I am currently interviewing/applying to different companies, and sometimes they ask if you have a full time flying job. What is considered full time in flying? I am an independent flight instructor for a small flying club and I work there "full time," (meaning I do nothing else, am there everyday and available to my students 24/7) but average about 40 hours a month flight/ground instruction.

You can survive on 40 hours a month? That's a good bit for a part-timer, I work 50+/ wk at the office and do about 20 or so per mo part time. You would seem to take home less than $1600/ mo at a rate of $40 an hour times 40, so nobody is going to believe you live on that unless you really push the issue. I would look at it this way, if you really can live on that amount minus taxes, then claim it is full time work, but be ready for the inevitable question of what the heck do you do the other 80+ hours a month because they are going to be skeptical. Unfortunately the full time flight instructor sits around quite a bit, which is a gray area to some.

I think of it like this, do you do anything else if all you do is instruct then I call that full time. Don't split hairs just my .02 can't imagine they care it u put in 40 wk. just so long as u meet their requirements.

Sounds full time to me.

For a pilot I would consider 40 hours/week on-site as full time (even 30-35 hours). Regradless of whether you're flying, doing ground, admin, or waiting for the phone to ring.

I would also consider about 60-70 hours flight time/month as full time in-and-of itself.

Or if you are on call a significant part of each month and getting paid a living wage, that's full-time as well.

In your case I think people in this industry understand how freelance works, even if you're not getting that much business.

He says he is paid for only 40 hours a month for flight-plus-ground clock-running time, of all the time spent on site each month. Let me guess, something like 120 hours per month spent on-site total with 80 hours of unpaid time a month. CFIs get abused until the cows go home, something that should not be true but is.

Thanks for all of the responses. They have been helpful, and I think I will just mark it as full time on applications. I believe it will be perfectly explainable as full time. I just wanted to double check because I did't want to give the impression of being dishonest.

The only caveat might be if you have W-2's from ANOTHER full time job...might make it less plausible.