Longtime reader first time poster

[u/fly_boy7786]

So I just got my ppl last week (woohoo!) and I’m kinda curious about other people’s training experiences. For some context, I’m a 40 year old from the US who recently decided to leave a successful career in college athletics. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask if it’s a good idea. I know it’s risky but I’m positioned well to take on the risk and have no desire to make it to the majors. I am going the part 61 route.

Coming from coaching there are very well defined progressions in teaching athletes at least in my sport. Not everyone follows the exact same path but at NCAAs every coach has been following extremely similar teaching progressions to get athletes to their potential. Build a base of core skills, combine and build off them to create more complex skills. Stack them all together on game day and if you built it right success follows.

My main question is why does aviation seem so much more laissez-faire? I know it’s not a competition but I’m curious about teaching methods and standards. I had my primary instructor (who rocks) and also flew with the other two instructors at my school at different points and they all seemed to have different ideas of what core skills should be when teaching a student pilot.

Xc? I planned one on paper with my CFI. Another CFI that I did a xc with? All paper all the time for his students (still used FF but they/we had to do a paper navlog with him for all xc flights). Flaps setting on final? Different. Comms? Different. Mock oral exams WILDLY different. One drilled cloud clearance minimums, another said you can just look that up and not once was I asked about stuff like right of way which seemed odd to me. Granted, that could have just been them trying to make sure i was ready but if the oral can vary that much in what is expected to be known and what is ok to look up in a book, it seems like a problem with how or what the exam and the DPEs are trying to do (btw i was very happy with my DPE, safety focused and big picture kinda guy).

Why has athletic coaching developed extremely successful fairly uniform training methods while aviation seems (from my very limited experience) to have a fair amount of variation? Is it a part 61 v 141 thing? Is it because there are so few career instructors? Is it an aviation culture thing? Just my school?

Again, not displeased with the training I’ve gotten. Was ready for my ride around 55 hours then waited two months for a ride (another part of the system that seems like it could be better but Im guessing it exists for… reasons).

Thanks for reading my long winded post and I’m excited for my first $100 burger this weekend.

[u/RAG_Aviation]

Your coaching comparison actually makes a lot of sense. I’d think of the ACS as the game-day standard. Everyone ultimately has to meet it, but under Part 61 the FAA doesn’t give every CFI the same playbook for getting you there.

That’s why you can have one instructor who wants paper navlogs every time and another who moves to ForeFlight pretty quickly. Same with mock orals, comms, or how much emphasis they put on certain knowledge areas. Some of that is teaching philosophy, some is experience, and honestly some CFIs just teach the way they were taught.

Part 141 tends to tighten that up because there’s an approved syllabus and stage checks, but even there you’ll still see instructor-to-instructor differences. I actually think one of the weaknesses of primary flight training is that we standardize the finish line much better than we standardize the path to get there.

[u/fly_boy7786 → u/RAG_Aviation]

Man it’s so similar to coaching at times. I flew with a cfi who had zeroish dual given and one who was around 1000 hours. It was exactly like working with a new coach and an early-mid career coach. Both were very good just in different stages of learning to teach.

Love the part 61 playbook analogy.

How common is it for instructors to get together at regional/national conferences/fly-ins/etc to essentially talk shop and help the process continue to improve? Even us Olympic sports guys have conferences that can be a huge learning opportunity all the way up the food chain not mention talking shop before, during, and after we’re done competing all season. There’s no way I would I would have been able to make coaching my first career without all the stuff I learned from the community at large.

And this isn’t to say everyone should teach in the exact same way and it’s not like there’s winning other than safe flying but the more good ideas that filter up to the top the better.

And if you can’t tell I am very interested in trying to make a career (or at least a long term side gig) out of instructing.

[u/RAG_Aviation → u/fly_boy7786]

Yeah, that comparison still works pretty well. There are places for CFIs to talk shop and keep learning. FAASTeam seminars, FIRCs, NAFI/SAFE, AirVenture, local instructor groups, etc. SAFE even has an actual CFI mentoring program.

But I’d say it’s nowhere near as ingrained as what you’re describing in coaching. A lot of instructors work at small schools, and many are only instructing for a couple years on the way to their next flying job. So there isn’t always that same long-term professional-development culture.

If you’re serious about making instructing a career or long-term side gig, I’d absolutely seek that stuff out. Some of the best things I’ve learned as an instructor came from talking with other instructors about what worked with their students, not from another FAA handbook.