I tend to disagree. I'm an independent CFI, and my insurance is only
about $500 per year to teach in non-owned aircraft. Expensive?
Perhaps. But most independent CFIs I know have other careers, and
teach because they want to teach. For us, $500 is an annoyance, but
not one that would cause us to quit teaching. Right now, I might only
teach 4 or 5 students per year (and a few BFRs on top of that), so
essentially I am teaching for less than the $25 an hour I charge,
because the first $500 goes to pay for my CFI insurance, but I do it
because I *want* to, not because I'm getting rich off of it, or
because I have dreams of slogging a 737 around the airways for
Southwest.

I think there will always be a cadre of interested and motivated
independent CFIs. It will be smaller in number if insurance goes up to
$1000 per year, but they will still exist. I also tend to see this
nonsense from the TSA as being the 'thesis' of a dialectic with
reality; the AOPA and practicality will force them into a synthesis
that isn't overly burdensome to general aviation.

Cheers,

Cap


"Roger Long" wrote in message ...
Unless AOPA succeeds in turning back the latest over the top foolishness
from the (T)oo (S)tupid to pay attention to anything except (A)viation, I
think we may see the end of the freelance CFI. Insurance is already forcing
most out because the cost of giving one BFR a year is the same as a full
load of students. Now they will have to take recurrent security awareness
training and keep records of it even if they don't take on any foreign
students.

It's going to be real tough for outfits like our club that depend on CFI's
that are not beholden to the local FBO's.