Flight instructors love aviation, and are fortunate to work in a field that elicits such passion. However, it's not enough to be content experts. Upper-tier aviation educators are just as passionate about growing and evolving as excellent teachers as they are pilots.
Join flight school owner, university adjunct lecturer, and 4-time Master Flight Instructor Aaron Dabney as he highlights some of his top teaching lessons learned from his first decade in this profession. He'll also outline tips for sharing these strategies and tactics with newer instructors to help them be better, earlier.
Aaron Dabney earned his Flight Instructor certificate in 2009, and has been an active instructor ever since. He has provided more than 5,000 hours of instruction in more than 30 models of aircraft, mentoring pilots from their first hour through becoming accomplished instructors themselves, and all points in between.
Dabney grew up in an aviation family. His maternal grandfather Joe was a World War II fighter pilot, and much of his childhood was spent in the family J-3 Cub with his grandfather or his uncle Mark. Aaron completed his first solo in that Cub in 1999 and is now its caretaker.
Aaron is a 6-time NAFI Master Flight Instructor, owns a small flight school, and has served as an adjunct lecturer for Baylor University's Aviation Sciences program since 2010. He serves on NAFI's Board of Directors and serves in several volunteer roles including coordinating MentorLIVE
Aaron lives in Waco, Texas with his wife of 20 years Alisa.
Tom Dorl has been flying since he was 16 years old and learned to fly at an Air Force base in New Jersey. It was at this aero club, flying C-152s, that Tom cemented his love for flying. He attended an aviation university in Ohio and secured a commission in the USAF along with a degree in Aerospace Technology.
Tom completed fixed wing and rotary wing pilot training flying the T-37, T-38, UH-1 and HH-60G and was one of the first operational USAF pilots to fly the HH-60G PaveHawk. Tom served over 25 years in the USAF flying mainly combat search and rescue missions in many overseas locations saving the lives of others; additionally he taught powered flight to USAF Academy Cadets in the Cirrus 20 (T-53).
He has been an active and dual rated flight instructor for over 22 years, is an active FAASTeam Representative and presenter, CAP member and published author. He holds a CMEL, CFI, CFII in both single engine airplanes and helicopters as well as a Pt 107 UAS Commercial certificate.
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