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Choosing the CFI Route

While flight instructing is not for everyone, there are major advantages while on the journey to becoming a professional pilot.

While flight instructing is not for everyone, there are major advantages while on the journey to becoming a professional pilot. [File Photo: Adobe Stock]
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Key Takeaways:

  • The article challenges the widespread perception that flight instructing is a last-resort method for building flight hours, arguing it's often a better and more realistic option for aspiring professional pilots.
  • Key advantages of flight instructing include its universal availability, ease of entry, and portability, allowing pilots to quickly secure jobs and accumulate continuous flight time.
  • Despite acknowledged downsides like long hours and pay, the author emphasizes the rewarding nature of teaching, the valuable skills developed, and debunks the myth that instructing is boring.
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In my previous installment of V1 Rotate, I noted some of the reasons that a fledgling professional pilot might choose not to flight instruct, and listed a number of alternate means of time-building. Most of those alternative jobs, however, have their own downsides in terms of pay, safety, being VFR-only, only being available in certain areas, or being tough to break into. 

I noted that the well-connected candidate with geographic flexibility is likely to have the most choice in how they get to 1,000 hours and beyond. The unspoken implication, which I most certainly did not intend, is that awkward homebodies might have to resign themselves to flight instructing after all.

Sam Weigel

Sam Weigel has been an airplane nut since an early age, and when he's not flying the Boeing 737 for work, he enjoys going low and slow in vintage taildraggers. He and his wife live west of Seattle, where they are building an aviation homestead on a private 2,400-foot grass airstrip.

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