Turns out this weekend has the potential to be one of the busiest weekends yet. I am scheduled from 8am to 8pm tomorrow, so I could be close to the FAA maximum of 8 hours of flight instruction within a 24 hour period.
I got stood up by the first student this afternoon. He is a 17 year old kid who really doesn’t care much for flying and has told me so. Its just something to do in his spare time is all. His uncle lives up in PA I believe and wires him money to pay for his training. The kid has no idea the caliber of the gift that he has been given and takes advantage of it big time. He does have an entrepreneurial spirit and sort of runs his own business repairing fences and delivering feed to clients. He is not a bum at all, and in fact is a very “with it” kid. He just couldn’t care less about flying and it shows.
I called him up at 2:30pm, when he was scheduled and he answered the phone and was clueless that we had a flight today. He just forgot. Typical of a 17 year old highschool kid, I guess. Its part of being a flight instructor, I guess. So I wasted 2 hours of my time for nothing. Well, not for nothing. We did charge him 2 hours of instructor time as a “no show” fee. So it cost him – his uncle actually – a good bit of money and I got paid just the same. Even though my logbook remains unchanged, I did bring in some benjamins over the deal.
The starter went out of the 172SP again. The “old” starter was only a week old. So, it should be fixed any time now and hopefully I’ll have an airplane this evening and all weekend. The flyability of that airplane is VERY important to me. Its a tough position to be in for a business to rely on a single airplane, but I think money is very tight right now. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that it’ll stay airworthy for a good while now.
I’ve got one more student today who is hoping to take his private pilot checkride on Wednesday. He needs to focus really hard and dedicate himself to nothing but flying for the next 5 days. He should be here in about 25 minutes and hopefully the 172SP will be back shortly after that. I’ll do some ground, then hopefully get airborne this evening, even if just for a little bit.
Tomorrow I am booked all day, and the same Sunday. I do have a 3 hour break in the middle of the day that day, so I can catch my breath and have a nice relaxing lunch.
But, I am not complaining. I’ll take every morsel of it with a smile. More money for me and more hours in the logbook. I just hope the weather cooperates, the airplane cooperates, and the students show up as planned. I’ll do my part, that is for sure.
I’ll keep you informed.