TOP REQUIRED 7 Attributes of Flight Instructors

1. People Skills

People skill is the talent of interacting, understanding, talking and connecting with people. A professional and effective instructor should be able to relate well with people. A flight instructor may have all the information in the World about aviation and aircrafts but this information is only useful if he or she can communicate correctly with students. Communication is one of the most important part of people skills which will be discussed later on.   If the instructor’s people skills are not enough for passing the information to the student, the training will not be executed successful. Another people skill is challenging students while supporting them to learn flying. While trying to learn something an instructor must also put obstacles on the way of students in order to get them developed in problem solving under pressure.

2. Subject Matter Expertise

Subject matter expertise is a term used for people who possesses a high level of expertise, skill or knowledge in a certain area. We can say that a flight instructor must be a subject matter expertise in aviation.   However the only area that flight instructor must be subject matter expertise (SME) is not aviation. He or she must also have information and knowledge about teaching. A strong motivation to teach and positive attitude toward learning is also needed to be a better FI.

3. Preparation of a Lesson

A preparation for next lesson is crucial for flight training. If the FI doesn’t know what will be the main task of a training flight, the training flight will turn into a sightseeing flight. In order to prevent this, preparation must be done before the flight. This preparation must depending on the specific student and task of the day. A lesson planned for a student may not be appropriate for another since every person’s learning style is different. Therefore different lesson planning must be done for different students.   In practice generally a commercially developed syllabus is used. This syllabus is already has been selected by a school. Flight instructors use this syllabus in the flight training process but slight alterations can be done for different understanding manners of students.

4. Proper Instruction Techniques

Every single human has a different type of understanding. Some understand better under pressure but for others pressure may show an opposite affect for example. A flight instructor must already have the knowledge of different understanding types and be ready for each type. Same subject may not be teachable with the same manner for different people. Therefore FI must be able to extend his or her limits for training with different people and a variety of instruction techniques should be usable by the FI.