Time Management

Time Management is one of the most important things for anyone to master. If a person isn't able to manage their time accordingly many bad things can happen, including stress increasing. If you are late to a job interview or meeting you instantly start with one strike against you that someone who is on time doesn't have.

Little did I know that as an instructor time management would be something that is constantly on my mind. Not only so I stay under the 8 hours of flight training in 24 hours as required by the FAA but also that I'm under the 10 "contact" hours for UND. Scheduling can be a major issue when you need to do cross country and night flights.

Time management is also very important when ever we take an airplane out for a lesson. If we have a 10:00 launch, a launch is 2 hours long, we need to be back by 11:45(15 minutes before our launch is over). This policy is in place so people with launches after us don't get delayed. This is a good policy IF everyone follows it correctly.

Last night for example we had a 7:00 pm launch, which meant we had to be back on the ramp by 8:45 pm. No big deal, more than enough time to get the lesson completed. However, because of lots of training going on and no aircraft we didn't get an aircraft till 7:10 pm(40 minutes after we can get the airplane). Now we are in a time crunch.

Preflight, taxi and runup checks take time. Finally we are wheels off at 7:35 pm, 1 hour and 5 minutes to get to the practice area, do the lesson and make it back on the ramp. Not nearly enough time.

I found that the best way to make it back on time is once we get to the practice area set one of the GPS's to the Grand Forks airport and keep my eye on the ETE (estimated time en route). When it gets close to the time en route to equal our due time back it is time to end the lesson and head back, regardless if the lesson is complete.

This has probably been one of the biggest surprises to me as a CFI. You prepare so much for teaching instruments, maneuvers, stalls, everything but never talk about time management when you are becoming a CFI. I think I have a new topic to talk about when I start teaching initial CFI applicants.