PearlPilot

I am in the same scenario. 1200 hours 50 ME and only 260 cross country. I am doing all that I can to log XCs as a CFI. I hate to be negative, but I don't think I am going to reach 500 hours of XC once I hit 1500. Oh well, bad timing I suppose. Gotta keep pluggin' away...

phalanxo

Hmm. I'm at 770TT and 380XC already, and I'm an instructor too. Every instrument flight we have to go almost 50nm anyway to get an ILS... Makes it pretty easy. I get nothing on the PPL flights, though. Design a sequence of approaches that takes you 50nm away and comes back... 4 or 5 approaches. String em in a line, based on where they start, etc.

rcfd13

When I hit 1500 hours I was working as a full time CFI and only had about 280 cross country. It took me 6 months of flying at the airlines and 1750TT before I reached ATP minimums. The new rule is going to be the hardest on CFIs probably.

MikeB525

I think it's going to be even harder on skydiver pilots. They go above the departure airport than come right back.

RunwayOneSix

Well, they elected to work for a skydive outfit, eh?

phalanxo

I don't understand how you could only have 280 XC at 1500 hours CFIing. Did you have mostly private pilot students? If you're doing any instrument training at all, it's not tough to get XC hours... and you were from DVT right? never went to P08?

Squawk87

Same boat, almost 1400 TT 500 ME and only 350 XC.... Unfortunately as an instructor in part 141 environment its pretty hard to build XC time...

phalanxo

I'm in 141 too 765 TT 380 XC... How do you guys do instrument training? At my 141 school, as long as we do each type of approach once, that's pretty much what the syllabus requires. So you just need to make sure that you're travelling towards an XC airport as you do your approaches. String along a few airports... Unless for some reason they give you really short flights for instrument or something, ours are pretty long.

JamesNoBrakes

It's called ethics.

If going 50 miles makes for better training and allows the student to accomplish the course faster, then great, go for it. If not, then it's the wrong thing to do and you are setting an example of personal gain to the student and everyone in aviation. If you are at DVT, you have a myriad of approaches to choose from without having to go 50 miles, and they do most of their instrument stuff around there at night if I recall (been a while since I flew into PHX at night).

Sometimes there are ways to get that 50 miles on flights that wouldn't normally be, but it has to be ethical and pass the test of being a benefit to the student, not just so they'll get experience, but also cost and efficiency. Often times doing two lessons (one flight to destination, then one flight back) is a total waste, as there's no time for the brain to assimilate any new information and really think about how to do better on the next flight. Although flying once a week is going to incur more cost, flying multiple times a day usually has similar results in my experience in terms of retention of knowledge, skill and progression.

Frick

I think building xc depends where you instruct. I'm a firm believer in flying to other airports to do approaches rather than constantly doing approach after approach at your home airport where eventually the student memorizes all the altitudes and fixes. I like to mix it up so the student isn't always familiar and has to be paying attention to what he's doing during each approach. I instruct at EVV (Evansville, IN) and there are 3 other airports within 20 miles and a 4th within 30. If a student is working on his instrument rating he knows enough to realize that if I'm taking him 50 or more miles away to do approaches that I'm wasting his time and hard earned money. The only time I can do that is if its one of the required xc's for the rating or he still needs to build some xc time to meet the 50 hours required for an instrument rating. Now if you instruct in a not so densely populated area I could see where you might log more xc time because there aren't nearby airports. With that said though unless you instruct at an actual flight school I think most mom and pop flight instructors like myself are having a hard time building time because the cost of flight training is through the roof nowadays. I rarely have ANY instrument students and about 80% of my private students get no more than 20 hours and I never hear from them again. When I first started instructing 2 years ago I started doubting myself as an instructor thinking maybe it's my teaching skills scaring students away but after talking to other instructors at the nearby airports they're seeing the same results. Flight training is just too expensive now for students to stick with it long enough and help you log some xc time. Im at 720tt with only 180xc. Luckily, my FBO has a charter department and I'm currently at Flight Safety getting a SIC rating in a beechjet. So when I do hit the 1500 hour mark ill have my 500xc. But I think any instructor out there who isn't in a situation to get some xc time somewhere else is going to have a hard time getting that 500xc