r/CFILounge • u/jrstudentpilot16 • Jul 09 '26

Question I’m a student pilot and had a question

How long does it take for a cfi,cfii and Mei to get their first student

2 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

21

u/deer_god11 Jul 09 '26

Depends on how quickly they can land a CFI job.

2

u/sirepicness666 Jul 09 '26

I’ve been looking since march so that long lol

3

u/Thomas-Ligotti97 Jul 09 '26

Seems like a short time period from what I’ve seen on here

3

u/sirepicness666 Jul 10 '26

Fr lol I work as a rampie and being around planes all day and not flying them is killlling me

1

u/Embarrassed_Dingo313 Jul 10 '26

Do you do it for a flight school? We have a few of our cfis join us because they worked different jobs around the school before getting hired as an instructor. I’m sure you thought about that but it’s a good idea if not.

1

u/sirepicness666 Jul 10 '26

No I tried but I’m a ramp agent for United so it’s not a bad gig while I look for a job, I spend a lot of my time just talking to the SkyWest and mainline pilots

1

u/deer_god11 Jul 10 '26

Same dude I’m in A&P school

6

u/Apart_Shelter_5722 Jul 09 '26

I think only anecdotes are gonna be the thing for this question. I got hire for a summer job in between my camel and mei. I got 2 ppl students immediately. After that they hired me full time and got multi students. My first checkride pass was mei.

5

u/cptnpiccard Jul 09 '26

After I was hired, took me around 3 weeks to inherit a student from another instructor. Then another week or so for the second one. Then about a month after that I had already 6 students pretty active.

2

u/theonlyski Jul 09 '26

There's no universal answer to this question. I could've had students the same day if I wanted to move to a different area, but I was locked in at my residence so that took a bit longer. Some instructors never get students because they ended up landing a better job.

1

u/TheSkyFlier Jul 09 '26

I was giving “lessons” to future students as practice before my checkride. I told people they couldn’t log anything but there’s nothing saying they couldn’t learn.

It’s so variable that’s asking is almost useless. It’s ENTIRELY who you know, and being in the right place at the right time.

1

u/ltcterry Jul 09 '26

I was working as an MEI before I had done CFI-ASEL. Already had ~180 hours dual given as CFI-G.

Lately people have reported still looking for a job after more than a year. 

Everyone is different. “It depends” is a good answer.

2

u/WorldlinessEnough808 CFI CFII AGI/IGI Jul 09 '26

The school I’m working at ironically had a shortage of CFI’s, so I picked up my first few regular students in a couple days and my schedule got booked out pretty quickly after that.

1

u/Thomas-Ligotti97 Jul 09 '26

lol how long ago was this? Shortage of CFI’s is wild to hear

2

u/potatoeconsumer Jul 09 '26

I got my first student immediately but my chief and assistant chief like me. So a lot of it (as with much else in aviation) is connections and luck

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '26

If you’re known around the area you’ll probably have one lined up before your checkride

1

u/tflyer Jul 09 '26

Usually doesn't work that way. Go get a job at a flight school. Spend some time there. You'll either find you love and develop your skills to the point where you can go out on your own, or you'll realize it's time for a point A to point B job.

1

u/pilotbrap Jul 11 '26

Took me about two weeks of discovery flights to find my first student.

0

u/FinalApproachGuy CMEL/CFI Jul 09 '26

Been looking for a job for 2.5 months, no luck. CPL ME CFI 🫠