Career Change - Full-time CFI: Average Flight Hours per year?

For what it's worth, I did 575 hours of instructing last year...
Full time working for a small school...

John Price
CFII/AGI/IGI
http://home.att.net/~jm.price



"Peter Gibbons" wrote in message
om...
Background: I'm currently 30 years old with my IFR and about 190 hrs
TT. Currently working as a systems administrator/programmer, but
weighing my options are if I were to try to make a career out of
aviation. Yeah - crazy, right? Try sitting in front of a monitor for
8 hours a day in a cubicle in a building with no windows! It makes
mowing lawns sound like a good career move...

Anyway, spending a year or two as a CFI seems like the common thing
most folks do in order to build time. From poking around in the
newsgroups, it seems as though if a new CFI were pulling in around
$20k for full-time instructing, he would be considered a rich man! I
could have survived on $20k about 5 years ago, but with a wife and a
baby on the way, that's just not going to cut it.

If I could build up enough hours to get hired on somewhere making
$25k-$30k, that wouldn't be as unrealistic financially, and I could
pad it a bit with some contract work here-and-there.

So rather than chuck my current job right away, I figured I'd do a
little comparison and see how realistic I was being. How many hours
could I build up per year (and how much that would cost) if I stayed
at my current job and flew on the weekends versus how many hours I
would get (and how much money I would lose) if I instructed full-time.

So, all of that to tell you the origin of what I am asking:
Generally, how many hours can a full-time CFI expect to fly in a year?

john price wrote:

For what it's worth, I did 575 hours of instructing last year...
Full time working for a small school...

I thought you only taught on weekends. When did that change?

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

I spent seven years as a part-time CFI and three years as a full-timer,
starting at $8 an hour and "topping out" at $25 an hour.

As a part-time CFI, I usually worked with no more than five or six students at
a time, most of whom were flying twice a week. I generally averaged 300 - 500
hours of flight time per year. During the winter months, I'd be lucky to fly 20
hours a month. Summer was all the flying you could stand, and then some. (This
was in addition to my full-time job as a computer programmer, so I spent all of
my time either at work or at the airport.)

In 1997 I quit my full-time job and began instructing full time, working at a
couple of schools in Florida. During my "best" year, I flew 1170 hours and
signed off 42 students for checkrides. My gross pay that year came to about
$16,700. It was pretty common for me to spend 90-100 hours a week at the
airport. A day off was a rare luxury.

Personally, I found the part-time work to be more enjoyable. My computer job
paid the bills, so there wasn't any pressure to fly in marginal weather or to
try to see how many students I could cram into my schedule. Most of my students
at that time also worked full-time, so our schedules were compatible - we
simply flew after work or on weekends.

From a financial standpoint, the best places to work for are flying clubs and
the smaller FBO's. These generally pay the best, and you will probably have
more control over your schedule. Avoid the big "academy-style" schools.

Another thing to keep in mind is that most CFI jobs do NOT provide any type of
benefits, such as medical insurance. This can be a major consideration if you
have a family.

E. Roberts, CFI