Raising the bar and weird job offers
Today I talked to one of the directors of my college’s flight program.
I’d heard one of the full time CFIs quit unexpectedly last week which means the college is very shorthanded at the flight center this summer. They have 25 students lined up to fly and only have one full time and one part time instructor to carry the load.
I basically said I’d like to work for the college again, but I couldn’t do it for less than $20/hour. The current pay scale tops out at $15/hour–that’s for experienced instructors with CFII and MEI tickets. The director told me there isn’t any wiggle room in the pay scale. He even said he thought $20/hour was pretty high for this area.
I tactfully told him I’m too busy with other obligations to work for less than $20/hour and wished him good luck in covering the student load this summer. Will they be in a bind without me? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever happens, I don’t have any ill-will towards the college.
I’m happy I’m finally at a point in life where I don’t “need” crappy paying CFI jobs any more. I have plenty of flight time, just a bit less than the IFR Part 135 minimums now. I have a full time academic class load, so it’s not like I’m sitting around twiddling my fingers, wondering what to do with myself, either. And best of all, I have low enough expenses with enough money in savings that I can afford to be unemployed for a couple months without any serious damage. I feel very free right now.
I’ve long been saying the college treats their workers great in every way except pay. I hope my actions help the up and coming CFIs around here see that they don’t have to just sit back and take it. This job has too much stress and liability to only get $15/hour. It’s one thing to be a starry-eyed brand new instructor, grasping for every second of flight time possible, and therefore willing to work for whatever they give you. It’s entirely different to have experience, not need the flight time, and start looking at the negative aspects of the job.
Hour for hour, I could make as much money answering phones at the front desk of one of the dorms. Liability, stress, and training involved with answering phones? Zero. So why should I bother putting myself through the ringer to teach somebody how to land when I’m not compensated accordingly? Because it’s “fun”? No doubt, I love teaching. But I’ve also started to see the big picture of life more clearly and the fun side of the job simply can’t stand up to the hassles of the job, all things being equal. That’s why money comes in to play. More money would equalize things. It would make me much more willing to put up with the liability and hassles if I knew my pay check would reflect the amount of effort I was putting in.
Maybe these new instructors will see it my way some day and the whole pay scale will be forced upward in order to attract more talent. Maybe. If not, that’s ok too. All I can do is live my life and let other people live theirs.
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So the other strange thing that happened to me today came as a result of owning my own plane. I got a call this morning from a guy who wanted me to give him a biennial flight review. He’d heard about me from a mutual friend at the airport where I base my plane.
In the course of talking with him, I found out he is only in the area briefly, visiting family, and he normally lives in Guyana. For those of you less familiar with geography, Guyana is one of the poorest nations in the world and is located at the northern end of South America.
This man runs a bush flying/medical missionary service in Guyana, flying about 900 hours per year in a Cessna 180 and a Cessna 172. Those are two of only 27 aircraft in the whole country. He is also the only designated pilot examiner in the country. He became a DPE because there is essentially no infrastructure set up for licensing pilots there. All Guyanese pilots used to get FAA licenses in the US, then return to Guyana to work. However, after Sept. 11, 2001, their access to US flight schools dried up. Now they are trying to set up their own network of flight schools and train their pilots from within. When the government found out how much flight time this guy had, they asked him to be the country’s DPE because he had more experience than almost all other pilots in the country.
He essentially asked me to come down and fly for his medical mission service. He said he was tired of having 300 hour wonders come down who had never flown a plane at max gross weight off of an unpaved runway. He could only send them back to the US and tell them to come back when they had more experience. He is specifically looking for mid- to high-time pilots who have a broad base of experience and own or have owned their own plane. He thought I fit the profile perfectly.
He also said even if I didn’t want to fly with his service, the Guyana national flight school was looking for a chief instructor and he could probably get me the job if I wanted it. Wouldn’t that be a kick? Being the lead instructor for a whole country?
I had to turn him down because this just isn’t the right time in my life to be doing that kind of thing, but maybe in a few years I’ll consider it. I saved his name and e-mail address for the future. Who knows…life is crazy.
Happy (con)trails!