October 24, 2011
Time to Renew my CFI
I’m right in the middle of studying to renew my flight instructor certificate, and thought I’d take a break to explain why. I became a CFI (Certificated Flight Instructor) back in 1980; one of the main motivations at that time was to find a way to build flying time without paying for every hour out of my own pocket. It’s a time-honored tradition.
Other pilot certificates, such as the private pilot license, commercial license or Airline Transport Pilot, have no expiration date. Once you earn them, you never have to repeat all that training. It is true that to exercise the privileges of your private pilot license you must be within two years of a Biennial Flight Review (BFR), but there’s no check ride involved.
The CFI has an expiration date printed right on it. Every two years, the holder of the certificate must apply for renewal. If it lapses, even by one day, the only way to get a new one is to repeat the entire course of training and a check ride. For an active flight instructor, renewal is just a matter of stopping by the FAA office and showing a record of the number of pilots you’ve trained (assuming they passed their check rides).
But I’m not an active instructor. I haven’t taught a student from scratch for almost 20 years. I used to give occasional instrument competency checks to instrument rated pilots, but I haven’t even done that in the last five years. My option is to complete a refresher course, either by attending a live weekend seminar (24 hours of classroom time) or by completing an on-line course of study and tests. I’m in the process of completing the on-line course, and just took a break to write this.
Why go to the trouble to renew a certificate I don’t use? The bottom line is that I just worked too hard to get it. Besides the basic CFI, I also added the instrument instructor and multi-engine instructor ratings. In the flying world, you’ll often seen this certificate represented as CFIIME (Certificated Flight Instructor, Instrument, Multi-Engine). Plus, truth be told, it’s really not a bad idea to occasionally review the basic elements of teaching and learning. I’m kind of enjoying it and soon I’ll have a new certificate, with an expiration of 10-31-13.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
I started working on my CFI rating in 2010. Thankfully I have my Commercial Single and Multi-Engine Instrument along with my ground instructor, aircraft dispatcher and my complex/high performance/high altitude rating. Getting all my lower ratings is a cakewalk comparing to CFI. Yea. The FAA structured the lessons for the lower ratings. The CFI is self study, very little flying, and requires hundreds of hours of hard in dept studying out of all the ratings that FAA has to offer. Yea. The fundamentals of instruction are a bonus but so useless and wont help you in your flying whatsoever. From what I heard is that there is one or two easy questions from the CFI oral check ride and then you have to answer private and commercial questions in such details that is literally impossible to answer. The FAA has made it that DPE cannot give CFI check rides no more. Its now the FAA designated flight inspector that gives CFI check ride. No matter who you know, no leeway. The FAA has made the check ride so over engineered that now at least 96 percent of people fail on 1 or 2 tries. I can bet you that its because too many students have failed their check rides on their lower ratings, and its all because of that 2009 Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, NY. Yea I started my CFI training 1.5 years after the Colgan crash, and no wonder why I am struggling more than ever with getting my CFI. I believe that out of all the ratings, and the CRJ-200 jet training and Boeing 747-400, or working on any type rating is a cake comparing to CFI. That means other ratings, and the type rating you work on you dont learn as much as flight instructing. I believe people that have flight instructed will be so much safer pilots than those that never instructed or don’t have a CFI. CFI is the bar exam in flying. Its like doing all my ratings over again times 3 at least. Since its gotten harder to get my CFI, can someone help me with what to study, how to study, and what kind of details will the inspector ask me in depth. The Jeppesen, FAA, oral guide books, FAA written exam prep, CBT, and my previous flying experience is just not enough to help me pass my oral and in flight CFI check ride. All because of the reasons above I wrote, the rise in fuel costs, aircraft rental, and flight instruction getting so expensive, I had to discontinue my CFI training. CFI training drained out almost all my money. What other suggestions do you have. Best regards
Comment by Stanley — April 12, 2012 @ 5:44 am