CFI Lesson Plans

CFI Lesson Plans

Sale price$ 195.004.6

Prep - Check - Teach

Spend your time flying! We've compiled all of the information required for each task in the CFI ACS (single engine) into an awesome, easy to use lessons and slides to make your life, checkride, and instructing easier, and we'll keep them up to date for you.

Prep & Check: CFI checkride - Teach: Private & Commercial students

All content provided in PC (Word & PowerPoint), Mac (Pages & Keynote), and PDF formats!

What's Included

Lessons & Slides

  • CFI ACS Lessons
  • CFI ACS Slides
  • CFI ACS Extra Detail Lessons

Syllabi

  • Private Pilot (SE)
  • Commercial Pilot (SE)
  • CFI (SE) - NEW!
  • Hourly Breakdowns
  • Student Trackers

Save Hundreds of Hours

Everything for your CFI checkride and future all for about half a day of work

Your Cost

  • ~ 4 hours of flight instruction (@ national average - $50/hour)

Your Gain

  • Hundreds of hours of prep work
  • Two versions of professionally designed CFI lesson plans
  • Professionally designed slides for each lesson
  • Private & Commercial Syllabi with hourly breakdowns & trackers
  • FREE lifetime updates for all content
  • Less stress, more focus on flying & teaching
  • Faster path to the checkride and a job - the content can pay for itself!
Awesome product and a must have for new CFI applicants. Everything you could possibly want to know is laid out in an easy to view format, making it easy to teach.

Kip

I just passed my CFI-A checkride with these lesson plans. They saved me a huge amount of time in preparation... Overall a great value and a great buy!
Write some content about what they says about your store.

Samples

A lesson & PowerPoint for every task in the CFI ACS with every single Knowledge & Risk Management element included & annotated. Use the links below to view sample lessons & PowerPoints!

 

 I. Fundamentals of Instructing
II. Technical Subject Areas
  • A. Human Factors
  • B. Visual Scanning & Collision Avoidance
  • C. Runway Incursion Avoidance
  • D. Principles of Flight / Slides
  • D. Forces of Flight (Addt'l info)
  • E. Flight Controls & Operation of Systems
  • F. Performance & Limitations
  • G. National Airspace System
  • H. Navigation Systems & Radar Services
  • I. Navigation & Flight Planning
  • J. 14 CFR & Publications
  • K. Endorsements & Logbook Entries
  • M. Night Operations
  • N. Supplemental Oxygen
  • O. Pressurization
III. Preflight Preparation
IV. Preflight on a Lesson
  • A. Maneuver Lesson
V. Preflight Procedures
  • A. Preflight Assessment
  • B. Flight Deck Management
  • C. Engine Starting
  • D. Taxiing, Airport Signs & Lighting
  • E. Before Takeoff Check
VI. Airport Operations
  • A. Comms, Light Signals & Runway Lighting
  • B. Traffic Patterns
VII. TOs, LDGs & Go-Arounds
  • A. Normal Takeoff & Climb
  • B. Normal Approach & Landing
  • C. Soft-Field Takeoff & Climb
  • D. Soft-Field Approach & Landing
  • E. Short-Field Takeoff & Climb / Slides
  • F. Short-Field Approach & Landing
  • M. Slip to a Landing
  • N. Go-Around/Rejected Landing
  • O. Power-Off 180 Approach & Landing
VIII. Fundamentals of Flight
  • A. Straight-and-Level
  • B. Turns
  • C. Straight Climbs & Climbing Turns
  • D. Straight Descents & Descending Turns
IX. Maneuvers
X. Slow Flight, Stalls & Spins
  • A. Maneuvering During Slow Flight
  • B. Demonstration of Flight Characteristics
  • C. Power-Off Stalls
  • D. Power-On Stalls
  • E. Accelerated Stalls
  • F. Cross-Controlled Stalls
  • G. Elevator Trim Stalls
  • H. Secondary Stalls
  • I. Spin Awareness & Spins
XI. Basic Instrument Mnvrs
XII. Emergency Operations
XIV. Postflight Procedures
  • A. After Landing, Parking & Securing
XV. Appendix
  • A. Energy Management
  • B. Flight Review
  • C. Plan of Action
  • D. Common Carriage
  • E. ADM, CRM & SRM
Syllabi

CFI Specifics

Get a clear picture of our CFI content and additions. We added a specific Operation of Systems lesson and Systems & Equipment Malfunctions lesson for each of the aircraft listed.

ACS Lessons

72

Covers all single-engine PTS sections & tasks

Additional Lessons

3

  • Forces of Flight & Maneuvers
  • Weather Theory
  • Airworthiness Requirements (FARs)
Aircraft Systems

9

  • Generic System Operation
  • Cessna 152 & 172S
  • Cirrus SR20
  • Diamond DA20 & 40
  • Piper Archer II & III
  • Piper Arrow
Appendix

5

  • Energy Management
  • Flight Review
  • Plan of Action
  • Common Carriage
  • ADM, CRM, & SRM
Syllabi

3

  • Private (SE) Syllabus
  • Commercial (SE) Syllabus
  • CFI (SE) Syllabus
  • Hours Breakdown
  • Student Trackers

FAQ

Let's clear up some common questions

More Questions? Email info@thebackseatpilot.com

Customer Reviews

Based on 77 reviews
77%
(59)
13%
(10)
3%
(2)
6%
(5)
1%
(1)
K
Karl
This really hurts to say

But, I have to dock 2 Stars from Gryffindor. While all my positives still stand from the CFII Lesson Plans, there's one massive massive negative that I need to point out; Task II.I. is garbage. I had to rewrite a sizeable chunk of it because the Flight Planning portion, especially the E6B portion, had no detail what soever. Also the Hazards segements in later lesson plans are just incredibly repetative.

Hey Karl, thanks so much for the thoughtful review.

It stings to hear II.I. didn’t meet expectations, but I appreciate you pointing it out. The Extra Detail version of the lesson has a lot more... detail - which may be exactly what you were looking for there. It breaks down a lot of the calculations, whereasthe standard lessons were condensed to just include the main steps to keep things streamlined. The Extra Detail version also mentions when to reference the E6B, but I didn’t want to overload the lesson with another lesson on how to use an E6B, especially when a lot of students and instructors are going electronic, and when the instructions are, for the most part, included on the instrument. I'll definitely see what I can do to balance everything out though.

As for the Risk Management/Hazards, I totally agree. They’re annoyingly repetitive. Unfortunately, that’s baked into the design of the ACS itself - it repeats the same risk management concepts across numerous tasks. That said, I’m working on tightening them up so they’re a lot less tedious but still checkride-ready.

Really appreciate you taking the time to share the information—it helps a ton. And I'm glad to hear the rest of the content is working out well. If you come across anything else, don't hesitate to reach out - info@thebackseatpilot.com. Thanks!

Nate
Owner, BSP

J
Jan Khela

CFI Lesson Plans

Thanks, Jan!

K
Karlie Hayes

CFI Lesson Plans

Thanks, Karlie! Don't hesitate to send over any suggestions to improve the content to 5 stars. I'm always working to make the content better!

A
Anup
Great start to lesson plans

I found the Keynote presentations a great start to my CFI preparation. I’m mostly done with the maneuvers and now working on the subject areas.
A couple of comments on the material:
1. Several of the lessons are too verbose or repetitive. For most of the lessons, I found myself condensing the verbiage down to about half the slides without loss of information.
2. The common errors are too cookie cutter. I’ve been prioritizing these based on bolded ones in the FAA docs, and what I find in my POH and Flight Ops Manual.
Overall, glad I bought these to have a starting point.

Awesome! We're on the same page with a lot of these thoughts. I'm currently working on updating the formatting for the remaining ACS Reviews/lessons and then the plan is to start condensing the slide information and to continue building out new products. As for the common errors, those are straight from the Airplane Flying Handbook which can be a bit 'cookie cutter' and lengthy - going forward the plan is to update/condense/improve on them. Thanks a ton for the feedback, Anup! I'll get it implemented.

C
Caleb Newcomer
great lesson plans

great lesson plans, learning myself just going through them and reading them. The only thing that I know would help me would be to highlight some of the main parts of each lesson plan. For example, on the runway incursion section highlight " a. Airport markings" and then " b. Airport Signs" just so its easier to scroll through and find what you want. but just personal preference, thank you

Hey Caleb, thank you! I absolutely agree—and that exact request was actually addressed in the latest update! The CFI & MEI Lesson Plans were completely reformatted to improve readability, structure, and flow.

You'll now see:
Improved section spacing for easier scanning / Varied as well as bolded headings to help you quickly find and differentiate sections and topics ('Airport Markings' and 'Signs' are now bold in the Runway Incursions lesson) / Color-coded highlights for things like main points, mnemonics, instructor actions (coming in future updates), and extra notes and details

Just head to your account and download the April 2025 version of the CFI Lessons. Future updates will continue applying this layout across the rest of the content. I really appreciate the feedback!

123

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