And that incontinent?
I figure if you’re that drunk you want your upper end over the bowl, not your lower end.
Pilot assumed it was fueled per standing order at airport. Ouch.
you can assume all you want with the cockpit fuel computer but there are still fuel gauges in the plane.
New standing order: refuel my plane and remind me to check my fuel level before I actually take off.
I’ve been a CFI (flight instructor) for many years, but not active in a while. So I didn’t know about this:
The FAA is removing the expiration date from CFI licenses, bringing them in line with all other pilot certificates. There will instead be some recency of experience requirements. I renewed my instructor certificate a few months ago. I’ll have to research how this affects me going forward.
I’m hoping it’s a distinction without a difference as the lawyers say. IOW, the same recency requirements as before, just no longer labeled an “expiration”.
Does this mean they aren’t getting a check ride to maintain certification?
That’s never been necessary. CFIs can be renewed in a number of ways, including an online course. But if the license is allowed to lapse, then a checkride is required. One of the new changes is that there will be a three month grace period before a checkride is needed.
I read some of the FAA’s rule-making documentation. Part of the justification was that checkrides are expensive and difficult to schedule. Another was simply having to process a lot of CFI renewals. The new regs are addressing those issues and some others.
If an ATP-rate airline pilot (so all of them nowadays) also has a CFI, it can be renewed simply by flying an ordinary line flight with a pilot-rated Fed on the jumpseat. In fact if both airline pilots have CFIs, they can both be renewed despite one never touching anything during the flight.
One of many regulatory scams related to CFI.
Unsurprising that there’s an internal bureaucratic justification for the rule change. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was the winning argument.
To elaborate - the CFI is the only FAA license that ever required renewal. Every other kind of pilot license is good for life, though various actions are necessary to maintain privileges. I’m seeing a range of numbers for how many CFIs there are, but 125,000 seems the best estimate. With each of them having to renew every two years, that’s a lot of bureaucratic overhead. So far, I support this change.
I have never had a CFI, nor the military equivalent. @Llama_Llogophile is the pro with real CFI experience. IIRC @Richard_Pearse has done some of it, albeit under non-FAA licensing / licencing authorities with dfferent administrative details. So I’ll instantly defer to their better knowledge driving their smarter opinions.
ISTM that what matters for any professional-for-hire in any industry is recency of relevant experience and currency of relevant knowledge. Ideally there’d be some sort of periodic QC process, but the FAA has always outsourced almost all of that, with BFRs administered by, yes, CFIs for the hobbyists, and employer-given checkrides for the rest of us.
If the new regs provide for the moral equivalent of that, good enough. The idea that your e.g. commercial pilot license never expired but your attached CFI did expire never made a lick of sense to me. Historical accident is all that was.
LTA have private & commercial. If you’re commercial, you can instruct.
…& we have four more summers of TFRs, damnit!.
I’m not sure how to voice this concern. A lot of CFI’s are newly minted for the intention of running up their hours in order to qualify for airline jobs
They do not command the level of expertise that long-term CFI’s have. I can see a scenario that takes this into account and requires check-rides for low-time CFI’s.
In the process of teaching someone to be a CFI, is it only about flying skills, or is there any information about different learning styles and how to be an effective teacher?
I think back to some of the things my instructors did, and others my dad told me about, and they weren’t always the best way for me to learn things.
Ref both @Magiver and @Robot_Arm just above. Agreed.
IMO CFI and the entire institution of non-part 141 flight training is an anachronistic swamp that FAA cannot stand to dip too deeply into lest it get slimed with a clean-up job it can’t possibly do right. I’m not expert enough to comment intelligently on Part 141 schools for that matter but what little I know from former co-workers who were/are involved in that stuff as a side gig, it’s a swamp too. A lesser swamp, but a swamp nonetheless.
The regulation of Part 135 on-demand “air taxi” or “charter” is another similar swamp.
Again @Llama_Llogophile is the professional teacher, instructor, and CFI. He’ll have far better info than I.
Responding here to the last few posts with the following general thesis:
The FAA actually gets a lot right when it comes to flight instruction
My qualifications and caveats: CFI for over 20 years, instructed full-time for about 5. I hold basic CFI, CFI-instrument and CFI multi-engine. Always worked at Part 91 flight schools, never at a 141. Spent the last ten years in airline (Part 121) and jet charter (Part 135). Haven’t been active as a CFI in quite a while, but I always renew my license and try to keep up with what’s new.
So… While there are certainly issues with flight instruction, as with any human endeavor, I will stop just short of endorsing the word “swamp” to describe it. First some data…
According to the most recent McFadden Report (formerly the Nall Report) General Aviation (GA) is gradually getting safer, despite an uptick in accidents. I believe this effect results from an increase in overall flying versus previous years.
Instructional flying has consistently had a slightly better overall safety rate than GA as a whole, and indeed fatalities have decreased significantly over time. Looking at the various accident breakdowns in the McFadden report, students and CFI-onboard rates are pretty good, except in fuel management accidents. But when it comes to landings, climb-out, etc, there’s more risk with a Private Pilot or even an ATP onboard.
Now, my opinion…
There’s a lot of variability in flight instruction by way of type of school, CFI level of experience, CFI level of dedication to teaching and any number of other factors. But even the least experienced instructor has been through a fairly rigorous process (I’m talking fixed-wing here; the standards are a little different for lighter-than-air and other stuff).
There is a pedagogical component called “Fundamentals of Instruction”. It’s a crash-course (heh) in how to be a teacher. Having come from an education background, I found it cursory and bit outdated, but it conveyed the basics to people who had never taught anything formally before.
When I got my initial CFI, I checked most of the boxes and then went to a “finish-up” school for a week. They actually spent more time on the instructional part and regulations than actual flying skills. I was told they got a lot of applicants who were good aviators, but lacked the ability to teach, talk and describe what they were doing to a student. They said I was the rare case of the opposite - having come from a teaching background my lesson plans and pedagogical technique were well in hand; I needed to sharpen some of my maneuvers.
All that to say, the FAA has successfully communicated it’s not enough for a CFI to be good at flying the plane. Does every place do it that way? Surely not. But there are certainly incentives to train CFI applicants properly.
At the same time, I’ll make the case that a certain amount of hands-off is a good thing. In the world of public schools, teachers have consistently lost their autonomy over the last decades. More and more micromanagement, down to the point of scripted lessons in some cases. Not so in aviation. CFIs are more or less free to teach with techniques of their own choosing, so long as they adhere to certain safety practices (there used to be a list of no-nos in the PTS, like not simulating engine failures at low altitudes, but that’s been incorporated into the text of the new ACS, which supersedes the PTS).
I think that’s interesting. In aviation we use a lot of standardization, but the ACS is fairly thin. It doesn’t generally prescribe technique at the teacher-student interface. Rather, it lays out standards and ways to measure performance and leaves the rest to the CFI. I think that’s a surprisingly smart approach to supervising instruction.
Me personally: I learned a lot as a CFI and I think I was good at it. Never felt uncomfortable soloing a student, made a point of taking them into real weather when I could, and revised and improved my lessons over time. Not so say everyone is like that…
Definitely true, always has been. But hell if I know how to change it. There are many, many CFIs who have no interest in teaching. They are just building hours. My own first CFI was like that, though he had a sense of professionalism sufficient that he was quite a good instructor anyway. I did a pretty good business inheriting students who had fired their instructors, and I was able to keep them as clients because of my dedication to quality training.
Overall with this issue, I’d say the trouble is earnings. It’s very hard to make any kind of real living as a CFI. If I could have made the same money I did as an airline or charter guy, I would have stayed a flight instructor because I loved it. But that’s not the reality for most people. The only way to make it work as a career is serious volume, or niche instructing with higher fees (aerobatics, specialized knowledge of a desirable type of aircraft, etc).
Lastly, let’s address Part 91 flight schools vs. Part 141. The former are “mom and pop” schools; the sort of place with two or three Pipers they use for training. Or even a single CFI with one plane. Or a CFI with no plane who works with students in their own aircraft. In all cases, beholden to Part 91 of the regs, which allows for less formal instruction and more flexibility.
Part 141 schools are more formal, they follow a set curriculum approved by the FAA and do things very methodically. These are bigger entities like ATP and universities like Embry Riddle.
I’m often asked which is better for students. I say the good thing about 141 schools is they are more structured. While the bad thing about them is… they are more structured.
I believe (no data) the safety record is better for 141 schools. This is not surprising given the greater oversight. But it also means they have much less flexibility to work with part-time students, and are more likely to employ former students as CFIs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the oversight largely compensates for lack of instructor experience. But from what my students have told me, I’m glad I went the Part 91 route.
A few times I gave lessons to 141 students and was startled at what they didn’t know. One had never been allowed to adjust the fuel / air mixture. He described a methodical approach that struck me as robotic, which I wouldn’t have enjoyed. But these schools do produce a lot of pilots who become professionals.
Part 91 schools are probably better for part time students who need flexibility. In my mind, the slack was taken up by having a good syllabus and good instructing. BTW: A good syllabus was probably my best tool as an instructor. It gave me structure and ensured my instructional approach wasn’t haphazard. I’ve always suggested students ask any prospective CFI to see their syllabus, and if they can’t produce one they should find someone else.
Okay, that was a lot. To reiterate, I think we have a good, but not perfect, system of flight instruction. There are many good incentives which drive safety and professionalism, but there could be more. I’d go back to it as a career if I could, but it’s not really viable, which is probably the biggest problem.
Thanks for some great insights.
My Dad owned / ran a small Part 91 flight school / rent-a-plane outfit when I was a little kid up through college. A few planes, a string of CFIs both long-time and perpetually turning over, etc.
What you say resonates w my memories of 50(!?? :eek: ) years ago.
That’s really the problem with most aspects of GA and the small e.g. piston end of 135.
It is simply unaffordable to do the job, whether it’s training or maintenance or whatever thoroughly and properly to 99.9999 quality standard. So CFIs are underpaid, airplanes get raggedy, and stuff is left undone.
I think the difference, as you already suggested, is that public school teachers go into the profession because they enjoy, and expect to be good at, educating their students. You shouldn’t need to micromanage someone who is dedicated to doing their job well.
On the other hand, when I was in public school I didn’t have any choice in who my teachers were. Someone should be making sure they’re good at their jobs; there was nothing I could do.
Ironically, my dad taught in 141s, but not Part 141s.
Looks like there was a tragic failure in Mesa, AZ. yesterday. Private jet couldn’t take off, attempted to brake, went off runway into the road. Five dead reported, 4 on the plane and one in a car.
I have been to that airport (used to go up Boeing Helicopters which is next door). Close to the road and only 5,000 ft. runway. so not much time to act.
Tragic all-around. One of the dead is a 12-year old boy.
Story: