Preflight

Should we accept this?

One relatively new flight instructor, who had been flying (much of it training) for five years before earning his flight instructor certificate, sent a particularly insightful message. "I commend your challenge to CFIs to get their act together. In the meantime, until you are successful with your crusade to make all CFIs well-paid and pleasant-demeanored, I suggest you prepare students for reality. You alluded to some realities, but I think it's useful to identify them and others explicitly," he wrote. I hadn't considered this a crusade, but it's an interesting idea.

The instructor identified four training realities:

• There is a shortage of CFIs. Some schools can offer CFIs better pay and benefits. Many schools do not. It's difficult for the average small flight school owner to stay in the black, much less turn a modest profit. If I owned a small flight school, I may rather have an "unprofessional" CFI on my staff than one fewer.
• Many CFIs are young and relatively immature compared to their clients. Even those who are not young can be cocky and arrogant. That doesn't mean they are not good instructors.
• Relationships between human beings are never ideal. People get offended unintentionally, and they say things they don't mean.
• Many people are quick to point out deficiencies in others, even if legitimate, yet are slow to accept a portion of responsibility for the results of relationships that aren't ideal. Some of those people seek flight training.

This instructor does not believe that a student "should just roll over and accept unprofessional treatment"--adding that a "one strike and you're out" attitude will not always serve a student's interests. He offers three ideas.

• Before dropping an instructor, have a meeting with the instructor and school management to clear the air and lay out expectations that may have been unspoken. Wait a day for tempers to cool.
• Get thick skin. Don't take every temper flare-up personally.
• If you can't find an instructor who is as professional as you would like, get instruction from the unprofessional one you can find. Don't tolerate dishonesty, but learn how to smooth over personality conflicts instead of allowing them to be deal-breakers.

What do you think about these ideas? What other suggestions do you have to improve the training process in a situation where the student/instructor match isn't what one party (or both) might prefer? Are there alternatives to accepting these realities? I'll report on the discussion for as long as you would like to continue the discussion.

A guitarist and music industry consultant learning to fly in rural Virginia probably won't accept the realities outlined above--not all of them, anyway. Ravi, who recently soloed an Indus Thorpedo light sport airplane, already sees a lot in common between the general aviation and music product industries. Many music stores offer lessons on site, and the similarity to general aviation flight training is striking. "Showcasing the dream and creating access are the backbones of both these industries," Ravi said.

Most people today are introduced to aviation as airline passengers. However, given the poor experience that many passengers seem to have on the airlines today, Ravi is concerned that the perception of aviation as a whole is in decline. "Is it any surprise that the pilot population is declining?" he asks.

Ravi had always been interested in flying, but he didn't seek training until he met Daniel Sennheiser of Sennheiser USA, which makes aviation headsets and a variety of recording equipment, at a music industry event. "We talked about the music industry for five minutes, and about aviation for an hour and a half," Ravi recalled. Sennheiser, a pilot, talked him into starting lessons. He told Ravi, "You won't be happy until you do."

Although he's still learning to fly, Ravi's already adapting his music industry knowledge to aviation. One idea is to rephrase the pricing--instead of quoting a cost by the hour, provide a monthly price--say, $500. "That's a car payment. For the price of a car payment, I can learn to fly." He launched a "train the trainer" program for guitar instructors. "Instructors can disconnect with the dream," he explained. "They forget why they started and need to be reminded."

Ravi is working on an article that will be published soon in our Instructor Report section, and he'll be presenting a seminar at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on Thursday, July 31, at 5:30 p.m. If you're a flight school manager or instructor, you won't want to miss it.

E-mail Mike Collins, editor of AOPA Flight Training, at [email protected].