Instructors a dying breed?

The latest figures obtained from CASA show a continued decline in the number of aeroplane flying instructors. Those figures indeed indicate that instructors are thin on the ground.

The figures show that as at the middle of 2008 there had been an effective drop of 29% in the number of fixed wing or aeroplane flying instructors from the preceding year. The total number of aeroplane flying instructors was 1837. At June 2007 that number was 2590. At June 2008 there were 842 grade 1 aeroplane instructors, 556 grade 2 instructors and 439 grade 3 instructors.