The CFI Route

Since completing my Commercial certificate last month a blatant dilemma has been staring me in the face: how to I get my first job as a pilot? Sure, there's plenty of jobs out there in the market... for EXPERIENCED pilots. But how does one become one of those high-time pilots?

The obvious answer that everyone tells me, is to become a CFI. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive that those working as Certified Flight Instructors are actually some of the LEAST experienced pilots being paid to fly, but since they are still flying the safest and least-complex aircraft for training it makes sense. In the business world, your million dollar airplane gets the pilot with 5000 hours of experience... your $50,000 piston and prop plane is the one you let the 300 hour newly minted instructor fly. Plus, that's the pilot that just spent 300 hours in the same aircraft. The experienced pilot might not have been in a 2-seater for 15 years.

So becoming a CFI is one way for me to make the biggest change a pilot can make in his or her aviation career: transitioning from a pilot who pays to fly into a pilot who gets paid to fly. Another way would be to buy my own helicopter and start a business somewhere in the world where I could get people to hire me. I like this idea. In fact, I really see myself doing this someday. But in all practicality, I don't have the capital to do it yet, and I admit I don't have the experience yet to know how to do it right. I'm pretty new to the aviation industry, and I have a lot to learn about the business side of it before I can presume to take that step. So, yeah. That's something to work towards.

While debating this and other options, what I really needed was incentive to begin my CFI training. I knew it would be the easiest route, and at the same time would make me a much better pilot myself, but I was worried, and I needed some reassurance that I wasn't just going to spend all my money on tedious studying only to find myself without any job offers. We are in a recession, after all, and jobs aren't so easy to come by these days.

But last week just such an incentive crossed my path. Catching up with some of my fellow flight school students last weekend I discovered that there is expected to be an opportunity for several of us to get work next year as CFI's in Africa. My eyes lit up! Not only were they talking about work as a pilot, but about working in another country... exactly what I would like to do. So now I have my carrot in front of me.

I know there are plenty of things that can change between now and the beginning of the year, but at least I'm on a good path now. And it's the path to becoming a CFI!