From pilot to teacher: why we are expanding the instructor course

Across the solar system, operators are short of pilots, and training schools are short of instructors to teach them. We see it every intake: First Solo waiting lists grow while we search for qualified people to fly in the right-hand seat. So from January 2188 we are expanding the Flight Instructor Certificate to ten students per cohort.

The course is 16 weeks long and based at Tasman Field, with a short block at Shackleton Base. It is designed for licensed pilots with at least 1,000 hours as pilot in command who want to teach, whether full-time at an academy or as a training captain with an operator.

Being an excellent pilot does not automatically make you a good teacher. In fact, very experienced pilots often find it hard to remember what it was like not to know. So half the course is about teaching itself: how adults learn, how to plan a lesson, how to recognise a student who is overloaded but not saying so, and how to deliver a debrief that changes behaviour rather than listing faults.

The other half is flying from the wrong seat. Trainee instructors log 60 flight hours in the right seat of the Sparrow Trainer and the Kestrel, learning when to let a student make a small mistake and when to intervene. In 50 simulator hours they practise setting up failures and managing the session if things go wrong. In the final month they teach real First Solo students under supervision.

The check ride is unusual: the examiner plays a struggling student, and you are assessed on how well you teach them. Our first-time pass rate is 92 per cent.

Tuition is 72,000 credits, and it is refunded in full if you join the Lumen faculty for two years. Graduates receive the Flight Instructor Rating, which lets them teach towards the Private Spaceflight Licence and, with more experience, supervise type rating courses.

If you have spent a career flying and want to pass it on, come and talk to us at the Instructor Standards Conference. Some of the best instructors I know came to teaching late.