Journeyman wrote
First of all, there is absolutely nothing involved in owning an airplane
that makes one better or not better qualified as an
instructor....absolutely nothing.

There are things you learn about flying by going places that you don't
learn sitting in the training environment. None of it's on the PTS,
but it's vital information if you're going to fly out beyond hectobuck-
burger range. This is objective truth.

If you don't fly long trips, you just won't know what you're missing.
As a renter pilot, such trips are inaccessible or prohibitive. As
graduate student, er, instructor, most "timebuilders" just won't have
the money to pay for this kind of training, and it doesn't advance
their careers.

This is part of it. An important part, don't get me wrong, and I
didn't snip it so it could stand as refutation to the nonsense above
it. But there is more.

As a rule, owners get involved in the maintenance of their aircraft.
There are exceptions, but not many. Even those who don't actually do
the work themselves don't generally hand over checkbook and keys -
they want to know what is being done, why it is being done, and how it
is being done. Once you become involved in the maintenance of the
aircraft, you begin to understand a lot more about how it is put
together, how the sytems work - and thus what the failure modes and
their early warning signs are.

An instructor who just flies can teach you to handle a total engine
failure emergency. If the main seal dumps all the oil or a jug
grenades itself, that's all that counts - but most problems are not so
cut and dried. An instructor who has taken care of engines for a
while can tell you a lot about when it's practical to nurse an ailing
engine along, and what can be expected from it. That can be very
important when you're over a field that is rough but probably
survivable, and an airport is a few miles away over probably
unsurvivable forest. Lest we forget, there was the guy who nursed the
Cub home on the primer.

In Russia, there is a proverb about 'the exception that proves the
rule.' There is in fact a small handful of renter (more commonly,
club member) pilots who, never having owned an aircraft, nevertheless
have been involved in the maintenance, done long trips, and in general
learned the things an owner learns. Sometimes it comes from being in
a really good club, sometimes by growing up in a family where aircraft
are owned and flown, sometimes by simply having been at the right
place at the right time and having the opportunity to fly and maintain
aircraft owned by friends. But those exceptions are just that -
exceptional.

In choosing an instructor, one generally has a huge number of
candidates - most of whom aren't worth much. Practically speaking,
one can only effectively interview a small handful. Further, there is
a question as to how effective the interview really is - after all,
you're hiring the instructor specifically to teach you that which you
do not know. For that reason, it is very important to have useful
ways to cut the candidate pool. Call those ways filters,
generalizations, or what you will - they are a way of elimintaing a
significant fraction of the candidates while eliminating a
significantly smaller fraction of the GOOD candidates. No filter is
ever perfect, no generalization ever 100% true. Even the best filter
will take out a really good instructor along with that large number of
bad ones. However, without filters, if you individually interview
every possible flight instructor, your odds of finding a good one
before you give up, start doubting your evaluation, and take what you
can get are exceedingly small because the good instructors are a
distinct minority.

Every time anyone proposes a set of generalizations, someone pipes up
to say "well I know this guy who is a great instructor and he doesn't
fit this generalizaiton." I don't doubt it. Generalizations are of
little use when evaluating a specific instructor you know because you
already know him - but if you don't have the time get to know him,
they're the best you have.

Think of the process of selecting a flight instructor as analogous to
the process of hiring an employee (because to a large extent that's
what you are doing). It is exceedingly common for a set of
qualifications to be written for a given position - and then to have
someone hired from inside, or based on acquaintance, who lacks one (or
more) of those qualifications. Does that mean that the set of
qualifications was wrong? No, of course not. It means that MOST of
the candidates who can do the job well will have those qualifications,
and nobody has the time to interview every possible applicant, nor is
an interview necessarily a good test. However, when you're dealing
with a known quantity, it's not that important. You already know he
can do the job.

Michael