By Derek Royal 

NOT too many pilots enter aviation with ambitions of becoming career flying instructors. Most dream of flying the left-hand seat of a state-of-the-art Boeing or Airbus and earning the big bucks commensurate to those dreams. But every now and then someone rare comes along and does the unconventional. Curtis Aviation Chief Flying Instructor Craig Marshall is one of those people. Aviator’s Derek Royal spent a day with the amiable 35-year-old and discovered a man comfortable with his career choice and supremely dedicated to his profession.

0700: Curtis Aviation, Camden Airport, NSW
Trainee flight instructor David Montuori sits in a briefing room at Curtis Aviation, studying flight plans, weather and NOTAMS for the day’s mission. The 20-year-old is sharing a navigation exercise to Jindabyne in the NSW Snowy Mountains with fellow trainee and former flight engineer Graeme Sussmilch, 49. David will fly the first leg and Graeme will handle the return. CFI Craig Marshall will sit in the commander’s seat on both legs and play the role of student, allowing the trainees to demonstrate their teaching skills in what many consider to be the toughest classroom of all.

David has been studying for his instructor rating for the past eight weeks and his moment of truth is getting closer. Like all trainee instructors he needs 50 trainee instructing hours before he can sit the final exam for a Grade 3 Instructor Rating. The hours he logs today will enable him to do so.

0730:
David pre-flights Romeo Juliet Echo (RJE), a high-tech Cessna 182 complete with a glass cockpit. This will be his maiden voyage in the 182 and while he’s excited about having something more advanced at his fingertips than usual, he’s a little wary of the distraction. A nav of this importance is challenging enough without having to worry about the configuration and performance of a new aircraft.

Once he has completed his walk-around, David’s three passengers (including yours truly) strap themselves into the aircraft, ready for departure to the southwest. David’s flightplan includes waypoints at Mittagong, Goulburn, Williamsdale VOR/NDB and Lake Eucumbene.   
  
David delivers the relevant ground checks and concise nav and safety briefs and within minutes he’s cleared to takeoff. He manoeuvres the aircraft onto Runway 24, eases the throttle forward and in seconds has Romeo Juliet Echo hurtling down the bitumen. The takeoff is bumpy but within minutes he has the nose pointing on a heading of one nine zero.

On track and meeting his estimates at each waypoint, David manoeuvres the aircraft past Mittagong, then Goulburn and with Lake Bathurst visual to the east, he requests a clearance to climb to 6,500 feet for the leg to Williamsdale. Request granted, David establishes the Cessna at 6,500 and decides to kick back and engage the autopilot. 

David’s flying well and has the aircraft under control but Craig’s concerned the trainee is navigating for himself and not his “student”. “He’s flying well but he needs to tell me what he’s doing and why he’s doing it,” Craig says. “That’s his job as an instructor. It’s common with trainee instructors and that’s understandable because of their inexperience. So the more he does it, the more he’ll improve.”
As we cruise, Craig explains that the advantage of taking the instructors’ path in aviation is a “continual re-honing of skills”. “Being an instructor is about dealing with a variety of students from 16-year-old schoolboys to 75-year-olds who’ve always wanted to fly but never got the opportunity. You meet a lot of people of varying resource bases and you tend to learn more about interpersonal skills because that’s what instructing is all about.”

Take David and Graeme for example. They’re separated by 29 years in age and their life experiences are poles apart, yet their motivation to fly is comparable: they both have a passion for aviation. David is three years out of high school, has a CPL, ATPL theory, command instrument rating and 620-odd hours up his sleeve. He desires a career as a pilot. Graeme on the other hand boasts ‘exactly’ 12,530 hours and 42 minutes as a flight engineer aboard Boeing 747s and 727s and has worked for several of the world’s major carriers, including TAA and Japan Airlines. He has 340 hours in his logbook, including 144 in the slick Extra 300L and, unlike his younger colleague, has just started his instructor rating. 

Craig has developed several pilots who’ve moved onto an assortment of jobs within the industry, including airline pilots and GA operators. But his pride isn’t reserved for those who become professionals, he thrives on seeing all his students succeed.

“I get enormous satisfaction out of teaching someone who knows absolutely nothing about flying and seeing them achieve their goals,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether they want to fly for the airlines or take the plane out for a spin on the weekend, I derive equal satisfaction when they achieve their goals.”

At Boogong Reservoir David climbs above cloud and maintains cruise at 7,000 feet. We admire the view before he disconnects the autopilot and sneaks between the clouds to descend just to the north of Jindabyne.

Jindabyne Airport is a gravel strip that slopes uphill on Runway 30. Surrounded by hilly terrain many pilots prefer to land uphill, even when driven by heavy tailwinds. The downhill variant of the opposite runway is dangerous for obvious reasons and after considering three-zero, David changes his mind and decides to land on Runway 12. 

Both ends of the airstrip have a severe drop and the ERSA warns of severe turbulence with westerly winds due to the effects of the hills. You’ve also got to be careful about protecting the propeller, which for obvious reasons is easy to damage on gravel. The strip is often full of kangaroos but that’s normally early morning or just before sunset. Given the time, we shouldn’t have any dramas with marsupials.

With a 20 knot westerly blowing, David brings the aircraft onto the red, uneven surface without a hitch. Dust flies but there are no kangaroos, no prop damage and no complaints from the passengers. The 182 comes to a stop on a deserted grass parking area just shy of 0930.

1100: Jindabyne Airport
Graeme does a quick pre-flight of the Cessna before settling into the right-hand seat. Craig has decided that the return leg will be a demonstration flight instead of an instructors’ exercise. That means he and Graeme will share navigation duties, alleviating some of the pressure on the rookie 49-year-old.

Graeme makes his radio call and with the runway clear manoeuvres the aircraft down the gravel strip and into the sky. He completes the relevant checks and takes a heading of zero-four-five, bound for Lake Eucumbene. 

The return leg to Camden is a challenging one thanks to the scuddy weather that has moved in from the coast. Just to the east of Lake Bathurst Craig decides a diversion is in order. Graeme’s flightplan had him tracking from Bungonia to Mittagong but Craig suggests flying via Marulan, intercepting the Hume Highway and then following the Wollondilly River at low altitude into The Oaks and ultimately, Camden. 

Flying at around 500 feet above ground, Craig says that following the Wollondilly is a common route for experienced pilots, but should otherwise be avoided. “It’s just like following the Yellow Brick Road,” he says. “But it’s not a route for inexperienced pilots.”

After touching down on Camden’s grass strip, Graeme feels invigorated. “That was fantastic,” he says. ”To experience such conditions with someone as experienced as Craig was unbelievable.”

Back in the classroom, Craig praises Graeme for a job well done but suggests he made a mistake common to all students: using his map like a street directory. “I call it street directory navigation because they always look at it in too much detail, they don’t look outside at the big picture,” Craig says. “All they need to do is identify two or three references per leg and if they succeed they know they’re going to maintain their track and find their destination. It’s that simple. I also thought he may have identified the (bad) weather sooner than he did, but everything improves with experience.”

1330: Curtis Aviation, Camden Airport
Despite being a little fatigued from the navex, Craig talks through the exercise with Graeme and David before advising them that they’re required to deliver respective briefs on Climbing and Basic Instrument Flight (BIF). Nothing like throwing the boys to the wolves!

David is up first and delivers a slick powerpoint presentation. He knows his stuff inside out and interacts well with his students (all three of us). In an attempt to keep him honest, Craig and Graeme ask questions and throw the odd curveball but David remains cool under the onslaught. During the debrief Craig congratulates David and assures him that his presentation would have been good enough to pass a real instructors’ test.

Graeme’s next and he’s nervous. He has everything written down on paper and his notes are impeccable, but he struggles to explain himself clearly. David and Craig query him during the debrief and offer constructive criticism. Graeme’s disappointed with his efforts but the others assure him that things will eventually get better.  

“If you read my notes, you’ll understand how to climb an aircraft,” Graeme says. “I have the knowledge and I felt I prepared well for the brief, but once I got up there in front of everyone I just got lost. It was the same in the nav today, it was easy sitting in the back seat organising maps and everything but once I was PIC (pilot in command), I felt the pressure.”

Craig jumps from his seat and demonstrates how Graeme’s brief could have been better. Craig’s delivery is impressive and he captures the essence of an experienced teacher: clear, concise delivery; genial interaction with his students and impeccable knowledge of the subject. Then again, Craig has been CFI at Curtis for eight years and with almost 13,000 hours in his logbook, not to mention the enormous amount of time spent in the classroom, his demonstration is simply par for course.  

During the debrief, Craig asks: “Where did the wheels fall off?” David suggests Graeme was just reading from his notes and because he didn’t have a logical structure to his presentation, needed to plan. He also suggests the volume of Graeme’s notes is unnecessary and advises him to reduce them to point form.

Craig agrees. “What we need to develop with you is more structure,” he says. “You’re doing a board presentation but where’s your board plan? When you do a brief, you need to be organised and do a board plan first.”

Disappointed, Graeme compares his brief to David’s. “David’s presentation was diamond class,” Graeme offers. “Compared to him I was a raw piece of coal still waiting to be extracted from the earth.”

Craig laughs and has some advice for his disappointed student. “Don’t beat yourself up mate, this was your first brief, so you’re only going to get better. That’s why you’re here. By the time you finish this course you’ll be polished and ready to go.”

The difference between being a CFI and an instructor is paperwork and responsibility. CFI’s aren’t just responsible for themselves and their own students, they’re responsible for all the company’s instructors and all of their students. “I make sure I dot the i’s and cross the t’s,” Marshall says.

Despite the bum rap levelled at instructors by some in the industry, instructors earn a ballpark figure of between $30,000 and $40,000 per year (Grade 3); $40,000 and $50,000 (Grade 2) and $50,000 and $60,000 (Grade 1), which, for a profession that many consider to be a stepping stone to greener pastures, isn’t too shabby. But for Marshall, the job has never been about the money.

“It’s a great career, a fun career,” he says. “Because my dad (Curtis Aviation Chief Pilot) Robert (Marshall) has been in general aviation all his life, I grew up with flying. I first held the controls when I was three, started flying when I was 15, went solo at 16, so it’s in my blood. Passing on my knowledge and seeing my students succeed is awesome. What more could you want from a career?”

What indeed.