15 Hour Wonders

On Monday, December 9, 2019 at 1:20:39 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Fake news

Spot on.

Villifying pilots who legally meet the FAA requirements and pass the exam just adds to our burden trying to stem our declining CFI-G population.

To become a CFI-G you have to have already earned a Commercial Glider Pilot Certificate - not a gimme by any means. Having an CFI-A decreases the minimum requirements a little bit, but it doesn't change the Practical Test Standards that have to be met. CFI-G's don't want to sign off someone who isn't going to pass the exam and DPE's don't award flight instructor certificates unless they are confident the applicant is competent.

In my case, I added on my Comm-Glider four-and-a-half years ago to go along with my ATP, 5 Type Ratings, Comm-ASEL, Comm-Rotorcraft, CFI-A and CFI-R (with around two thousand hours instructing) and 21,000 hours of flying. And, I still flew gliders for four years to gain the experience, not hours, I felt I needed to be an effective instructor. The experience has made me a better glider pilot overall, so it was worth it. Too bad there's no place to use it around here.

Let's talk about experience vs attitude, shall we?
In the past four years I've seen our local senior glider instructors land short of the runway on a road with a student, send a student for their first solo without their student pilot certificate or logbook endorsement, allow a minor to continue soloing well past the expiration of his solo endorsement, continue flying a glider they declared should be grounded and justifying doing so by saying they limit their max speed to 80kts, look the other way when someone (not a CFI-G) decided to autotow a known marginal pre-solo student so he could do some "landings" and later look the other way when that same student came back from a solo flight and recounted how he got himself into a spin and somehow survived when he, admittedly, used all of the wrong recovery procedures, and one who went around the patch only one time with a private pilot who was out of 90-day currency to carry passengers and declare her legal to do so without the full three landing required by FARs.

Being long in the tooth with a thick glider logbook doesn't endow you with superpowers or forgive poor judgement. Having the right attitude and applying one's previous experience flying and instructing in other types of heavier than air flying machines makes a huge difference in the equation.

I trust those endorsing CFI-G applicants and the DPEs to be the gatekeepers and to have all of us in the sport of soaring in their minds when they sign off a new CFI-G.

Can I have an AMEN?

Paul A.
CFI-A (1986), CFI-R (1993), and CFI-G (2019)
Jupiter, FL