Allowing instructors to just teach (freelance)

Silvaire wrote:

maybe $75/hr.

Wonderful. And if he loses his medical he will end in a shed made from corrugated metal in one of those slums that surround most larger cities in the US. I’m glad that we don’t have this kind of loooow level self employment yet around here. And not everything that comes from the States is good.

Cost wise I don’t think PPL training is expensive because of the flight training

That is totally true – because anyone who cannot raise the 10k initial cost won’t be doing much (or any) flying afterwards. Of course that opens one to the allegation of this but it is self evidently true IF your objective is to stimulate GA and not just generate PPL holders of whom 90% chuck it in more or less immediately.

So, this leads to the many threads we have had on why do people give up, etc, etc. Actually the average professional/business person finds the average club/school downright embarrassing in its level of disorganisation, and walks right back out.

And those people who advocate “freelance instruction” outside FTOs expect that figure to go down even more, otherwise what sense would it make?

Regarding instructor pay, there is a very basic point in this:

In every area of business (and PPL training is a business, even when set up to look like a “club” – simply because if you constantly lose money you must go bust) there is a maximum level of overheads which can be carried.

If you run a nuclear power station then you can probably carry 100 inspectors, each on 50k, as mandated by the nuclear power station supervisory body (or whatever it is).

If you run a flying school, how much can you carry? If your national CAA mandates that you have three posts (three different people) e.g. head of training, head of the filing cabinet, head of documentation (or whatever) then even if each of these is paid the national minimum wage, you have to pay the instructors peanuts – because that’s all you have left over…

Whereas a freelance instructor, in an evironment where freelancing is fully allowed, could charge say €50/hr which is reasonable money. Actually I know a freelance instructor (who loosely works via an ATO for stuff which mandates an ATO) and who is busy as hell freelancing at £35/hr and IMHO making a decent living out of it. And of course there would be far fewer schools, because who would need them?

£50/hr is standard for an IRI, CRE/IRR, etc e.g. those who can do IR revalidations away from the ATO money-sponge-for-the-CAA system.

Unless you artifically restrict competition and are based in a wealthy area, it is probably impossible to make a living out of PPL training as a school because as soon as somebody sees you making a living they will open up in a “wooden hut ATO” and undercut you. Regulatory compliance consultancy is the world’s second oldest profession so, like ISO9000 etc, you can get somebody in to set it all up.

However full freelancing will never happen because here in Europe the default assumption is that an individual is a crook and cannot be trusted, whereas an organisation (which has gained various approvals) is good. This in turn drives the often atrocious maintenance scene because the companies are all “approved” i.e. they are “good” and anybody wanting to do anything about bad stuff has an uphill struggle because what they are investigating cannot by definition be happening… The staff at EASA is mostly recruited from the regulatory compliance services business e.g. Part 21 because those are the people with the right CV for the jobs. Expecting freelance instruction is like expecting turkeys (in the UK; some cultural differences around Europe involve eating different animals) to vote for xmas. This is why e.g. ELA2 is so long coming – everybody except the actual users is lobbying against it.

what_next wrote:

And if he loses his medical he will end in a shed made from corrugated metal in one of those slums that surround most larger cities in the US. I’m glad that we don’t have this kind of loooow level self employment yet around here.

That’s an odd perception, like something from the DDR. Somehow unlike some other people I don’t think he’d end up in a bad situation when faced with change And beyond that he doesn’t need a medical for most of his instruction work, and you don’t need a medical to be an IA.

I think $75/hr works out OK for him. He seems to be working pretty much full time, and enjoying life. I’d guess he’s grossing $10K a month, and his total overhead is $500/month, the hangar rental. Not getting rich but doing OK. A while ago I was amused that one of his Malibu guys called him to the UK to do some maintenance, being somebody’s ‘regular guy’ does have some value.

Peter wrote:

…If your national CAA mandates that you have three posts (three different people) e.g. head of training, head of the filing cabinet, head of documentation (or whatever) then even if each of these is paid the national minimum wage, you have to pay the instructors peanuts …

In my FTO (which is a third generation family business) all these mandated postholders (the “head of documentation” is called “nominated person ground operations” by EASA as far as I know ) are all active instructors themselves and about the only people employed full time. So there is no big overhead required.

One of the reasons why I would never work as a “standalone” freelance instructor (after all I do instruct freelance, but under the “roof” of an ATO) is the total lack of legal and insurance cover. You wouldn’t believe how many students, or rather student’s daddies and mummies who had to pay all the bills, drag the school to court because their spoiled brat, who would rather play counterstrike on his tablet instead of following the course, failed to pass his exams. Of if the student’s precious Bonanza gets bent because I let him make his own crosswind landing experience. If you want to insure yourself against all that as freelance instructor you need to take 150 Euros an hour, 120 of which are for the variuos insurances alone… And from the rest you have to pay taxes, health insurance and social security.

If you want to insure yourself against all that as freelance instructor you need to take 150 Euros an hour, 120 of which are for the variuos insurances alone

Maybe that is the German situation but it for sure isn’t the case elsewhere I know of.

Also the probability of getting sued is proportional to how “big” one is in asset terms and whether one has insurance

So there is no big overhead required.

There is the whole physical establishment… and the time wasted on regulatory paperwork.

But merely allowing freelancing is not the solution because the “national CAA money sponge” machine will find a way to skim money off the freelancers as well. I know one guy who can do everything including PPL initials, IR initials, IR revals, etc and who pays of the order of £5k/year to the UK CAA for the entitlement to use those authorisations! So obviously he has to work rather a lot just to cover those fees.

A return to freelance instructing would absolutely require a removal of the cost of the CAA authorisations.

Peter wrote:

Maybe that is the German situation but it for sure isn’t the case elsewhere I know of.

Yes, I know of the 150 Euro/per year liability insurance for flying instructors offered by AOPA for it’s members. Why can it be so cheap? Because all flight training must be done within an FTO or flying club which has insurance anyway, so they never will need to pay out. They could charge one Euro as well. The day freelance instructing will be allowed around here (never!) will be the end of the 150 Euro p.a. insurance…
Back when I was mainly working as freelance engineer (not the kind with spanners and screwdriver) one of my clients wanted me to take out some kind of “small business liability insurance”. I inquired with insurers and for what I did (software development for the aerospace industry which at that time developed an 800-seat four-engined airliner to be assembled somewhere in France) got quotes between 60.000 and 100.000 Euros for the annual premium. Luckily the customer did not insist on the insurance and even more luckily nothing could ever be traced back to the bits of software I contributed. But for an instructor it is much more obvious. The student fails his checkride, I am the instructor, it can only be my fault…

Why do you say that?

From my own experience back in the days when some of the training (e.g. differences training or multiengine ratings) could be done by freelance instructors outside an FTO. That was a constant bargaining with some of the students. There were those who assumed that the instructor would be paid by the aircraft owner. Others did not even know (or faked that lack of knowledge) that an instructor expects to be paid at all (as I wrote above:“I give you the chance to fly on my wonderful Bonanza for an afternoon, what more can you want?”). And the worst one were those who would combine business travel with instruction. Pay the instructor for one hour in the morning going from A to B (where he would be stranded all day on some remote airfield with no food or anything) and then pay him for another hour flying back at night. They always found someone who would do that, unfortunately (just like those pay-to-fly low cost carriers). I much prefer it the way it is now.

In my experience with the US freelance instructors tend to be the more experienced type or IR/multi instructors who are not going to take that sort of crap from “students”. These are the Bonanza or PA46 specialists. Ab initio stuff is still typically done within flight schools or clubs. You pay a day rate plus expenses.

I wonder if, WN, you happened to be dealing with a customer profile which was somehow self selecting on e.g. national culture, or certain aircraft types correlating with “tight” owners… Also, as a general comment for all business, a business which has a low grade (e.g. arrogant) customer interface will unwittingly be selecting equally low grade customers, so it is easy to see how a particular school could be drawing those out.

I don’t think Brits are particularly reluctant to sue (ask any maintenance company) but the issues you describe don’t seem to happen in the UK. There are isolated cases of a student dropping a freelance instructor in the sh_t, following some dispute, and where the flight was illegal and both sides PROB100 knew it to be thus… I know one such, quite famous too, and the CAA prosecuted the pilot (he pleaded G).. that was illegal paid training in an N-reg and that whole area, governed by the notorious ANO Article 115 and any paid training requiring a full JAA CPL, has been ripe for students blackmailing instructors. However I know of another case of IMHO blatent negligence by the instructor, on a night nav training flight, where the student AFAIK didn’t sue for serious injuries (CFIT) despite some pretty amazing statements posted by the instructor on forums to justify it (they were deleted afterwards). And that latter flight was no doubt conducted within the (ex-WW1) PPL training guidelines………

I don’t think a student can sue unless the FI did something not in accordance with standard training practice, and this would be true regardless of whether the FI was freelance or not.

Also lots of people threaten to sue but say 75% drop it when they find out that a lawyer will want a few hundred € for the initial consultation and the next 24% drop it when they have paid the few hundred € and get told they are looking at a few k to take it further. I have been on the receiving end of that myself (with my ex wife ) and that is how it usually works. Accordingly, whenever some old hand in GA gets threatened with litigation (e.g. a dodgy engine shop) he just smiles…