On Aug 30, 12:56 pm, "El Maximo" wrote:
"Gattman" wrote in message

...



Those were the exact sorts of tips I was looking for. Thanks!

One more note. Go ask a few of the CFIs how many hours they REALLY get paid
for. Being the skeptic that I am, I wouldn't believe the owner who says that
the CFIs fly 40 hours per week. That means the planes are in for 100 hour
inspections every 2 and a half week.

What is a pay-hour? An hour that you are there, or an hour that's billed?

Bingo. I always hear CFI's brag about flying 120+ hours a month, but I
seriously doubt that. Where I work, the weather is VFR just about 350
days a year. There hasn't been a weather related cancellation since
about February. That said, I hardly ever see 80 hours a week, a bit
more if you count in ground school and simulator hours. I work just
about 7 days a week, and I barely have time to sit down and catch my
breath. Its not uncommon I start at 8AM and end at 8PM (or later) with
only 5 or 6 hours of actual billed hours.

For instance, yesterday I was going to do a night flight. When me and
my student got there, the plane wasn't fueled up, so I had to walk
over to the hanger, start up the fuel truck, drive over to the ramp
and put fuel in. As I'm doing that, the student preflights. We get it
started, taxi up to the ramp, and the left mag is running way rough.
So we taxi back. I go inside, get another plane and start the whole
process all over again, with the fuel truck and all. Then when we got
to our destination, we had to fuel up again, which is off the Hobbs as
well.

All said and done, the 4 hour flight ended up taking 6 hours to
complete. Thats fairly typical. I guess if you freelance, you can
charge the student for all that time, but if you're freelance, you're
going to have to deal with a lot more "back scene" stuff anyways...
Just something to think about.