About Faisal Afzal
Flight instructor, Cirrus pilot, and a San Diego resident who thinks the SR22 is the best personal airplane ever built and that most of them are under-flown.
I hold Certificated Flight Instructor, Instrument Instructor and Multi-Engine Instructor certificates, a commercial certificate with single- and multi-engine ratings, and a second-in-command type rating in the Cessna Citation Ultra. I have close to 2,000 hours total time, more than 500 of them in the Cirrus SR22 series across the G3, G5, G6 and G7 generations and the Perspective, Perspective+ and Perspective Touch+ panels. I have flown Cirrus aircraft for owners and in charter operations, which is where most of my opinions about how the airplane should be taught come from.
I have also spent time in the right seat of the Citation, and that experience shapes the way I teach the single-pilot Cirrus: the same briefings, the same flows, the same respect for the checklist, scaled to one person and one engine. I remain available for Citation and Phenom second-in-command flying with San Diego-based operators.
Outside the cockpit I have spent a career as a principal engineer in cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, which is to say I am comfortable with complex systems, documentation, and explaining both to people who have better things to do. A lot of Cirrus owners are professionals with the same constraint on their time; I try to teach accordingly.
I moved to San Diego from Washington, DC a few years ago, live in Rancho Bernardo, and fly mostly out of Montgomery-Gibbs. I organize a cloud-native technology community in Los Angeles and write occasionally about engineering at Medium; the aviation writing lives here on the blog.
How I teach
- In your airplane, with your panel, on your missions. Transfer of training from a rental to your own aircraft is poor, so I skip the rental.
- Scenario-based. Maneuvers are a means, not an end; the point is to be ready for the day the airplane surprises you.
- Honest. If you are not ready for a sign-off, I will say so and we will fix it. If a session is not worth your money, I will tell you that too.
- On your schedule. Early mornings, weekends and video ground sessions are all normal.