Should I fire my CFII?

flyingron said:
Neither of these are compelling reasons.

Any time you have more than one pilot it behooves you to work out what people are doing, not just PIC vs. not.

Not my problem as a student.
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Not your problem as a student? I thought you wanted to be PIC? Not really seeing your point here.

61.53 says that CFI's can log PIC anytime they are giving instruction (Not just with student pilots, but any and all pilots that you are flying with). Now why do you think that is? The FAA usually doesn't make regulations just for S&G's, so there's certainly a reason. I think it would be reasonable to assume that they made the rules that way because you are EXPECTED to be PIC, and will be treated as PIC should something go wrong. So, to answer your question of "Why should they be PIC?", That's why.
 
Unregistered said:
Not your problem as a student? I thought you wanted to be PIC? Not really seeing your point here.

61.53 says that CFI's can log PIC anytime they are giving instruction (Not just with student pilots, but any and all pilots that you are flying with). Now why do you think that is? The FAA usually doesn't make regulations just for S&G's, so there's certainly a reason. I think it would be reasonable to assume that they made the rules that way because you are EXPECTED to be PIC, and will be treated as PIC should something go wrong. So, to answer your question of "Why should they be PIC?", That's why.
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It also says a rated pilot can log PIC for some airplanes for which he may not act as PIC. For instance, during tailwheel or complex transitions. You're reading something in.

In my experience, instructors seldom act as PIC, unless they have to for some reason.
 
I flew with two CFII in San Diego who sucked. Spoke with a few more who were clueless on how to do something called teaching. Maybe they have knowledge but no business training pilots to fly on instruments. Teaching and skill/experience are two different things. Same for CFI or any instructor. Same issue is true for sailing and scuba diving. Lots of good divers and sailers who suck at teaching and instruction. I learned the hard way doing these things what makes a good instructor per se versus a good practitioner! Ideally a quality CFII is both that is why they have Gold Seal and MCFI designations supposedly.
 
Blueangel said:
I learned the hard way doing these things what makes a good instructor per se versus a good practitioner!
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As a CFI, in my view, a CFI's students' performances are the acid tests, not how good the students feel about the teaching. So, as a student, how do you judge a CFI? How well you can fly or how good you feel? Or something else?

dtuuri
 
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SkyHog said:
Of course the 90% number is a made up number. It could be 89% or 91%.

But if you lined every CFI up shoulder to shoulder, closed your eyes, and threw a baseball in the general vicinity of the line, your odds would be MUCH higher that you hit a bad one than a good one.

And he'll be the one that starts his complaint about being hit with a baseball by saying "You know, I was told that..."
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Haha...wow. You must have been a real joy to teach.
 
tawood said:
Where did you get this figure from (or the 89 to 91)? My experience has been more like the opposite. I'm just a recreational flyer, and I've been taught by 6 different CFI's (1 for my PPL, 1 for tailwheel, and 4 different CFI's for various BFRs, etc). Only one was a tool. I understand that my experience is a small sample, but 90% garbage?
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Yeah...I've flown with many instructors over the years in my own training, while checking out new hires to teach at one of the school's I worked for as a CFI and in Air Carrier training and I can honestly only pin point one as a poor instructor. Obviously some were better than others, but most were competent and got the job done.
 
GCA319 said:
Yeah...I've flown with many instructors over the years in my own training, while checking out new hires to teach at one of the school's I worked for as a CFI and in Air Carrier training and I can honestly only pin point one as a poor instructor. Obviously some were better than others, but most were competent and got the job done.
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I figure that "competent and [getting] the job done" is not a good trait for someone that makes $40/hr.

But maybe I have higher standards. I generally expect my employees (which a CFI, being paid to perform a service for me, is) to be great to be considered good.

But moreover, the test for "goodness" is easy. If you are a CFI and you ever state something as true without knowing where and how it is true, you are a bad CFI.

And for that, I say 90% are bad.
 
SkyHog said:
If you are a CFI and you ever state something as true without knowing where and how it is true, you are a bad CFI.
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Some might say they forgot more than somebody who just read it and remembers where. That doesn't make 'em bad, it makes 'em wise. Where did you learn what the capital of your state is, huh? Times up, your bad.

dtuuri
 
SkyHog said:
I figure that "competent and [getting] the job done" is not a good trait for someone that makes $40/hr.

But maybe I have higher standards. I generally expect my employees (which a CFI, being paid to perform a service for me, is) to be great to be considered good.

But moreover, the test for "goodness" is easy. If you are a CFI and you ever state something as true without knowing where and how it is true, you are a bad CFI.

And for that, I say 90% are bad.
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It's possible in your local area that there are a lot of bad instructors. I've had 12 total and really only felt 1 was incompetent. Hilariously, that 1 was able to state something as true, know where and how it is true, but not have the confidence or mental clarity to apply it in an instructional situation -- which made him a terrible instructor.

The "employer/employee" relationship some students try to apply to their instructors is not an appropriate analogy in the training environment. No employee is ever critiquing, evaluating, endorsing, or certifying an employer as is the case with an instructor and student, respectively, in the training environment.

As an aside, unless a pilot-in-training is dealing with an independent instructor, they're not seeing that full $40-$50/hr. Try $14-$20. (Then ask why "the good ones" all leave your local FBOs.)
 
Harold Rutila said:
No employee is ever critiquing, evaluating, endorsing, or certifying an employer as is the case with an instructor and student, respectively, in the training environment.
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Not true. There are jobs where certifications are required by staff of bosses. And people hire coaches for all sorts of things all the time and also fire them. Any job or company may have specialists that certify or train others above their pay grade.

Any boss with a true open-door policy (that they're not just giving lip-service to) has been critiqued directly or indirectly by staff, and accepts such also.

It's just an uncommon relationship not often seen in traditional formal employer/employee roles.

A common example is certified safety training. It's often a very low-level staffer who's qualified as a trainer who certifies that even the big bosses completed and understood their safety training, often on a mandatory/regulatory schedule.
 
dtuuri said:
Some might say they forgot more than somebody who just read it and remembers where. That doesn't make 'em bad, it makes 'em wise. Where did you learn what the capital of your state is, huh? Times up, your bad.

dtuuri
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Lets say I didn't know the answer to that question. Thankfully, there is a great place to find the official answer: http://tornado.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/olls/constitution_print.htm

Article VIII Section 2 said:
Section 2. Seat of government - where located. The general assembly shall have no power to change or to locate the seat of government of the state, which shall remain at the city and county of Denver.
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Amazingly, if I said "No, its Pueblo, because I heard that from someone who I respect very much," I wouldn't be considered very smart, would I?
 
SkyHog said:
Lets say I didn't know the answer to that question. Thankfully, there is a great place to find the official answer: http://tornado.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/olls/constitution_print.htm







Amazingly, if I said "No, its Pueblo, because I heard that from someone who I respect very much," I wouldn't be considered very smart, would I?
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Ahh, doesn't matter anyway. Bunch of politicians from Kansas stole it from Central City and named all of the streets after themselves.

Talk about narcissists. Although this is not much of a surprise with politicians from any era, really.

Market Street downtown is named that because one of them became the town drunk. He'd sit on the street corner and point at the sign and say drunkenly, "See? It's MY street!"

This embarrassed his Kansan political friends so they renamed the street Market after what it was used for back then, to get him to shuffle off and be drunk somewhere else. ;)

And the idiots laid out the streets lined up with the river, until they decided to lay them out on cardinal directions like everyone else had gone to. This leads to our lovely triangle shaped corners where the two grid systems run into each other downtown.

Again, stupid ideas from politicians, not exactly a surprise in any generation. But it's fun to discuss their screwups as trivia fodder over 100 years later.
 
denverpilot said:
Any boss with a true open-door policy (that they're not just giving lip-service to) has been critiqued directly or indirectly by staff, and accepts such also.
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In my experience, whenever a student has brought up an employer-employee relationship during the course of flight training, they are using it to try and push me around, and have a notoriously closed-door policy when it comes to critique. I've never had a good student refer to me as an employee.
 
Harold Rutila said:
In my experience, whenever a student has brought up an employer-employee relationship during the course of flight training, they are using it to try and push me around, and have a notoriously closed-door policy when it comes to critique. I've never had a good student refer to me as an employee.
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I agree. An instructor is a teacher, which is a special position of trust, not an "employee". The student must either be able to trust the instructor to teach properly, or find another. For the student to try to change the teaching to his/her liking is almost always impractical and counter-productive.
In my own experience having flown with many instructors over the years, for both ratings and FRs, I would say most are mediocre, some downright awful, and a very select few are excellent. However, I learned long ago to try to get the most out of every situation, and pull the red handle only as a last resort.
 
RotorDude said:
In my own experience having flown with many instructors over the years, for both ratings and FRs, I would say most are mediocre, some downright awful, and a very select few are excellent. However, I learned long ago to try to get the most out of every situation, and pull the red handle only as a last resort.
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A more politically correct way of saying exactly what I am saying. I agree with this, except that I consider mediocre to be a bad trait for someone to have when the output is a pilot certificate.
 
Unregistered said:
Not your problem as a student? I thought you wanted to be PIC? Not really seeing your point here.

61.53 says that CFI's can log PIC anytime they are giving instruction (Not just with student pilots, but any and all pilots that you are flying with). Now why do you think that is? The FAA usually doesn't make regulations just for S&G's, so there's certainly a reason. I think it would be reasonable to assume that they made the rules that way because you are EXPECTED to be PIC, and will be treated as PIC should something go wrong. So, to answer your question of "Why should they be PIC?", That's why.
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Because for the TEN THOUSANDTH TIME LOGGIN PIC time has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING PIC.
If the FAA wanted logged PIC time to reflect actual PIC time, the regs would say that.
They give the sole manipulator and the instructors PIC time credit because they think that such experience should count for something even when it actually isn't in the PIC role.
 
The phone is easy. Go read 91.21. As far as I'm concerned, even if we are technically VFR and I'm wearing foggles, we're IFR. I must be able to depend on all the stuff in the panel working correctly and I'm NOT going to spend the time doing a bunch of EMC testing to ensure that the phone isn't causing problems. His phone, not any different one. Anytime I go up with someone I show them that I'm shutting my phone down and tossing it in my flight bag. I insist that they turn theirs off, as well. I'm PIC, I enforce the rules. I haven't had a CFII object yet. Perhaps the fact that I've been an EMC engineer for 40 years influences my feelings on that subject. Maybe, just a little bit. :)

I've had CFIs that I wouldn't fly with again. No problem, just don't call them the next time you need one. People change CFIs and CFIIs all the time. You have to be able to learn from the person in the right seat, that's what you are paying them for. If you have a problem you should discuss it, but if you can't fix the issue, change instructors. Not everyone is a good match.
 
Ghery said:
As far as I'm concerned, even if we are technically VFR and I'm wearing foggles, we're IFR.
.
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Not that it matters but you're wrong. It's simulated IFR and I'd be surprised if your CFII entered it as actual in your logbook.
 
Ghery said:
[snip] Perhaps the fact that I've been an EMC engineer for 40 years influences my feelings on that subject. Maybe, just a little bit. :)
[snip]
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More experience = more paranoid. And that's a good thing! In my experience (30+ years in SW/HW development) insufficient paranoia has bitten more young engineers than I can count.

John
 
TylerSC said:
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.
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I should re-state and say that I have had several sim instructors who were pros at engaging the crew in small talk while initiating insidious failures.

Generally speaking, I agree with your tenet. Got an attribution? I'd like to put it in neon on my office door.
 
mscard88 said:
Not that it matters but you're wrong. It's simulated IFR and I'd be surprised if your CFII entered it as actual in your logbook.
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Actually, simulated instrument conditions. Just wearing foggles doesn't necessarily cause or simulate IFR.
 
MAKG1 said:
If there really is a disagreement on risk, the "more conservative opinion wins" approach is commonly used, but the real answer is 14 CFR 91.3(a).

Unless this is a multi or seaplane, you're PIC, not the instructor.
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FAA legal in DC disagrees with you and there are plenty of cases to that point. 91.3 does not appoint the PIC, but only outlines what the duties and responsibility of the PIC is.
 
James331 said:
If you're only 15hrs from your ride, just suck it up and get it done.
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The problem with this is that you're encouraging this type of behavior.

What would I do? Sit down with the guy, tell him your concerns. If he's anything near a decent CFII he will hear you out and place great weight in your concerns. Hell, you're the customer. He should accommodate to your needs.

If he doesn't agree to change his ways, I think you're better off looking for a new CFI. If you still have 15 hours simulated left, you have enough time to convince the new CFII that you're ready.

Alternatively stick with him and hope nothing goes wrong. If it does, hopefully no one gets hurt. Stay safe.
 
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