And I fail to see how freelance instructing is a panacea against the decline of GA. It should certainly be as easy as possible regulations wise, but how would it boost the number of PPL students, or more importantly the number of pilots who stay active after doing their PPL?
And I fail to see how freelance instructing is a panacea against the decline of GA.
It depends on where you are.
Most people probably have a PPL school at their local airfield, but it may be a bad one, disorganised, crap shagged-out aircraft, etc, whereas a freelancer will obviously travel. Also a freelancer is far more likely to want to train in your own plane, which most schools really dislike doing.
And a freelancer “works better” with a business/professional client who needs extra flexibility in the training schedule. Many of these clients like to incorporate flight training into their business trips, which is a great way to learn. Obviously it costs a lot more than banging circuits and doing local flying until you are OK to pass the PPL skills test (see one thread here) but these students are not too worried about that and they end up with a much more usable PPL because they have seen more real-world navigation, ATC work, etc.
When you get to say an IR the scene changes dramatically and most people are looking at some pretty lousy options involving hotel residence. Many have to travel abroad to e.g. do the classroom in one place and then sit the exams elsewhere. We have many threads here on e.g. CPL theory for instructing, involving multiple trips abroad and a year’s worth of hassle. If I had to do the EASA IR now, in my own plane, I would have to drive 2hrs each way, which obviously needs a hotel stay.
The ability in the USA to do everything locally is a key factor in the health of GA in the USA and in their order of magnitude bigger IR adoption. The IR adoption translates to a far better utility value of GA flying which translates to a much higher GA activity which supports the GA infrastructure – all of it i.e. airfields, maintenance facilities, avionics facilities, the whole lot.
Europe has shafted the ability of “any PPL school” to train the IR, and allowing freelance instruction towards the IR would alleviate that. That of course means it will never happen because the “IR-ATO” owners will lobby like hell behind the scenes against a “drop in standards” etc which always works because it pulls on the emotional (“safety”) strings. Same as anything to do with medicals which are ultra emotive but, having said that, the UK has the really amazing NPPL which below 2000kg needs only the car driving medical standard, so amazing GA victories do happen occassionally… but EASA will kill it off for EASA CofA aircraft in April 2018.
You get the same thing with freelance maintenance. It is wonderfully convenient for the client (well, for those who want to get involved, rather than just dropping off the plane at a dealer) for many reasons (one of which is the separation of hangarage from maintenance, which avoids the politics and being over a barrel) but obviously the maintenance business is against it, and if the business pays hefty licensing fees to the CAA (as happens in the UK) the CAA will be against it too because they aren’t going to cut their own throat.
Peter wrote:
Europe has shafted the ability of “any PPL school” to train the IR, and allowing freelance instruction towards the IR would alleviate that.
I am not so sure about that anymore. Look at what is going on with cost sharing and France. France argues againt cost shring using the “safety” argument, but EASA does not look like it is about to give in.
That of course means it will never happen because the “IR-ATO” owners will lobby like hell behind the scenes against a “drop in standards” etc which always works because it pulls on the emotional (“safety”) strings.
I am not so sure about that either anymore. The CB-IR has gone a long way in allowing using freelance instructors for the bulk of the training.
Peter wrote:
…whereas a freelancer will obviously travel.
Why would he “obviously” do that? If I would instruct freelance I would do that from exactly the same airport from which I instruct now. I hate traveling. In order to get me to travel you would have to pay me a super-extra-bonus-premium of an order of magnitude which would make Bill Gates eyes water 
Peter wrote:
Also a freelancer is far more likely to want to train in your own plane, which most schools really dislike doing.
We train quite a few students in their own planes. That’s a matter of filling in a few forms for the aircraft owner and getting the proper insurance and required maintenance for the duration of the training. There would be exactly zero difference if the instruction was given by a freelance instructor.
Peter wrote:
And a freelancer “works better” with a business/professional client who needs extra flexibility in the training schedule.
Why would that be? As I wrote above, the great majority of flying instructors around here are not employed by the FTO, just registered there. We do not get assigned to students or training slots by the FTO, but we negotiate our own training hours with the students as they come (just happened 30 minutes ago when I fixed an appointment with a student for tomorrow morning – the school knows nothing about that and doesn’t care the least, apart from the aircraft reservation). So wether I go fly with him two hours in the morning or all day according to his business schedule is completely up to me. I do not have to be a “standalone freelance” instructor to do this kind of stuff.
LeSving wrote:
Back to topic
what_next wrote: As a freelance instructor I would have to learn all those lessons on my own expense the hard way. Why should I?Life is always “easier” when you have a company covering your back. I want to turn it around. Why should a student care about what is most comfortable for you as an instructor?
Because he needs me more than I need him. Very simple.
I’m instructing in a club in Norway and I’m really looking forward to the DTO. I see more and more clients wanting to instruct in their own planes, and in particular Cirruses, but the club is obviously reluctant to allow this, because then their eighties 172s won’t be flying those 45 hours. I have managed to cut some deals from time to time, which has allowed me to become specialized on the SR22s. I don’t think the DTO is going to generate a lot more PPL holders, but I think specialized instructors can help with the “decisions” and processes to become aircraft owners, and thus adding to the fleet of GA aircraft.
Btw, I charge EUR 42/hr.
MedEwok wrote:
And I fail to see how freelance instructing is a panacea against the decline of GA. It should certainly be as easy as possible regulations wise, but how would it boost the number of PPL students, or more importantly the number of pilots who stay active after doing their PPL?
Freelance instruction is less expensive, expanding opportunities to fly to more people, sometimes free when it’s between friends or relatives, and the quality of instructor is typically higher so the student learns more and gets more satisfaction from their flying. For instance, when practicing stalls with a part-time instructor who is an unlimited aerobatic competitor, because the type you own tends to stall a bit unpredictably, you don’t have to worry about his ability to recover from a spin if/when you botch something up. As you might imagine that was a real situation for me and there is precisely zero chance of that certificated instructor having done it as a job, or (particularly) within a business.
At your stage of flying, you still have to learn what you want or need to learn. Flying schools for private pilots are motivated to build walls, visions of dragons out there, to limit your progression in that regard… because your cash flow will likely go elsewhere (some to freelance instructors!) as you progress. Those who never do climb the walls never learn who and what is out there, many quit but some keep paying.
Instructors in, at least larger ATOs are typically recruited internally, thus also with limited “real world” experience.
Cost isn’t the thing to be focusing on when discussing freelance instructors.
I’ve done all my training with one, from basic PPL to multiengine instrument. In all cases, I paid the instructor a higher rate than what the nearest flight schools were charging for instruction.
By far the greatest advantage of the freelancer was not price but availability. Most flight schools work “bankers hours” only plus weekends, meaning if you work a job that keeps bankers hours, most people who are learning to fly for reasons other than going into it for the airlines are all competing for weekend hours. This makes training a slow, long and drawn out affair. However, my instructors generally had a ‘day job’ and did instructing because they loved to pass on their passion, and would take on perhaps a couple of students at a time, and teach in the evenings, and could be a bit flexible. For instance, during my PPL, I could get three sessions a week. If the weather was bad, we could just do it another day – unlike when you only have 2 out of 7 days where you can possibly fly with an instructor at a bankers hours ATO, which means having to reschedule for another week with the attendant loss of currency.
The other big advantage was that the instructors I flew with were not the types who were instructing primarily to build hours, they were instructing because they liked instructing. All of them had over 1000 hours in GA. The flight schools typically had 300-400 hour instructors who had never been outside the training environment. Now some of the instructors with real world light GA experience do exist in ATOs but they are pretty few and far between.
alioth wrote:
Most flight schools work “bankers hours” only plus weekends, …
Define “most”. If I show you the reservation table of the aircraft of “my” flying school you will see that the reservations are randomly scattered across the fleet from Monday 7AM till Sunday 11PM. We have few full-time employed instructors (who will need to work something like 8AM to 6PM due to flight time regulations). All the others instruct beside a normal job, many work part time (like myself) or are self employed and can instruct whenever they and/or the students like.
The other big advantage was that the instructors I flew with were not the types who were instructing primarily to build hours, they were instructing because they liked instructing. All of them had over 1000 hours in GA.
Like myself. And 80 percent of the other instructors in our school. And I always instructed within an FTO.
