So I found this in the November safety report

O

Oldschool Pilot

Well-Known Member
"I witnessed several occasions where instructors were discussing amongst themselves both at the airport and at Ryan hall about the great weather finally allowing flying. What concerned me was their attitude. From their conversation I picked up on the fact they were willing to bust duty days to fit in the most students possible to make up for the lost pay. They seem to be in a big rush to pack up their day with students. This is exactly the first link in the accident chain. In addition it also raises the concern, about the quality of flight instruction."

I really couldn't agree more with this person who wrote it. The weather has been pretty bad the last two months and even I have heard similar stories such as this. We have these so called "professional" CFIs at a "great" flying program willing to bust safety nets to make a quick buck.
 
I'm not familiar with any duty day limitation while instructing....... hmmmm.

And don't kid yourself. Aviation is a cost-benefit analysis of money vs safety. Every day, every flight.
 
Well 8 hours of flight time per FARs plus UND 16 hr duty day per polices, and no ore than 10 contact hours per day with students .....im guessing those are the duty times this person was referring too.
 
Sounds like somebody just wants to write a safety report for the sake of writing a safety report. Of course they are in a rush to pack their day with students. It's not just to make a "quick buck" (keep in mind, that is what pays the bills and puts the food on the table). Probably also has something to do with the fact that having students incomplete doesn't look good on the eval, and the fact that the students risk failing ground school for not completing on time.
 
Do I schedule most days out to my max contact time if I can and try and maximize my use of a duty day? Absolutely. It's a reality of having 6+ students, all of whom face the threat of failing ground schools if they don't finish on time (that's a rant for a different day). Do I bust the FAA limits of 8 hours of flight training in a rolling 24 hours or any UND duty/rest policies? Nope. Not worth the carpet dance in my lead's office or a nastygram from the feds if they found out.

There's a certain skill involved in good schedule management, just like the airline practice of working the bid system to gain max credit for min effort. Us CFIs have to sometimes think a bit outside the box to make sure we don't do something illegal or unsafe. For me, that'll sometimes mean starting my day with briefings or sims if I'm coming off a long night cross-country the day before. It lets me still instruct to a level where the students get something meaningful out of the lesson without taking unnecessary risks in the airplane.
 
I'd be a big fan of UND adopting ATP's method of having a lower hourly payscale but paying a "retainer fee" of ~$150/month per assigned student. The amount of hours I spent doing work that I didn't get paid for was ridiculous. If you expect me to drop everything to run out to the airport to do a records correction or to have a boatload of crewlink comments updated weekly, base pay outside of the contact time payment would be appropriate. This would also allow for CFIs to be able to make rent in No-Fly November without maxing out their schedules. To get 10.0 contact hours paid pretty much means you're a zombie by the end of the day, but I had to do that quite a few times to make ends meet and get students done. From what I've heard, the pressure on students and CFIs to get lessons done no matter what has only gone up since I've left.
 
Maybe if our ability to maintain financial stability didn't rely solely on packing the skies full of airplanes when the sucker holes pop up, these kinds of safety reports wouldn't be necessary. That being said, you can't really just go to the higher ups and demand more money, because its not like there is much to go around- if the plane isn't flying, they aren't getting paid either.


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