Code of Ethics

Yesterday's class focused on professionalism as a flight instructor, something we're bound to get hit hard with during the oral portion of the check ride.

I actually hadn't thought a whole bunch about the concept until yesterday but for me a huge part of it boils down to attitude. Professionalism is an attitude and it doesn't matter if you're a student pilot, a private pilot, a flight instructor or captain of a jumbo jet.

If you act professionally you are professional in my book. If you don't, you aren't, no matter how much you're getting paid.

(Rod Machado has an interesting article on the subject here.)

In aviation that means taking safety seriously, working to improve your own skills and experience, striving to meet high performance standards, objectively critiquing your own performance and treating others with respect.

For a flight instructor it also means developing and abiding by a code of ethics, which was our homework assignment.

I used the National Association of Flight Instructors code of ethics as a starting point and modified it a bit to fit my own personal goals.

NAFI's code was pretty good and since it didn't say anything about stealing the code of ethics, I stole it.

I wound up with the following:

Code of Ethics

I, William McCoy Outlaw Jr., accept responsibility to practice my profession according to the highest ethical standards.

Therefore I pledge:

• To always provide a safe and effective learning situation for my students
• To treat flight training clients with respect in all aspects, including respect for their time and their finances
• To instill in clients the shared goal of operating at the highest standards of performance
• To continually critique and to improve my own teaching and flying skills through education and operational experiences
  
• To scrupulously adhere to safe practice and to applicable Federal and State Aviation Regulations
• To treat all fellow flight instructors with respect
• To conduct both my professional and personal lives in a manner to reflect credit on the profession and to set an example of self-discipline for all pilots
• And, to encourage my fellow flight instructors and the organizations in which they teach to uphold and support these principles, and to question and resist those practices which may undermine or defeat them

We also started in on endorsements, of which there are a bunch.

I'll spare you the details on all of the endorsements but before yesterday they were nothing more than words on paper to me.

Now, it's both an extremely cool and sobering thought to realize that soon I'll be responsible for teaching flying and signing my name in another pilot's logbook.

The responsibility to do a good job training just got a little more tangible.