Flight and duty time limitations cap how many hours crew — including instructors in commercial operations — may fly and remain on duty over defined periods. Even where training-specific rules are lighter, schools set internal instructor duty limits, and schedulers must enforce them automatically.
Flight and duty time limitations (FTL) cap how long crew may fly and remain on duty across defined periods, with mandated rest between. The full FTL apparatus binds commercial air transport; flight instruction sits in lighter regulatory territory, where national rules vary and much of the protection comes from the school's own duty scheme — commonly capping daily instructional hours, duty length and consecutive working days.
The underlying logic is unchanged by the regulatory gap: instruction is high-workload flying, and an instructor on their seventh flight of a hot summer day is operating with degraded margins whether or not a regulation says so.
Why it matters for flight schools
Fatigue erodes exactly what students pay for — an instructor's judgment and attention — and it correlates with both training quality complaints and safety events. Schools that publish and enforce duty limits also protect themselves commercially: instructor burnout is a leading cause of the churn that disrupts student continuity.
How FlightLogger handles it
FlightLogger enforces the school's duty scheme in scheduling: daily flight-hour and duty caps per instructor are checked at booking, so the roster cannot quietly build an illegal — or merely inhuman — day.
Frequently asked questions
Do formal FTLs apply to flight instructors?
Full commercial FTL schemes generally don't bind pure instruction, but national rules and, above all, the school's own scheme fill the space. Instructors flying for an AOC operator alongside instructing must count both toward their limits.
What are typical instructor duty limits?
Common school schemes cap instructional flight around 6–8 hours per day within a longer duty ceiling, with minimum rest and consecutive-day limits. The right numbers depend on mission profile — six circuits sorties fatigue differently than six navigation flights.