Find the Right Flight Instructor for Your New Airplane

Here are some tips to vetting CFIs, understanding insurance, and securing safe training.

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, May 12, 2026 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Flight instructor and student inside small Piper aircraft [Credit: FLYING Archive]

Key Takeaways:

To find a qualified flight instructor for your new airplane, leverage resources like aircraft-specific type clubs, professional CFI organizations (NAFI, SAFE), and local flight schools, noting that current market conditions may offer more experienced instructors.
Prioritize insurance requirements, ensuring your chosen instructor meets specific experience criteria for your aircraft's make and model (including recency), and be prepared to offer fair compensation for their expertise.
Embrace comprehensive ground instruction, including aircraft airworthiness checks, as a crucial part of training, and commit to consistent learning while adhering to aviation rules to ensure safety and proficiency.

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Congratulations! You just bought an airplane—or a share of one—and now you need to find a flight instructor who can teach you how to fly it.

Luckily for you, pilot hiring at the airlines appears to have slowed down a bit, which means commercial pilots who became flight instructors to build their hours for jobs at airlines are staying flight instructors for a bit longer than they were even a year ago. This means they have more time to develop as teachers.