Flight Instructor

By becoming a Flight instructor you will be authorized to provide the flight training towards EASA ratings, licenses and certificates. To become a Flight Instructor is a bit longer to obtain any other EASA instructor certificate, however the FI(A) brings much more opportunities for you and your license.

FI(A) course is usually taken by the pilots who are commencing their professional pilot career and struggling to find their first airline job for a longer time. So by other words the flight instructor is usually the first job for majority of the professional pilots in Europe.

Training concept

The FI training course is designed to provide you with the training in theoretical knowledge instruction and flight instruction to the level of competence defined in FCL.920.

The FI(A) training course should develop safety awareness throughout by teaching the knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to the FI(A) role including at least:

• refresh your the technical knowledge;
• train you to be able to teach the ground subjects and air exercises;
• ensure that the your flying is of a sufficiently high standard;
• teach you the principles of basic instruction and to apply them at the PPL(A) level.

Restricted FI(A) privileges

Once issued for a very first time, your FI(A) certificate becomes so-called restricted. This does not not allow flight instructor to authorise student pilots to conduct first solo flights and first solo cross-country flights. 

Restrictions in accordance with the FCL.910.FI may be removed based on the recommendation of an senior - supervising flight instructor once you meet following requirements:

• 100 flight hours of flight training
• supervised at least 25 solo flights of the students

FI(A) Privileges

The privileges of a Flight Instructor iaw FCL.905.FI are to instruct for the flight training for issue, revalidation and renewal of different kind of licenses, certificates and ratings as follows:

• according FCL.905.FI(a) - flight training for obtain of the private pilot license - PPL(A) and the light airplane pilot license - LAPL(A)
• according FCL.905.FI(b) - flight training for obtain and renewal SE(SPA) class ratings and type ratings, thus the flight training on the airplanes within class SEP(land) and TMG or single engine type ratings - eg. Zlin Z-137, Pilatus PC-12, etc.
• according FCL.905.FI(c) flight training for class and type ratings for single-pilot aeroplanes, except for single-pilot high-performance complex aeroplanes, in multi-pilot operations
• according FCL.905.FI (e) - flight training to obtain of the commercial pilot license - CPL (A) (minimum required flight hours as an instructor - at least 200h)
• according FCL.905.FI (f) - VFR night flight training (additional examination of the instructor is required)
• according FCL.905.FI (g) - flight training for the obtain of special ratings for towing gliders, banners and aerobatics training (additional examination is required)
• according FCL.905.FI (h) - flight training for the obtain and renewal of the instrument rating - IR(A), basic instrument rating - BIR(A), enroute instrument rating - EIR(A) and Competency based Instrument Ratings - CB-IR(A) (the requirement for further training and checking withing the scope of IRI(A))
• according FCL.905.FI(i) - flight training for obtain and renewal ME(SPA) class ratings and type ratings, thus the flight training on the airplanes within class MEP(land) Privileges, training and checking are similar to CRI(A)/ME(SPA)
• According FCL.905.FI (j) - flight training to obtain and renewal of instructor certificates - flight instructor FI(A), instrument rating instructor IRI(A), class rating instructor CRI, synthetic training instructor STI and Mountain Instructor  (additional examination required after acquiring at least of the 500 flight hours as an instructor)
• According FCL.905.FI (k) - flight training for the MPL (requires additional training and checking)

The further extension of the privileges of the flight instructor - FI(A) depends on the number of hours flown, hours flown as a flight instructor - FI(A) and additional flight instructor training and checking - instructor assessment of competence.

FI Validity

The validity of your Flight Instructor certificate is 3 years. 

Revalidation

To revalidate your FI(A) certificate, you need to meet, within the validity period of the FI(A) certificate, at least two out of the following three requirements:

• to provide at least 50 hours of flight instruction If you are an EASA Examiner your examiner time is fully credited towards the 50 hours requirement.
  • If your privileges are to instruct for the instrument rating are to be revalidated, at least 10 of those hours shall be flight instruction for an instrument rating and shall have been completed in the period of 12 months immediately preceding the expiry date of your Flight Instructor certificate;
• completed instructor refresher training at ProfiPilot Training;
• passed an assessment of competence in accordance with point FCL.935

For at least each alternate revalidation of a FI certificate, you have to comply with the assessment of competence requirement.