These days, it's pretty common to build the required flight time for an airline job by becoming a Certified Flight Instructor, or CFI. The turnover is pretty high because most people don't want to remain CFIs for their whole career, so it's typically easier to find work as an instructor versus other flying jobs. Part of the reason the turnover is high is because it's not an easy job, and sometimes we lose sight of why we are up there in the first place. Let's get into some ways we can address this and maximize the value that we both provide and receive during our time as flight instructors.
You're there for your students.
Remember that our priority aside from safety is to make sure that we are providing quality instruction to each of our students. They're paying a lot of money to fly, so we want to give them the most bang for the buck possible. Think back to when you first began flying: how did your instructors teach you and what tricks really worked for you that might work for your students? How did you feel learning from them? Were they good at finding gaps in knowledge? Take the best of what you learned from your instructors and pass it on to your students. If you're having a bad day that is affecting your student, ending the lesson early or cancelling altogether is not a bad idea.
Teaching is the best way to maximize your own learning.
When we teach others how to fly and everything that comes with it, we solidify our own knowledge and become better pilots ourselves. That's partly due to repetition, but it's also because you won't always know the answers to every question asked by your students. When that happens, look it up together! You will solidify your student's knowledge and your own knowledge. You will also build trust in the process because admitting what you don't know is humbling and students know that. You may even find that your student catches you on something that you misremember!
Your situational awareness will heighten quickly.
Starting out as a new CFI with new students is probably about the most intimidating part of being an instructor. You're immediately thrown in the deep end having to monitor both the brand new student trying to kill you and everything about the airplane you are flying. The complexity of this task is heightened when you are in busy, controlled airspace. Oh and by the way, you have to teach too! All of this forces you to learn the art of multi-tasking quickly which thankfully becomes much easier even after only a month or two of instructing. Eventually, you'll find your situational awareness has greatly improved and you'll develop a weird intuition that allows you to catch stuff before it happens. This will come in handy later on in your career when you're flying airplanes that are significantly faster and more complex.
Burn out is real, so don't allow yourself to get to that point.
I did an article some months back about burn out and how to deal with it. It doesn't matter how much you love flying; if you are teaching students and flying every day for weeks and months, you're going to need to give yourself a break. Don't forget to take time off and give yourself a breather. Remember that it's not just about making sure you don't lose sight of what you love, but also about safety. Burn out breeds complacency which is something that has no place in the cockpit.
You're flying a friggin' plane!
Think about how many people sit behind desks all day! You're literally guiding a piece of metal through the sky, and teaching someone else how to do it. That's the coolest thing ever. If you're flying with a student with whom you're comfortable, take a glance out the window on the takeoff roll and watch the ground drop beneath you. That still gives me goosebumps to this day, and it was a nice reminder of why I got into flying in the first place.
You might not fly general aviation aircraft much, if at all as an airline pilot.
I can't tell you how many times I've landed at airports where people are burning holes in the traffic pattern and I think about how much fun it was flying those planes and that I miss flying general aviation. There's so much you can do as an instructor with students that you won't ever be able to do as an airline pilot. I fondly remember taking students on cross countries to a tiny airport where they had great breakfast burritos, and showing a new student a little zero G and watching their faces light up. So enjoy flying the little planes while you can! Flying is supposed to be fun, so do what you can (safely) to make sure you experience that when you're teaching.
Notes
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