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Originally Posted by zmiller4  Uhhh.....
You're saying you could instruct in something you're not certified to fly?
I think that may be pushing interpretation of the regs a little far. |
You don't need to be certified to fly a plane in order to give instruction it it. All you need is to be certified to instruct in the plane. A CFI-A gives you the ability to act as a "authorized instructor" in an airplane. A seaplane is still a plane, so you can indeed instruct in it.
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All of the above comments give me cause for concern. If you're a student and you want to learn how to fly seaplanes, then how do you know if your instructor knows his way around a seaplane? How can one make sure that they're getting a genuinely qualified instructor? Do they log their seaplane hours as such and then you ask to see their logbook?
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Acting as PIC in an airplane and instructing in an airplane are two different things. A CFI-A with no seaplane rating can instruct in a seaplane, but can't act as PIC.
For example:
If a student has never touched a sea plane before, and a CFI hasn't touched one either, neither person can act as PIC. Therefore this situation is illegal.
If a student already has a seaplane rating, and the CFI has never touched a sea plane before, the "student" acts as PIC, and the instructor can give all the instruction he/she wants.
For instance, a guy owns his own seaplane and is A-SES wants to get a commercial, so he comes to me to teach him lazy-8s and 8's on pylons. All I would need to do this is a CFI-A.
How about this: a never-before-touched-a-seaplane student in the left seat, a C-SES pilot in the right seat, and a never-before-touched-a-seaplane CFI-A in the back. The CFI can legally log dual given, as long as he/she is actually giving instruction (there was a thread about this a while ago). But can this instruction be used as the basis for a certificate or rating? I'm sure it says somewhere "you can't endorse someone for something you don't have", but where? I don't see it anywhere in 61.195... All thought it does say,
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(b) Aircraft ratings. A flight instructor may not conduct flight training in any aircraft for which the flight instructor does not hold:
(1) A pilot certificate and flight instructor certificate with the applicable category and class rating; and
(2) If appropriate, a type rating.
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But I'm 99.9% sure "flight instruction" here means "primary instruction" as in with a never-before-touched-a-seaplane student. But I'm not really sure.