The Certified Flight Instructor certificate allows the pilot to teach Private and Commercial students and give flight reviews. It is a monumental change in the pilot's knowledge and responsibilities.
Considerable time is spent in ground instruction on principles of flight, navigation and flight planning, regulations, and aircraft systems. While piloting procedures, technical subjects, and instructing techniques can be taught, communicating with students from your command position while keeping the aircraft upright presents new challenges of its own.
The course, based on two or three sessions per week, is normally about 2½ months. Graduates of OCFC's Airline Pilot Program are eligible to be hired as instructors here to build time toward the 1,500-hour airline requirement.
What you'll learn
- Fundamentals of instruction
- Teaching technical subjects
- Teaching flight maneuvers and procedures from the right seat
- Review for the two FAA written tests (FOI and FIA)
- Review for the FAA checkride
Where this takes you
- Get paid to fly while building hours toward the airlines
- CFI employment at OCFC for eligible program graduates
- Add CFII and MEI to become a full-service instructor
Requirements
Commercial Pilot certificate with Instrument Rating; minimum age 18. Debt-Buster E4: 27 hrs flight — 21 dual, 6 solo — plus 63 hrs ground and briefings.