Instructor Report: Like students, CFIs also feel frustration

To facilitate passage to salvation, they wore shirts made of rough animal hair next to their skin as part of a practice known as mortification of the flesh. Hence the term “wearing the hair shirt” denotes undertaking an uncomfortable or undesired task simply because it is a requirement for earning a better status.

Some cynics regard flight instruction as the “hair shirt” worn by those seeking a career as a professional aviator.

Mere mortals desiring airline employment need 1,500 flight hours, the minimum for an airline transport pilot (ATP) certificate, to be considered by U.S. passenger and cargo airlines. Military pilots with 750 hours total time, holders of a bachelor’s degree with an aviation major and 1,000 total piloting time, and aviation associate degree holders with 1,250 hours are eligible for a restricted-privileges airline transport pilot certificate, which is sufficient for serving as a first officer. Obtaining such flight time without holding a piloting job, however, is beyond the budget of all but the megawealthy; flight instructing enables a pilot to gain time quickly—possibly as many as 800 to 1,000 hours per year—while someone else is footing the bill.

Even aviation jobs not associated with the scheduled airlines require more flight time than the average person can afford, by either renting or owning their own aircraft. Gone are the days when several hundred hours and a commercial certificate with an instrument rating were sufficient to sit for an interview with a scheduled carrier. (Yes, such an age existed, before the tragic crash of Colgan Flight 3407.) Hence, many aspiring aviators today are engaged in flight instruction as the means for logging time.

Building time by teaching steep turns or ground reference maneuvers day in and day out can be monotonous—and what CFI hasn’t been frustrated by the student who seemed not to respond to his or her instruction? The thrill of being paid for flying and the joy of being aloft in a small Cessna or Piper becomes stale all too soon. Giving 20 or so hours of flight instruction each week, plus the necessary ground instruction to make time in the aircraft productive, is hard work even for the most ambitious aviator. Pay is poor, and burnout is a real possibility. What was once a dream job can become a nightmare, particularly when students fail to respond to instruction. For the aspiring airline or corporate pilot interested solely in building flight hours, the slide to instructor frustration is understandable and inevitable. Furthermore, COVID-19 has greatly impacted the demand for airline travel, thereby diminishing the need for new first officers. The likelihood that today’s CFI will be hired soon after filling a logbook with 1,500 hours is low.

Salvation, at least from frustration, comes from focusing on the primary reason the FAA issues aviators the privilege of being a certificated flight instructor: namely, being a professional teacher.

First, be a teacher

Being a teacher is a worthy profession that belies staleness. No two students are identical. Each student has different abilities and shortcomings. Each presents his or her own challenges, and every flight encompasses the stimulating and often daunting task of communicating effectively.

CFIs know that a lack of common experience is the greatest barrier to understanding between teacher and student, and lack of understanding leads to frustration. For example, as aviators, we have experience flying airplanes. Prior to beginning flight training, the average student has experience driving cars. Understandably, students often assume that what they know about driving cars transfers directly to flying airplanes, and they view the CFI’s instructions through the lens of a person who has operated automobiles.

But flying is not driving. Consider turns: Aside from the obvious difference between maneuvering in three-dimensional space in the air and negotiating turns in two dimensions on the ground, the control that turns an aircraft—its ailerons—affects rate of roll while a car’s steering wheel positions the auto’s front wheels to achieve a turn. Initiating a heading change of an aircraft by establishing a banking motion and holding that motion (i.e., roll rate) only until the desired bank angle is achieved is different from positioning a car’s steering wheel in a fixed position and holding the wheel there until the turn is completed.

Consider the vocabulary differences between flying and driving. To a driver, stalling refers to the engine stopping. To a pilot, stalling means the wing no longer produces sufficient lift to sustain controlled flight, but the engine has not stopped.

Improper analogies and aeronautical jargon easily distort communications between CFI and student, thereby impeding the transfer of knowledge and adding to CFI frustration.

As teachers, CFIs accept the challenge of communicating effectively. They identify the barriers that interfere with student understanding. They define all aeronautical terms. They approach teaching obstacles as a maze to be traversed—a puzzle to be solved.

Finding the way to have your student succeed is your path to avoiding frustration. Furthermore, the teaching and communication skills you develop as a CFI translate to other aspects of your professional and personnel career, outside as well as inside the cockpit.

Be a professional.

Professionals are focused on serving their clients and their community. Being a professional educator, which is the responsibility of the CFI, is a noble endeavor. Aviation provides vast opportunities to visit interesting places and meet people with varied backgrounds. Travel by air is essential to economic development and quality of life. Helping your students enter the field of aviation introduces them to those rewarding experiences. Focusing on the value students receive from good instruction is an effective means for avoiding frustration and CFI burnout.

The true rewards of being a certificated flight instructor—rewards that never become old—are helping others become safe, successful aviators. Logging flight time is simply a side benefit. FT

John W. Olcott is an airline transport pilot, CFII, and remote pilot, as well as former president of the National Business Aviation Association.