Does your CFI change diapers?

They’ll work in sweltering hangars, get dirty doing maintenance chores, and perform myriad office, computer, and administrative tasks to help their students, and themselves, log more air time. That comes with the territory, too.

But the acid tests of CFI commitment may have little, if anything, to do with actual flying. They’re the things that prove to us how far we’ll go to help our students succeed.

I had such a gut check last year when a student whose regular instructor was out of town asked me to review his flight planning and sign him off for a long solo cross-country. That was straightforward and no real trouble. I’d flown with him several times and knew he made sound decisions, had an even-keeled demeanor, and was capable of performing the flight without difficulty. The weather, which had been atrocious for a week, finally was severe clear—and his regular instructor wanted him to go.

The stumbling block was that the student’s then-2-year-old son needed a babysitter. The student, an overburdened executive, would have to cancel the flight (and stay on the ground during another week of adverse winter weather) unless I was willing to put aside my own plans for this sunny Saturday and hang out with his toddler for six hours.

I was tempted to say tough luck. Child care isn’t in the FAA’s Fundamentals of Instruction, and it’s not in any CFI job description that I know of, either.

The acid tests of CFI commitment may have little to do with flying.Enabling this student to complete his long cross-country as planned, however, would be a big step toward his goal of becoming a pilot. And if I was truly committed to his success, the obvious right thing to do was take his kid (and car seat, Star Wars toys, diapers, Juicy Juice, animal crackers, baby wipes, et cetera) to my non-childproof home for the day so his dad could fly.

Fortunately, I had an ally at home in the four-legged form of my Labrador retriever, and he kept the boy entertained. The kid was dazzled by the dog’s prowess at catching tennis balls on the fly and returning them. After lunch, they both napped a long time. And when the kid’s diaper needed changing, the dog pointed it out long before I would have known.

My two kids grew out of diapers more than a decade ago, and even though I wasn’t diaper current, I was able to muddle through without too much trauma. I’ll take it as preparation for possibly being a grandparent someday.

That afternoon, the student/executive returned to the airport after a successful and uneventful cross-country flight, and his boy and I were there to meet him. We even tracked his progress on Flight Aware so we knew when to go outside and watch his Cessna 172 enter the airport traffic pattern and land.

The student went on to complete his private pilot certificate a couple months later, and he and his swiftly growing son are airport regulars now. They even celebrated the young boy’s last birthday inside a hangar, a sure sign the kid’s being raised right.

The boy’s dad and I never discussed it, but the time I spent with his kid was actually one of the highlights of my years as a CFI. Not that anything particularly special or dramatic happened, but only because it made me feel that, on that day, at least, I didn’t fail the commitment test.