I currently work as a CFI at Monarch and I also did all my training there. I can say without a doubt that the flight school is a great place to work at.
Sure, flying the desk for free sucks as does not getting paid for discovery flights but that is where much of the bad side of things end. Oh, and did I mention they have recently hired a girl to work the desk on weekends? That means that CFIs now only have to work open and close shifts for free which are 7am-9/10am for opening and 5pm-7pm for closing shifts. The rest of your day is now free since during the week the Owner's nephew works the desk as well.
With the latest pay increase making money is very easy. At Monarch we typically bill the entire block for instructor time. So a two hour block you bill as 2 hours for the instructor, then whatever the hobbs time was for the plane. That means that if you fly 5 flights a day at 5 days a week-which is half of what you could fly if you were up for it- you would be billing 50 hours a week. Thats 120 hours a month X $22/hour and you are making $2600 a month.
A full time instructor averages roughly those numbers. I am part time and bill anywhere from 50 to 80 hours a month...PART TIME. And the 2 hour blocks we bill include pre and post flight trainig, so don't think we are talking on our cell phones and watching youtube videos while our students pre-flight and still charging the entire 2 hour block.
You make your own schedule, minus the desk shifts and are free to do basically what you want when it comes to who you fly with and when. Management largely stays out of the day to day flight school operations, which is good since the father/son owners can be a pain in the ass sometimes. However our cheif pilot, Dick Kirby is the best person I have met in the world and is truely looking out for the CFI's best interest.
On top of all that, our MX is world class, our fleet is among the newest in the entire region, we have the largest fleet of G-1000 aircraft and a HUGE student base which keeps us all busy, even more busy than we would like at times. Plus KADS is a class airport with great controllers and Regional Approach directing all inbound traffic. The fact that we are a single runway airport is sometimes bad when traffic is busy, typically on Friday afternoons and evenings, and when the winds are outside the plane's limits keeping us on the ground since there is no intersecting runway.
But other than the few negatives I mentioned above it is all positive at Monarch. I breifly trained and was offered a CFI position with a rather large flight school out of KGKY and let me just say that I am glad I didn't go work out there. Monarch is light years ahead in many ways, and a number of CFIs with experience at that school agree that Monarch is the place to be.
If anybody thinks they are going to be rich as a CFI then you are seriously in denial. But then again if you think that making anywhere from 1200 to over 2000 a month as a CFI is low then by all means show us where you can make more.