Career Flight Instructors Are Hard to Find But Worth the Search

Age and experience does not matter, only that the CFI has the heart and soul of a teacher.

Meg Godlewski

Friday, March 28, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Ryan Ewing

Greg Brown is the author of 'The Savvy Flight Instructor,' a book that has been helping aspiring CFIs for decades. [Courtesy: Richard Jackson]

Key Takeaways:

The article distinguishes "career Certified Flight Instructors (CFIs)" as dedicated educators passionate about teaching comprehensive flying skills and judgment, in contrast to those who view instructing merely as a means to build flight hours.
Experienced career CFIs are vital for improving training quality, implementing essential scenario-based learning, and mentoring less-experienced instructors, which helps counteract the issue of "check-ride learning" and inadequate pilot preparation.
These professional instructors, exemplified by figures like Greg Brown, Rod Machado, and John and Martha King, prioritize empowering students to make safe decisions, continuously develop their teaching expertise, and find deep satisfaction in contributing to the aviation community's safety and skill.

See a mistake? Contact us.

I received a call from a recruiter for a regional airline who had stumbled across my CFI résumé someplace. As I have well over 1,500 hours, he wanted to know if I would like to fly for it. “No, thank you,” I replied. There was an awkward pause. He seemed puzzled, repeating the question slower as if I had not heard him the first time. He asked why I was working as a flight instructor if I wasn’t trying to build hours for the airlines.

While it is true that most people become CFIs as a means to quickly build their hours for other jobs, there are some of us for whom flight instruction is a passion and vocation—and not a steppingstone. The age of the person and even their experience level does not matter. What does matter is that the CFI has the heart and soul of a teacher.