What a Flight Instructor Needs: Systems That Work!

Being a flight instructor sounds like the perfect job. Doing what you want 365 days a year, financially lucrative, emotionally rewarding, and getting paid for taking off and touching down with your students. At least that's how it's often perceived from the outside, but is it really that perfect? Can anything really be that perfect? We'll start by taking a look at the myths vs. the sometimes grim reality flight instructors frequently face.


The Myths

Flight instructors are always in the sky; Flight instructors only teach flying; Flight instructors have a stable, high income; Flight instructors do not have to deal with paperwork or documentation; Flight instructors only deal with advanced students; Flight instructors do not need to stay updated—they know all the latest regulations, certification, maintenance records, so why bother?



The Reality

None of the above—but it's certainly not all doom and gloom!

The title What a Flight Instructor Needs may sound a touch arrogant—after all, who are we to say what a flight instructor actually needs? Well, another thing to add to the "Reality" part is the fact that we are actually a team of aviation experts, and standing tall among us is a team of experienced, actual flight instructors. Not only that, but we also know flight instructors because we have forged extremely close relationships with our partners—among them flight schools and their flight instructors—who regularly give us their insights, demands, and desires as well.

So, let's learn about flight instructors from flight instructors and our 'friends of friends' who are also flight instructors, and find out all those things that make their job challenging, yet ultimately rewarding. Let's find out about all their little headaches, and the 'pill' that can alleviate their pains.



The Pain and The Cure

Instructing isn’t always smooth flying. Click the buttons below to meet four very different instructors, each living their own daily storm—but each with a hopeful path forward. If you're an instructor yourself, some of these stories might hit surprisingly close to home.

  • If you, the reader, are a flight instructor, our first story may sound familiar: Jacek B. (name changed for the innocent's sake), has a full-time job working for an airline. To keep in touch with the joy of flying and share his passion with students, he has a part-time job working as a flight instructor for a flight school based in his hometown. He discovers his roster for the airline once a month, which he then takes a photo of and sends to the flight school. By the time the flight school has inputted Jacek's availability manually into their system, there are very few slots available for Jacek, which means very little time in the sky. When Jacek goes to the flight school to provide practical training to his student, it turns out the aircraft he was scheduled to use is undergoing maintenance, so the lesson is canceled. Jacek returns home, his passion for flying dampened by the frustration of being grounded, and he does not get paid for the wasted time.

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    So, that's the problem, what's the cure?

    If aircraft and instructors are not optimally scheduled, there is a serious risk of inefficiencies and wasted resources. But if training operations are streamlined, connecting the instructor's availability with the aircraft's availability with the learner's availability, then practical training can be optimized, and instructors like you and Jacek will never experience such a situation. That's where the Best Pilot dashboard comes in: it connects all the dots in the training process—learner, instructor, aircraft—in real-time, eliminating human error such as double-booking of aircraft, practical training sessions, etc. It also optimizes the training slots for the benefit of instructors like Jacek: no more hanging around for hours at the ATO, waiting for the next training session to start. Best Pilot proposes bulk slots so Jacek's time is spent doing what he does best: providing expert guidance to the new crop of trainee pilots.
     
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  • Roberto M. has a very different tale to tell than Jacek. Roberto works full-time at a popular ATO in the south of Italy. Most of the instructors employed at this ATO are well-liked and respected by their students, though none more so than Roberto. His popularity has unfortunately caused him to 'get away with things' that could cause a few headaches—both to him and to his flight school. He has sometimes found himself 'overbooked' and frequently 'double-booked'. No sooner does one practical training session end than another one begins. By the end of the day, Roberto is running on empty, struggling to find time to provide constructive feedback for his learners that will help them develop into the excellent pilots he believes they will become, and often losing focus mid-flight as fatigue sets in.

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    So, what's the cure for being well-liked? Should Roberto become a tyrant, growl at his students, put his feet up and not care any longer in the hope that students will turn to other instructors?
     
    That's always an option, but there's a far simpler way:

    With our Flight Training Management Software (Best Pilot), Roberto now provides his ATO with more detailed insights into his availability. The system logs all of his flight hours and ensures he gets fair scheduling and never exceeds regulatory limits. Not only that, but thanks to the pioneering speech-to-text tool, Roberto can now provide excellent, constructive feedback as soon as each lesson is over, which his students will receive immediately, and know what went well, what did not, and what to work on. The debriefings his students now receive are informative, in-depth, and never time-consuming. He also enjoys allocating learners electronic learning resources that are readily available via Best Pilot, rather than rushing to make print-outs on a photocopier whose best days ended when flares were still in fashion.

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  • Léna D. (once again, name changed, as we don't want to get anyone into trouble!) works part-time at an ATO in France. Like most instructors, the actual flying with her students and observing their progress is the most pleasurable part of her day. However, the endless grind of having to ruffle through paperwork to prepare lessons, checklists, and theoretical materials gave Léna a headache. She once calculated that 75% of her time was actually spent preparing the necessary lessons and their documentation, rather than actual contact time with the students and the aircraft. She also confessed to occasionally skipping the pre-flight briefings before a flight, just to get up in the air that little bit quicker.

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    This is not an isolated story, but something we have discovered is fairly common.

    Ultimately, nobody benefits from skipping pre-flight briefings, preparing inadequate materials for the aspiring pilots, nor from having to spend 75% of the time hunting down documents, filling them in, filing them, and then having to rinse and repeat until finally getting up in the air. It's also a story that can have a happy end. That happy end comes with Best Pilot, where students get instant access to lesson plans, checklists, and the relevant theoretical materials at the click of a button. The instructors can quickly and professionally allocate materials, assign tasks, and carry out an efficient and effective pre-flight briefing in record time. If an instructor wishes to regain lost time and recapture the beauty of the actual practical training, the cure is Best Pilot.

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  • For the final story, we'll stay in Europe, and this time, we won't even give fictional names to real people, as the story tells itself. Upon completion of a training session with his student, this pilot made his way back to the facilities, only to be informed that there was a visit from the regulators. No problem, he thought—mistakenly. Later the same day, he learned that his medical certification had expired—he was convinced that all of his documentation was valid, correct, and any reminders would have been sent out by the ATO's admin. He was wrong. His license was suspended, the ATO issued with a substantial fine, and the incident left the instructor with a sense of distrust towards the ATO, who he felt had not performed their basic duties of keeping an adequate check on the impending expiry of the necessary documentation.
     
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    We can't turn the clock back and 'un-suspend' the pilot. However, we can take lessons from this situation and prepare safeguards so that such situations need never happen again.
     
    How can we ensure documentation is ALWAYS valid, and nothing slips through the cracks? Quite easily, in fact: thanks to Best Pilot's Document Expiry Alerts, instructors, admin, heads of training receive timely reminders for instructor certifications, aircraft maintenance, and student documents, to name just a few. With these automatic reminders, flight schools and flight instructors alike no longer run the risk of compliance issues due to expired credentials. Everything is managed for them, so they have no need of rifling through SEP and FI documents to check their validity. They are always up-to-date and compliant on all document management matters.
     

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Common ProblemsAnd How Best Pilot Solves Them

Those were just a few of the stories we've been told, which led us to seek ways to improve the training experience for instructors, students, Heads of Training—in short, for everyone involved. We've heard tales of many things instructors could live without and developed things they could quite simply not imagine being without ever again. Have a look at some of the other ills and their cures, and you will come to the natural conclusion that these are exactly the things that flight instructors need:

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Scheduling conflicts and double bookings: 

Without a centralized system, or when the 'lines to admin are busy', it is so easy to find yourself double-booked, overbooked, or in a situation where the aircraft is unavailable. This can affect an instructor's morale, finances, and also harm the crucial instructor-trainee relationship.

Use the arrows to find the 'Best' solution to the problem.

With Best Pilot's "Scheduling & Self-Booking System", 

instructors and students alike have real-time access to flight schedules so they can see and declare their availability as well as the availability of aircraft in real-time, reducing scheduling conflicts, improving training flow, and boosting efficiency.

 

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Sticking to a rigid training syllabus: 

Many instructors feel that they have the best insight into their students' actual needs, yet they have to stick to a rigid training syllabus. They would love the freedom to tailor resources to their learners' needs rather than prescribe the same learning to every student, no matter which areas of development the learners need.

With Best Pilot,
it's understood that flight schools must walk a fine line between 'standardizing training practices' whilst allowing highly-qualified instructors to tailor lessons as they see fit to match their learners' actual needs. With our "Customizable Curriculum & Lesson Planning" feature, it is simple to tailor lesson plans to meet regulatory requirements, while also making sure instructors align with the school's teaching philosophy.

 

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Losing track of individual learners' progress: 

Some instructors, frequently those with a large number of students, have difficulties understanding how well specific students are progressing. They have occasionally found themselves summoned to the office for a 'chat' about certain students who they discover have been making unsatisfactory progress. So, how can an instructor stay in the loop with all their students' progress, and know how best to help struggling students?

Best Pilot provides "Training Oversight & Performance Analytics". 

With real-time tracking of student progress and data-driven reports on training effectiveness, both instructors and Heads of Training can gain a clear overview of how well students are progressing. Best Pilot comes with real-time insights and reports, helping to identify areas where students struggle and where an adjustment to teaching methods might be a good idea. Best Pilot's dashboard provides a perfect overview of student progress, completed lessons, and flight hours so students can also learn where they stand and what remains.

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The Impossible Dream—grading things fast, consistently, and constructively: 

A potential hiccup that many flight instructors have experienced occurs when the slots they are given allow very little time to assess their learners effectively, as they need to be 'up in the air' with their next student, with not enough time to even grab a quick coffee! We've heard and seen with our own eyes situations where instructors cut corners—providing any old feedback to their learners, providing inconsistent and vague feedback to their learners, and with haphazard grading that fails to meet their ATO's standardization practices. Getting feedback done fast, well, and fairly seems to be an elusive dream.

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The Beautiful Reality: 

Best Pilot comes with a Flight Instructor 'Assistant' and digital timer. It allows flight instructors to provide voice-assisted feedback, with AI suggestions to help improve their debriefings. One of the key features is also the Electronic Grading and Feedback system, which enables instant feedback and standardized grading. Gone are the days of paper-based records. As soon as the lesson is over, flight instructors can now record their feedback directly into the Best Pilot app, which will convert the speech to text, and provide suggestions for constructive improvements so flight instructors will prepare timely, effective, and constructive feedback to their learners. It also gives instructors a one-click departure and landing time recording so there is no chance an instructor will fail to have a record of their students' sessions.


A Better 'New' Reality for Instructors 


Now that we've debunked several myths about being a flight instructor, revealing a reality that often seemed challenging, it's clear we can "debunk" that version of reality too! With Best Pilot, the reality of being a flight instructor has transformed for the better and is one where training is optimized, efficient, and rewarding. How have we done that? Throughout the development process, we have prioritized improving the training experience by listening to those directly involved. We've listened to:
 
 
 
We've learned from all of them the little aches, pains, and frustrations that they had been experiencing. Best Pilot was developed to alleviate the pains they faced far too frequently. It has since made the training process smoother, more constructive, and efficient, and minimized the potential for costly mishaps, mistakes, and inefficiencies.

For better training, better efficiency, better pilot training, the answer lies in Best Pilot—the perfect cure for your training ills.