The Problem With Flight Instruction

Perhaps youve heard the riddle, "What do you call the person who graduates at the bottom of the class in medical school?" The answer: Doctor. The maxim being conveyed applies equally well to aviation: What do you call the pilot who has met the minimum standards set forth in FAR 61.183-187? Answer: Certificated Flight Instructor. Yet whether acting in the capacity of doctor or flight instructor, that individual is directly responsible for another persons well being. Others literally may live or die based directly on the doctors and the flight instructors knowledge and skills. The path to becoming a practicing doctor evolved to include a rigorous course of study and years of apprenticeship: college, med school, internship, residency, fellowship. The tradition in aviation, on the other hand, has been to treat flight instructing as the bullpen for corporate and airline flying. Still clinging to this model, many instructors teach largely for their own benefit and not the benefit of their students. Instructing, after all, is supposed to be a transient phase; building time, the primary goal; low pay and high turnover at flight schools, expected.

Key Takeaways:

• The current flight instructor (CFI) training model is flawed, often treating instructing as a temporary phase for building flight hours rather than a dedicated profession, resulting in compromised training quality.
• This leads to significant gaps in pilot competency, particularly in crucial areas like stall/spin awareness, as many CFIs themselves lack sufficient expertise and practical experience in these critical maneuvers.
• To enhance aviation safety, the instructor certification process must be recalibrated to demand higher proficiency, establish instructing as a standalone profession, and ensure instructors teach essential survival skills and risk management beyond minimum test standards.

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