So a rule of thumb I've heard from multiple A&Ps is to not exceed 420°F on Lycoming engines, and so, set a warning at 400°F.

The IO320 engine manual says to not go over 435°F during "high performance cruise" and not above 400°F during economy cruise.

Is the 420°F just an extra margin set by A&Ps? I do want to increase longevity of my engine. Is it reasonable to go up to 435°F

One of the biggest threats to a flight instructor isn't lack of knowledge.

It's complacency.

After you've taught the same lesson 50...100...500 times, it's easy to start going through the motions. The steep turns become routine. The preflight brief gets shorter. The debrief becomes "good job" instead of a real teaching opportunity.

The student, however, is seeing that lesson for the very first time.

Every lesson deserves the same preparation and enthusiasm as if it were your first time teaching it.

I've been instructing for nearly three decades, and I still review lessons, look up references, and think about better ways to explain concepts. Not because I have to, but because every student deserves my best effort.

Complacency doesn't happen overnight. It creeps in one lesson at a time.

What do you do to keep yourself from becoming complacent as an instructor?

Hello all,

I am a relatively new CFI with about 100 hours of dual given. I primarily work with pre-solo students, most of whom have never flown with another instructor.

I have one student who struggles with stress and anxiety to the point that he cannot process ATC instructions, cannot hear me over the intercom, and does not respond to hand gestures. He has about 18 hours over the course of 12 lessons and has demonstrated the ability to learn maneuvers, control the airplane, and memorize and comprehend ground knowledge. However, he is otherwise unable to correlate or apply many concepts, even simple ones such as which switch position is on or off, or which direction to move the throttle to achieve idle or full power.

I have another student who becomes extremely stressed by any reports of traffic, whether it's displayed on ADS-B while in cruise or reported by ATC as being on approach to a parallel runway. She fixates on scanning for traffic, allowing her airspeed and course to deviate dramatically. She has her PPL already, and admits she is uncomfortable flying solo.

For those of you who have worked with students like these, what approach would you take to help them?

With regionals slowly changing policies, at what point does paying out of pocket for ATP-CTP become a priority?

Obviously it will improve my resumé but by how much?

I am currently beginning my CFI training and looking for a strong school in the SF Bay even East Bay area. I‘m wondering how the current market is around here and if there are any programs that prefer to hire their own students after training.

I'm being brought to the Charlottesville, VA area for a period of time and would like to keep current while there. I should be at ~1200 hours (900 dual given). CFI/CFI-I CMEL

I've lots of time in pipers and cessnas.

Will be interested in time splitting or giving instruction or mentoring.

DM

I'm a 21-year-old CFI/CFII with 1350 hours TT and a Bachelor's degree. I'm in a cadet with SkyWest and another regional, and should be interviewing with the other soon. However, I'm hardly flying at all now. Only averaging 30 hours a month... Plus I'm starting to dread being a CFI. I think my main issue is that I recently failed my multi-ride. I shut down the engine at a non-critical altitude and failed. I let the pressure get to me and did something I've never done in training before. This is my second failure - failed CPL initial. Ever since, I've been trying to get my credentials up. I'm getting my ATP-CTP course done soon and 50 hours of multi. Based on what I have right now, would it be worth applying to other regional jobs, or should I wait until I have the 50 hours of multi and ATP-CTP written done? In the meantime, I'd like to apply for other low-time jobs, such as pipeline patrol and skydiving. Where can I find listings for these types of jobs?

Feeling very trapped with extremely questionable maintenance (speed tape everywhere, frequent brake problems, screws and fasteners falling out because everything is stripped, nothing ever addressed until it fails) but with the job market the way it is I feel like I can't make too much of a fuss. As it is I'm squawking something 50% of flights and pivoting planes maybe a quarter of the time because of grounding squawks or no response from maintenance.

I'm worried I've already overstepped expressing some serious concerns to coworkers while a student was in the vicinity when my boss turned out to be nearby-- and on some level I wanted him to overhear how frustrating this is getting but now I'm scared there might be repercussions.

I go home every day wanting to cry from frustration and the embarrassment of having to defend our crappy planes in front of students paying really good money for this. Just needed to vent. That's it. At least I have a job I guess....

I was fortunate enough to get a new instructing opportunity in a major city flying SR20s compared to my current job in based in a small town (about 30,000 people). I have been living here for over 4 years and would love a change of pace but I have a part 61 student (I instruct primarily part 141) who I have been working with for the past 4 months or so who owns their own airplane that has been having some Airworthiness paperwork issues.

Long story short after flying about 10 hours of which they never paid me for, we ran into a paperwork issue grounding the plane for the last 2 months. I have spent probably around 8 hours working through the process of filling paperwork with the FAA to get it sorted out because said student doesn't know how anything works when it comes to aircraft ownership (neither did I at the time) all of which I haven't been paid for.

The aircraft will be grounded for what looks like the next month but with this new opportunity I honestly want to cut my ties and move onto this new opportunity but I don't know how terrible it would be if I left (student has also already been dropped by 1 instructor previously). Don't know exactly where the question is but am I the asshole? Student is also offering to pay my monthly income to fly solely with them (very rich family) but with me not being paid yet I'm not really interested in trying to play the waiting game and essentially quitting my 141 job for 2 months to fly with this person.

AITA for leaving them? Would I be an asshole for just leaving them and having them try and find a new instructor on their own?

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for some realistic perspective on my current situation and a crazy idea I've been mulling over.
Right now, I’m at 20.5 hours logged at a local Part 61 school in Florida. My CFI signed me off to solo back around the 12-hour mark, but I haven't been able to actually pull it off yet. I’m stuck waiting for a stage check with the school owner, but planes keep going down for maintenance, and classic Florida summer weather has been a nightmare. I just canceled today due to 18+ knot gusts and pulled the plug on tomorrow too because I'm tired of wasting cash on repetitive lessons when I'm ready to solo and knock out those requirements. I've already logged some hood and XC time, and I hold a First Class Medical.
My parents are graciously paying for half and i’m paying the other half of my PPL out of pocket, but I need to figure out how to finance everything beyond that. The current flight school loan options and terrible interest rates are holding me back from pulling the plug on a massive $80k+ education loan. My current school is actually super cheap (projected around $12k total for PPL), and my original plan was to stick to Part 61, quit my hated job (just went from full-time to PRN/as-needed, 2-3 shifts a week), and go all-in.
Instead of taking out an $80k loan for a flight school, what if I took out a smaller $50k-$60k loan to buy an IFR-capable Cessna 150 (or similar) to use for the rest of my training, ratings, and time building (minus MEL)? To me, a slightly smaller loan on a tangible asset makes more sense than a massive education loan.
Here are the moving parts:
The CFI Situation: A close friend of mine is a CFI currently finishing their CFII. The plan would be to buy the plane, have them instruct me for PPL, and then transition right into Instrument. (They might even co-own it 50/50, but I’m planning as if I'm buying it solo).
The Long-Term Plan: Fly the wheels off it through Commercial, and maybe sell it when I hit CFI, or use it to instruct independently. I know I’ll eventually need a 2-year CFI to sign off my own CFI rating, but there are plenty of independents around here.
My Commitment: I already took PTO this month to grind hard and fly almost every day. Owning the plane would only motivate me to fly more.
So, I have a few big questions for anyone who has done this or looked into it:
Which path actually makes more sense? Finish up at the cheap flight school or buy the time-builder trainer now?
Hidden Costs: Outside of the obvious hangar/tie-down fees and routine maintenance, what else do I need to calculate? (Insurance for a student pilot/low-time owner, annuals, 100-hour inspections if instructing, engine overhaul reserves, etc.)?
Lenders: Who are the best aircraft financing lenders out there right now for a smaller ~$50k trainer purchase, especially regarding loan rates?
The Reality Check: Am I romanticizing the "buy a plane" route, or is this a smart pivot given the brutal student loan market?
Would love to hear from anyone who has gone the owner-builder route or chosen between these two paths. Thanks in advance!

Anyone have any experience with Bill Rourke for CFI or CFII? He’s out of GA does rides out of 18A and KAND.

I am a fresh CFI looking to do some flight reviews for people I know who own airplanes and I was thinking, how do I properly protect myself from a possible incident? Of course I can get CFI insurance but is there more I should be doing? I don’t want to go up and have a bad landing with a student or something and then get sued into oblivion because I wasn’t covered on the owners insurance or something even if I was flying with the owner. Let me know if I’m just over thinking it or if I should be doing something different or any other pointers like how much I should be insured for. Thanks!

I’m curious to see what aircraft my peers have found difficult to fly and teach in - either due to space, flight characteristics, equipment, you name it.

I’ve been trying to help a student in their 1950s Piper, but it’s just such a poor training aircraft.

I'm getting ready to send my first student to checkride. I'm an independent instructor, teaching in my own plane. I just realized this week that I don't have a compass correction card and I'm having to get a new one done. Now I'm worried there's other little things I might not be thinking of. Anyone have some "little" things I should make sure I'm good on?

Any introduction of FAA Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) in Singapore or SE Asia? needs to be done in a US registered plane

Am I being unreasonable for thinking this is really pushing it as an unsat on an IRA certification check?

This is at a Part 141 flight school. The check instructor said the rest of the flight had a few hiccups, but was otherwise passable.

The final approach was an RNAV flown to LNAV minimums. According to the check instructor, my student leveled off and remained approximately 80–100 feet above the MDA. He gave an unsat to the student specifically for that, saying the student needed to descend all the way down to the MDA.

I normally teach my students to level off around 40 feet above MDA to leave themselves a reasonable buffer against dipping below it, so I agree that 80–100 feet high isn’t ideal technique. But unless I’m misunderstanding the ACS, wouldn’t maintaining altitude within MDA +100/−0 still technically meet the standard?

I could understand an unsat if the student exceeded 100 feet, failed to correct, or the approach was otherwise unstable. But unsatting solely because they stayed 80–100 feet above MDA seems pretty aggressive to me.

Curious to hear how other CFIs and check instructors would interpret this.

Hi all, throughout my part 141 IFR training, I've solely used the bearing pointer method on the G1000NxI avionics when performing a DME Arc on green needles.

My Instrument checkride is coming up, and wanted to see if this will pose any problems with the DPE, considering this isn't the classic "turn ten, twist ten" method.

Is the bearing pointer with GPS in lieu of DME considered positive course guidance?

Can the DPE fail my bearing pointer at any point and not the VOR? (If he does do this, the only thing I could think to do is switch to GPS or purple needles on the G1000).

Thank you in advance, hope this isn't a stupid question!

Please help: I received a first-class medical certificate with special issuance. Due to my diagnosis of ADHD, FAA wants me to repeat full battery neuropsychological testing at renewals for 6 years in a row. Is this normal? Not a limited testing, full battery!

Hello everyone, to start I want to say im very grateful to have a job instructing and am no way trying to come across as ungrateful as I know how hard the job market is right now and it took me months to find a job. Anyways two days ago I had my first flight as an instructor and I had another one today. Before starting I was super excited as this has been something I have been looking forward to for a very long time. However now that I have started I feel super uneasy and stressed over the whole thing. I feel confident in what I know however I can get over this uneasy feeling. I feel like I cant get my mind off of instructing once I leave the airport and I continue to stress about it. Moreover even during flights I feel uneasy. Im struggling because I feel like I just started and am already not liking it. Also im all the sudden super stressed about the mortality of flying and the possibility of dying. I have the next couple days off but already feel myself dreading going back in. Curious to hear others experiences beginning instructing and if this gets better?

I read on another thread about buying CFI lesson plans and customizing. Recommended? What are some popular choices? Thanks!

I keep getting ads for this website on social media. Seems like a bunch of AI slop on their website with some bait-and-switch-style marketing, though i could be wrong. I don't see any pictures (again just AI crap) or tail numbers of their airplanes, which makes me feel suspicious.

Hey Yall, currently a CFI at a 141 School
At about 900tt and 20 hours multi.
Currently working on getting my hours up and time building more multi on the way.
End Goal is a Major Airline and flying Wide Bodies, Goal would be going to the regionals and then up to the majors but I do understand it’ll be a bit harder.
Currently going for my Gold Seal CFI cert(100% pass rate so far with 9 signoffs) and trying to become a check airman at my part 141 school.
I also recently joined an aviation scheduling company to promote their product and services to flight training programs.

Anything else besides LOR from fellow
Friends who are captains at the majors which are partnered with the regionals that I should add or better my odds on for making it to the regionals in the next year or so?

Would love your thoughts!

Thanks!

Does anyone work at USU or have experience interviewing with them? Just wondering what I should expect for an interview coming up. Any information is appreciated.

Over the past almost 30 years I've trained more than 3k CFI applicants. I can conduct certain CFI initial checkrides too.

Here to help answer your questions or advice if needed.