new here, but want to throw a different perspective into the mix on "building flight time." [Skip to the bold to avoid my time-building CFI advice rant.]

It seems like the advice is always to work as a CFI if you want to build hours. In every thread where someone wants other ideas to avoid it, they get told to 'suck it up' (or similar). The perspective is often juvenile: "I did it, you should too"...almost like it's a mandatory right of passage in aviation. But that's not the point here. Please don't respond with the virtues of having worked as a CFI.

I GET IT. You really only know something well if you can teach it...blah, blah, blah... I have taught high school for multiple years. Both physics and math. I have a B.S. in Physics. I know about teaching, and am not afraid of challenging technical or complex subject matter. I think if I were to have continued teaching full-time A FEW MORE YEARS, I would really learn how to be an exceptional teacher. For the same reason I would never go to a low-time CFI (anyone with less than 1,000 hours or so of dual already given). A Flight Instructor should be the pinnacle of aviation, not a career stepping stone...and below the Regionals at that! But I digress...

My point is different. The problem with the old "CFI pipeline" model is simple: there is no way (mathematically speaking) student pilot training will be able to support even a fraction of the pilots working toward airline careers within the newly mandated climate of 1500 hours. There are simply too few who are both interested and able to begin flight lessons (either with career aspirations or for business/leisure flying). Look at the student pilot data...not too promising lately.

Furthermore, there have never been more CFIs with active certificates. The FAA data says so. Right around 99,000 at present (2013 data). This number was 64,000 in 1990. That's the supply side. Now for the demand. There were about 40,000 NEW private pilots created in 1990. And the most recent data from 2013? Less than 16,000 new private pilots. Not looking good for anyone wanting to work as a CFI!!! These numbers mean that the ratio of NEW private pilots to active CFIs has decreased by a factor of four. In other words, there are four (4) times fewer students per CFI now than in 1990 (using PPL completion as an indicator). Only one out of four!!


The question is this: Are there enough low-time jobs and CFI jobs COMBINED to produce sufficient numbers of 1500-hour pilots for the airlines? Is there enough demand in the Part 91 segment (plus Part 135 SIC) to produce pilots capable of applying for FO positions?

[Please do not make this a debate about the merits of working as a CFI or about slamming the 1500-hour rule. Let's discuss the question above!!]

What is the FAA criteria for "active" CFI? I renew mine every two yrs, but have not used it in 10. BTW, I think the whole airline career is a pyramid scheme!

I too have keep my CFI current and haven't instructed in over a decade.

Same here, I renew my CFI every two years but don't use it.

Yes, I get it...Most CFIs are not active even though they have current certificates. But the same was largely true in the comparison year of 1990, wasn't it?

The "four times fewer" number I gave was a ratio of ratios.
[PPL issued 1990 / legal CFIs 1990] divided by [PPL issued 2013 / legal CFIs 2013]

This type of statistical analysis should eliminate the inactive-but-legal CFIs who were present very large numbers in both data sets.

Fact remains there are almost four times fewer students to go around. (Actually, 3.86 times fewer by my calculations, but 4 is close enough.)

Forgot to include the data source:
https://www.faa.gov/data_research/av...en_statistics/

Flying Slowly:

In my opinion the short answer would be No. Most entry level flying jobs want to see either ATP (non-restricted) minimums or Part 135 minimum hours. That is why most, not all people, choose to go the CFI route in order to build time. How else are you supposed to gain the hours (experience) to even apply? Maybe knowing someone in the company you'd apply too? That's the Catch 22.

Who cares? Where is it chiseled in stone that you or I or anyone else is owed any part of a career? There is no "scheme" to instructing. It's a job. Take it, or leave it. It doesn't exist for you or anyone else to "build" hours.

You may actually need to go get a job. Something other than instructing. You may need to slog it out towing banners, or gliders, or flying jumpers, or doing pipeline patrol, or flying folks at the Grand Canyon. You may need to do any number of things to get your "hours." That's the way it is.

The notion that one instructs for a little while and then climbs into the nearest passing airline for the ride is a myth perpetuated by the curtain climbers who managed to do so for a few years...the rest of us built our careers on hard work and it didn't come to us.

You may have to go get it, too. It's great that you've been a teacher; good stuff for flight students who can benefit from your teaching experience. It doesn't mean much for your aviation career outside of teaching, but it probably makes you a better you. If you're moving into an aviation career after already having established an adult life, be prepared to start over.

There are no guaranteed paths or careers in aviation. Flight instructing is one path, one job, but that's all it is; a job. No guarantees that anyone will hire you, no guarantees about the number of students you may get. It's a job.

Regarding "hours;" build experience, not hours. Two people fly the same airplane, do the same thing; one comes away with an hour of time, the other with an hour of experience. Build experience. If you want hours, falsify them, and write them into your logbook. That's what hours are worth. They're meaningless.

Experience cannot be bought. It is earned, one hour at a time, one landing at a time. You can fly the next hour of your career and land with an hour for your logbook, or one hour of experience richer. Your choice. If it's about building hours, save yourself the stress and fake it all. Otherwise, go get the experience, don't worry about the number of students (as it's irrelevant), and fly. If you don't have enough flying with students in your area, do what many of us did and go drum them up. If there isnt' enough work, then go tow banners this summer and come home with eight hundred hours of time, a lot more experience, and a lifetime of stories, and maybe even a few friends.

You may starve in the process, but you'll be a lot richer for the experience.

When I didn't have students, I taught ground schools to bring them in. I visited high schools and colleges. I towed banners advertising the flight instructing. I put together mall displays, and took apart and put together an airplane in a mall for a display. I got busy with Civil Air Patrol, and worked at several places with students. I towed an airpane through one of the longest parades in the country as a float, to advertise. Point is, the work doesn't necessarily come to you. You go to it. I worked at several locations to pick up adequate student loads, and did aircraft maintenance as well, on top of washing and waxing, and fueling. I worked a second and third job off-site, too. I did whatever I needed to do to make it work, as you may need to do.

There is no pyramid scheme. The only "scheme" is the plan you formulate for yourself. It's called a career.

Most of us when I moved up through the ranks, incidentally, couldn't get on with a commuter or regional without at least 2,500 hours or more, which meant a number of years of slogging it out in the trenches, earning our way. Many of us did night freight, as well as almost any other job you can imagine to get there. You might just need to do it, too.

Biggest crock of crap that I've seen in months.

You beat me to it. " You may starve" . That's an aviation brochure right there. :cool:

I hear what JohnBurke is saying, but how many professional industries rely on experienced, professional employees by having them simply meander from job to job, hoping for and conniving ways to get that experience? Does Mercedes-Benz hire mechanics and assemblyline workers this way? Are medical professionals educated and groomed this way? Does the US military find pilots this way?

I think these symposiums are right when they say more structure needs to exist in the training pipeline for this career. We have to change the way we think in the US about "dues earning" and "rugged individualism"; this doesn't wash in an increasingly high-tech globally competitive society. In fact, i don't think any first world country has as bad of a directionless education system as the US. I don't know of anywhere else where students are told to just get a degree and then wind up working somewhere totally out of their field.

With all this said, there is no substitute for experience in this career. Airlines don't want to pay for it and in the past the military supplied it. Also in the past, there were no regionals; if you couldn't afford to fly, you took Greyhound. Maybe we need to think about aviation training using the merchant marine academy example.

Is it a Ponzi scheme? Ultimately, yes, just like professional sports is a Ponzi scheme. There are only a few who make it to the show, out of a large number who play in college, semi-pro, etc.
There will be a number of folks who earn a commercial license but who won't ever really make a living from flying. That's just life, there is a lot of leftover slag after making iron. The process of producing pilots is inherently wasteful, the separating of wheat from chaff, the separating of capable pilots from those who paid $50,000 for a nice wall decoration. I do believe the majority who earn a commercial license will make their living flying, but I don't believe it is a "vast majority".
I think it will be a problem for new CFIs to find a job in a year or so. New CFIs will need a few years to earn their 1000+ hours, and to earn those hours each CFI will need to train more than five students. Then one of those trained students will replace the CFI. Are there enough other time-building jobs to absorb the other four students? I don't believe so, but I think the cream will rise to the top. Good students who become good CFIs will get the available CFI jobs. Many of them will have John Burke's determination. Many others won't, and will find other paths to success outside of aviation. Such is life.

Perhaps you simply haven't been there and done that, and therefore, wouldn't know.

Otherwise, you might attempt to contribute to the conversation, if you're able.

I don't know where Mercedez-Benz gets it's mechanics. Where to most auto workers come from? Off the street with little or no training. It doesn't take an extensive education to put the seat in a car all day every day for 20 years. Medical professionals are groomed this way; the medical professional obtains his or her training and his own expense, then seeks work, putting in long hours of residency, and ongoing training for many years to come. Does the military find it's pilots this way? Yes. Pilots compete for the opportunity, and then the taxpayer buys their actual training.

Airlines aren't expected to do that, and the airlines don't work the same way that the military does.

Who owes a prospective pilot candidate anything? If you want to learn to fly, it's all on you.

It has nothing to do with paying your dues. It has to do with entitlement. Nobody is entitled to a career as a pilot. No one is obligated to pump students to an instructor until he's done using the school and moves on with his career.

A student wants to have a career, who owes him or her a dime, or a student, or an hour?

Some airlines around the world pay for all the training for their students. Some students get in far over their head: a typical chinese contract for a chinese student is a 99 year term; the student owes 99 years of his life upon completing training. If the airline doesn't use him as a pilot, he still owes the years, whether it's sweeping hangars or scrubbing toilets. Other airlines have ab initio programs. In the USA, there is no shortage of available, qualified aviator applicants for major airline positions. The regionals struggle more, as they aren't willing to pay much. Never the less, there are ample pilots and there's no need for ab initio training, nor a likelihood to see it develop as a standard practice domestically.

Those who feel the world owes them a living, who feel they're entitled, those are the type that want a pipeline provided to them. When the sun rises, however, in the light of day, the hard cold truth is that nobody owes them anything. Dues? No. Lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps and making their way like an adult? Yes, you bet.

This is a pretty good explanation for how we have built up over $1 Trillion in student loan debt, with a 14% default rate. Consider it the additional premium for liberty. America is a tough town, or as Sgt Stryker said:

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/73...460c8b12f7.jpg

OK, you didn't understand anything I stated and instead jumped on a libertarian soap box. Mercedes (at least in Germany) does not hire mechanics off the street, they go through organized and structured training and apprenticeships, the assembly line workers are constantly trained and moved up with experience. Under the "free mkt" (it can't exist, esp. in the airlines for safety reasons), we had 250 hr wet commercial pilots in the right seat of airliners--basically learning on the job at 450 kts with people in the back. There is no way that should happen. Pilots need time to gain experience and more importantly to be PIC. Now, we have the govt. saying 1500 hrs is required, but there is no structured way to achieve it, why should aviation be run like a pirate ship. Right now, the best and most capable aren't necessarily the one's becoming airline pilots, it is the one's with the money. It is a chaotic approach, which is needlessly wasteful.

As to the question of whether there is enough demand for training to satisfy the supply, the OP doesn't have a sound enough understanding of what is actually happening in instructing.

I work at a well-known university 141 program in Ohio. I've been working here since 2013 and our instructional staff has COMPLETELY turned over (I'm the most senior instructor except for the Chief). We also are down from 20 instructors to 16. This is despite increased hiring activity and, for the first time in years, widespread interviewing of outside applicants. Additionally, student enrollment is higher than it's been since 2007. This is a typical story for flight training operations in our area. There is absolutely no way, in the short term, that we are going to work through this demand in a couple of months.

By the way, schools as far away as California have been calling offering to pay for a CFI's relocation costs and give them a signing bonus since they are in the same boat.

The primary causal factor is the airline hiring climate. Post-2008, many instructors were stuck in the CFI world until upwards of 3000 TT (which with Ohio weather can be a seven-year slog!). Today, the moment a CFI reaches R-ATP mins they have job offers from multiple airlines and are gone. The training supply is limited by the fact that all those "active" certificates are actually turning into airline pilots much faster than in the past many years.

I understood everything you said. You've just repeated yourself. I understood that too.

Again, nobody owes you or anyone else a pathway to a career.

Yes, the government is telling you that 1,500 hours is required to fly for an airline. This means nothing, and is in fact the same number that's required to obtain an AIRLINE transport pilot certificate. One needs an ATP to fly an ATP job Shocking. As stated, for many of us, it took a lot more than that to be considered, and we all managed to find other work (as previously described) to get there. The same can be done today. The fast ride is over.

Get used to it. Again.

1,500 hours is an insignificant number. If you or anyone else chooses to obtain that minimal experience only through flight instruction, that's your choice. Nobody owes you the students, or a "structured path" to get that experience. It's your career. Make your way. What auto workers in germany do is irrelevant. It's your career. Your problem. Act accordingly.

Getting back to the statistics question, you (the OP) came up with some ratios that are indeterminate. Active CFIs/inactive CFIs is an unknown ratio at both sample points. If I say 1/x is to be divided by 1/y, all I have is y/x. If you were trying to normalize out the active CFI/inactive CFI ratio, great idea but that won't do it because the normalization quantity has to be known or at least be the same variable. For example, in aerodynamics we like to normalize things as much as possible to allow apples-to-apples comparisons without extraneous stuff riding along. The most common example is to divide everything by dynamic pressure (q) to get that out of it, because q is q no matter where it turns up.

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I think this is an apparent dilemma only. Someone said that historically pilots had >2500 hours to go to work at a regional, which I hear was the case until maybe ten years ago. So having to slog through the traffic pattern with an English-mangling student all day is no big deal if the previous number was 2500 anyway. It's was always a hard profession to get into unless you were either a crook who falsifies logs, or a military aviator who was granted an exemption. It is true the acceptance criteria got lower by the late 2000s when 250 hour wonders started turning up, but the washout rates got ridiculous and it was pushed back by Congress anyway. Was the ATP rule right or wrong is another topic for discussion.

I haven't renewed my CFI in ten years and haven't had a need to use it.

Since this entire paragraph seems to be about the past, what exemption criteria are you referring too in the sentence bolded above?

Airlines have always used multiplication factor(s) to translate military aviator flight times to civilian flight times.

As one of the wise A&Ps here said: "You don't need to be smart to be a pilot. You just need money....lots and lots of money".
The military is the place to go if you don't have money. Military pilot slots are very competitive, however.

Thanks for addressing the question. I realize there's not a problem now with regional hiring opening up lots more positions (CFI and otherwise). I wasn't asking for me personally, although I did get some very personally targeted responses from a few. I was asking for predictions with an eye toward coming years.

Yes, exactly. But it's the best (only) data available. It assumed a constant ratio of active CFIs to inactive CFIs. This is probably not quite true...

And that is an exemption?

I assume you know what the word means so I do not know what you are asking. Were/are you are not aware that airlines use multiplication factors to calculate equivalent flight times for their military applicants? Former military aviators can qualify for lower minimums this way. As such they are exempt from meeting the full (civilian) minimums for the job. For example, 1,000 hours of F-18 flight time might equal 3,000 hours of civilian flight, or something like that.

I am aware that there is now in place a R-ATP; but I also assumed that you were talking about the pass situations.

No - - I do not think of the conversion factors as being exemptions.

And I hope that you know what the actual multiple conversions are that airlines actually use and the purpose for those conversion factors.

Ive never understood why people say it takes so much $$$ to become a pilot. I started to fly in 1990 at a 141 school. It took me 6 months and $13000, which included housing. Adjusted for inflation thats around 23K today. That's not too bad.

That's not the exemption I was talking about, and it was not an exemption until recently. I said only that military aviators get a break on flight time. Maybe you are reading something into it that is not there.

If they act that way, then why not? I still do not get what you really talking about here. If you are military you are exempt from meeting the full minimums for the job. We're not bogged down in semantics are we?Would you call it something else? Is exempt a word that you really dislike? Propose another.

Oh ok so you do know about them. I am not military so I do not keep track of that info. I would guess something like 2:1, not sure. And I definitely do not know what you are talking about if not that. Feel free to explain.

:eek:

Yes - I even looked at the definition of exempt and did not see how it worked in with how you were trying to use it.
It is your word - if you are good with it - no problem.

You do not understand the military conversion factor if you think it is something on the order of 2:1. This makes me doubt you understand the purpose of the military conversion factor; but that is a matter that has been hashed out in numerus threads before.

I'll not contribute any more to the thread drift.

This doesn't have anything to do with SkyHigh, does it? :)

Uh, that's 25 yrs ago. Fuel prices are still much higher since then, as is insurance and everything else. I did my training 11 yrs after you, and multi-Inst-MEI cost about 50K. ATPs is offering 0-Hero for 70K, which is probably 80K with fees and incidentals at this time.

There's Kool-Aid on your chin.

To the OP:

CFIing at large flight schools that cater only to students seeking professional* ratings has ALWAYS been a pyramid scheme. With the exception of roughly 2006-2008, 1200-2000 hours were required to be competitive at the regional level. Now, the law mandates what was the natural order.

To get a CFI typically takes about 300 hours of which roughly 200 was dual received (assuming he got IFR and Comm AMEL along the way). Back then, at 300 hours our newly minted CFI needed another 1000 hours to begin to be competitive. That meant he needed to instruct 5 zero to heroes. When those 5 got their CFIs, they each needed 5 students or 25 total.

Soooo.... Let's take a trip in the Wayback Machine..... (cue wavy line screen affect)

The year is 1989. A 22 year old and growing regional airline that has high standards is having some trouble finding qualified pilots. The solution? Train the pilots ourselves. So the owners of said regional buys a little 141 flight school located at SFB. The first 20 or so instructors were hired and heard the promise, "Finish our program [through MEI], and we guarantee you an interview at our airline."

Thus the ComAir Aviation Academy was born.

Now let's look at the numbers:

Year # of Instructors # of Students required @ 5 per Instructor

1990 20 100
1991 100 500
1992 500 2500
...
2014 1,200,000,000,000,000,000 Instructors

Obviously, there were never that many active instructors. There were drop outs and people that bailed for other jobs along the way. But you see the point. And after ComAir had more new hires than they could handle, all the other regionals started scooping them up until they were full. But the Academy kept churning out pilots.

Too many pilots, too few jobs, what happens? The race to the bottom begins.

bahah good luck finding anything close to that now a day.:rolleyes:

I dragged rags in Panama City Beach Florida one summer and picked up 800 hrs and drank tons of booze. Well worth it!

Can't rent a C152 for $25/hr wet anymore.:)

I started in 1993 in California. My instructors were career CFI's, and guys who had been instructing for 3 or 4 years because it was hard to move out of instructing. AmeriFlight was an option. I think Skywest wanted 3000 hours minimum. I remember Eagle coming to give a presentation and took no resumes at our school because they demanded 500 hrs. instrument time. Kind of hard to log that honestly on the west coast descending through the marine layer for 45 seconds. Then RJs started coming online (and PFT), and the "commuters" started growing like crazy. By 2000 my carrier was hiring guys with commercial certificates and 50-100 hours multi directly into RJ's.

+1. What happens is industry sees the bounty of cheap labor and develops a means of exploiting the endless bonanza of new people wanting to do this work. Welcome to low-end aviation in America, complete with ways of ejecting anyone who climbs too high in pay, lifestyle, or power. Now the tide is turning after many decades and less people are coming to the profession, which may signal hope for fair wages and fair treatment for many pilots.

How does a flight school represent a means of ejecting those who climb too high in pay? How does it represent lowering the bar? How does it represent anything other than a business that offers a path to pilot certification.

Let's not read too much into reality, folks. There's no conspiracy. there's no scheme. The FAA, long charged with safety and certification, has set the minimum standards and requirements for levels of pilot certification. Those are the basic points of entry into working as a paid pilot or instructor. If one wishes to become a working pilot or instructor, one first needs to obtain certification. Flight schools offer the aircraft and instructors, and the means to do that.

As long as I can remember, colleges and flight schools have been serving their best interests by promoting the mythical pilot shortage, which has never existed. Every young troop of new aviators thinks that they're seeing a world that nobody else has seen, and crows about shortages, high prices, the difficulty of the industry, yada, yada. Nothing new here.

The prices are what they are. Nobody is raping anybody. It's the nature of the cost of doing business. There are ways to lower the costs, just have there have always been, from buddying up to split aircraft costs to buying your own (and yes, it can be done; go buy an experimental, fly it, then sell it, and you'll be amazed how little you ended up paying for your initial flying v. renting).

Schools are what they are. Rent from them. Rent somewhere else. Buy. Instructor rates have become ridiculous. Not that a good instructor isn't worth the investment, but instructing is an entry level position, and it's seldom I find a good instructor or one with any real experience. Fifty or seventy five bucks an hour for someone who's been there and done that and can offer you the world? Sure. For some wet behind the ears kid who could still stand to receive a lot of instruction. No way. But such is the reality of things.

Nobody owes the instructor a living. He chose his path. Nobody owes him students, or a means to build hours. The industry didn't choose him. He chose the industry. What makes him any more special than the tens of thousands of us who managed to get where we are.

The industry conspires to hold a man back, and limit his pay? How? Have you seen what can be made in this industry? I've been in some very hard working jobs. Real back breakers. Flying ain't. It's a very lazy white collar profession compared to many. I know a lot of pilots that fit the description, too.

Most primary instruction isn't the passing on of a wealth of knowledge and understanding. It's the administration of a basic syllabus, such that the student receives a minimum of training and moves on. It's often given by CFI's who know little, often some of it mythology that's been passed on from one wet behind the ears instructor to another; a heritage of inexperience, each administering the bare minimum to the next. The qualifications are more like a telemarketer, reading a script, with minimal understanding of the product; just enough to get in trouble, or to barely keep out of it. The moment that instructor has enough "hours" to escape the rat pack, he or she bails, leaving behind a pool of inexperience which seldom changes or grows.

More's the pity, most who crawl out of that pool feel like they know the world, have the tiger by the tail, and understand the industry. It's a reincarnation of the teenage blindness; extreme overconfidence in what each really doesn't know. In fact the same reiteration said of teens may be applied to many low-time CFI's and new regional FO's...now's the time to leave home and make your own way kids, while you still know everything. The only ones I've found who are more sure that they know all there is to know are the private pilots with a little training; surely a dangerous thing.

The FAA doesn't set maximum standards. The FAA sets minimum standards and they are minimal. We see that the average student does not complete certification within the minimum framework, but typically requires more; in the case of the private pilot, often double the minimum hours. This indicates that the minimum really is minimal; considerably less than what ought to be expected and often is. To whine about the certification requirements is, then much ado about nothing.

There is no pyramid scheme. Flight instruction is NOT a ponzi scheme. (It makes one wonder if those who might say so actually understand what a ponzi scheme is, or a pyramid plan, for that matter). Flight instruction bears no similarity to either.

When I instructed full time, I taught foreign students who came to the United States for the cost. I taught individuals seeking military flight opportunities, teens excited about the propsect of flight, doctors, veterans, retired people, aircraft owners, a few individuals who moved to the airlines, etc. Some wanted to become instructors and go no further.

When I began flying, I simply wanted to fly. The notion that I would one day wind up in the left seat of a 747 was wildly unrealistic to me, so much so that I only occasionally referred to as a joke. Yet one day, there I found myself, and the trip has been wide and varied (as it continues to be). The idea that legions of people begin flying with the intent to turn themselves into airline pilots is only a partial truth; there are far more students who undertake instruction than ever intend to fly for the airlines, or even fly for a living.

There exists neither an instructor shortage, nor a student shortage, nor is there a pilot shortage.

There is a temporary demand at the regional level for inexperienced aviators who are willing to prostitute themselves for meager wages. That's it. No other segment of the industry is hurting for pilots, nor will that happen. There are many more paths in the industry than the airlines, particularly the regionals, regardless of what one wishes to do or where one would like to end up.

What we're actually seeing right now are the voices of inexperience, dismayed that a mighty 1,500 hours is required of an airline pilot to obtain the airline transport pilot certificate. By and large, the rest of the industry doesn't care. The world hasn't slowed or changed its rotational axis by even a smidge. Most of us see it as no big deal at all, as far more hours were required of us, and we all managed just fine; to be competitive one had to have 2,500 hours or more when I moved up the ranks, so it was a given that one was going to need to go get experience beyond instructing somewhere, and we all did.

Those crying that the sky is falling, that a conspiracy exists, that the system is broke, that the industry owes them a path and a living, and that some great crooked scheme is in play preventing them from moving forward (the old "keep the man down" lament) need to wake up, dust themselves off, and work out their own path. Welcome to reality kids. Stop crying, make it work for you, and move on.

The industry has always had a way of weeding out those who weren't motivated enough. If that's you, bye bye.

If that's not you, welcome. You're in for an interesting journey.

I did not refer to the flight schools there but many of the low-end aviation companies (ie. regionals) doing business in America. Regionals are famous for using tricky methods to dump their more costly payroll labor to replace it with newer, cheaper labor. Many low-end aviation companies use similar tactics on their pilots simply because they can get away with it and pilots are a dime a dozen. I did not say conspiracy, I said that's the way the business is, and that it is exploitative. Legal? Sure, but so was slavery at one time. I first thought the pyramid-scheme comparison was a bit of a stretch here, claiming conspiracy where there may not be one, but then I realized it more resembles a pyramid scheme than not, and it really does not matter what anyone meant when they created it. It matters only what they did. They created a de facto ponzi scheme consisting of implied promises to supply a certain number of students to newly-minted CFIs which could not be supplied from a purely mathematical standpoint. If you do not have any compassion for the many who were exploited by this arrangement, then what should I say.