Will Help Flight Instructors Become Better Teachers AND Business Operators

By Bruce Brandon

The National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) is creating a Professional Development Program (PDP) to help flight instructors become better instructors and more successful business persons. This benefit both instructors and aviation in general. While in its infancy, it holds great promise. Bob Meder, chairman and Rick Todd, President of NAFI outlined NAFI’s new program here at AirVenture 2017.

We in the aviation community often are lulled into thinking that being a competent pilot qualifies one to be a good teacher. Being the “ace of the base” simply doesn’t translate into being a good teacher. In fact, the more naturally talented flying skills a pilot has, the less likely one is to be a good instructor without proper teacher training.

Minimizing the importance of learning to be an effective teacher harms the student and simply is bad for business. Teaching is a profession, not something that one kibitzes and is rarely an inherent talent.  We pilots forget that to teach 1st graders one must attend a four-year college and major in education to be qualified to teach the alphabet. Those same skills a 1st grade teacher acquires over four years are often not intuitive.

Too often, we pilots are so enamored with flying we simply assume that the rest of the population is also. The assumption is that flying will sell itself, like it did with us. Sadly, that assumption is wrong.

The attrition rate among students is alarming. Eighty percent of students drop out before receiving their pilot certificate. These students who show up to a CFI are excited, motivated, spend a lot of time and money per lesson and want to learn yet four out of five decide that learning to fly isn’t a worthy pursuit. Why?

The reasons become obvious when one looks at how some CFIs conduct their business. Many don’t employ the most fundamental of sound business practices. Often instructors fail to show up on time, aren’t professionally dressed, fail to motivate the student on the advantages of flying, fail to utilize the fundamentals instruction, etc., etc., etc. There is an old adage, “if you don’t take care of your customer (student) someone else will, whether it is another CFI or another avocation.

You don’t know what you don’t know. Fortunately, NAFI is lighting a candle to help CFIs get and retain students and to make a decent financial living.

NAFI’s PDP’s objective is to help CFIs to not only improve their piloting skills, as demanding as they are, but to also learn the ins and outs of what it takes to be an effective teacher and run a successful business. The goal is to provide opportunities for CFIs to receive the training that provides them the skills necessary to be a good teacher who can motivate students and operate under a sound business model.

NAFI PDP will become a one-stop source providing solutions to correct these deficiencies.  It is a work in progress. This innovative program includes applying resources not normally thought of as applying to flight instruction, including Dale Carnegie courses and non-aviation business people to give advice.

It is imperative that we, the aviation industry, stop the hemorrhaging of student pilots. NAFI addressing this problem will help us all in the end. We need the next generation to be pilots.

(Staff images. Top: Bob Meder. Lower: Rick Todd)

FMI: www.nafinet.org