Flight training marketing / business trends

Most of them learn the Queens english in school, but you do get some villagers that have no english training.

Its true, some just don't know English when they get here. We had one that barley new any. When you told him to do something you got an "OK" and then nothing happens. On the ground he refused to talk English to get better. He was sent home as we had to keep charging him extra as he couldn't even get through lesson 4 and really didn't care about what he was doing.
 
My level of instructing has been anything but consistent as of late. Over the summer I was flying 100+ hrs a month. For the past three months I have flown anywhere from 10 to 90 hrs in a month.
 
The honest truth is that it's too hard to tell. Right now the entire pilot market is crazy, no airlines hiring or even training replacement pilots, cargo opperators have been moving a lot of personel from active routes to standby positions, and those that have a good job are unwilling to leave because there is nowhere to go. I have personally watched entire crews for a cargo carrier that just went out of business get stranded in Europe and have to find their own way home. There have been several jets from American Eagle and ExpressJet flown here to Kingman airport and parked on the ramp for storage. That all means bad business for us flight schools because when the market opens again, the entry level jobs will become flooded with pilot applicants, so the company hiring will raise the minimum qualifications considerably to narrow down the pool. This will leave a lot of pilots without work. This will also increase the demand for jobs, and when there are more pilots than jobs the pay will be cut, as we've seen time and time again. Instead of making $30,000 per year at a regional, you may make $20,000 with more qualifications.

If you ask me all of us have just three options:

1. Be glad you have a job. Something that pays the bills, if not so reliably all the time with fluctuations in training. Be overjoyed that you are not a 'out-of-work' pilot. Be content to stay where you are for longer than you planned and make some guarenteed money.

2. Find a corporate gig. Start networking as a second job and find some rich guy who needs to be flown around. Work is going to be very tight, very demanding, and very inconsistant, but there is money to be made.

3. Apply for food stamps, file for unemployment, and start looking for a new career. Times are almost always tough for pilots and it isn't going to change for the better anytime soon. I just see it getting worse.
 
Going into summer I thought we would slow down a little bit as a result of high gas prices but we still had 50+ students complete their ratings at different levels over summer. We had one instructor log over 1300 hours of instruction this summer. But historically we have always been one of the more busy part 61 flight schools in the country. Part of this is due to the fact that we have the lowest airplane rental rates in the country. C-150= 48.90 wet C-152= 52.62 wet C-172= 79.08 wet C-182RG= 142.18 and PA-23-180= 193.29 wet. This gets us a lot of business. You can get your private certificate for under $3000 flying a 152 here. We tend to get a lot of retirees and business men coming to our school to learn to fly. We don't have many students come who are looking to make a career out of flying so we aren't effected by the turn down in hiring. Even though if you look there are still jobs to be had. I agree that finding a airline job is hard right now( I have a buddy furloughed from Express Jet ) but there are numerous 135 operators hiring plus some good paying time building jobs such as pipe line patrol etc. I personally have been offered a pipeline job that runs from next aug-april that will pay over 20k for that short stretch. The key to finding a job in this economy is networking and knowing where to look. Corporate jobs are out there to be had also. A KCAK there is one operator who is constantly adding new jets to his corporate roster. Back to the flight school though, part of what makes our flight school so appealing outside of the ridiculous low rates is that fact it has a family atmosphere to it. It is a private air park owned by the owner of the flight school. We have our own movie theater and two hot tubs plus a tiki bar that are all free to members. Membership is only $50 dollars a year. You simply can not beat the price. Most of our flying is done from May through November due to harsh winters. We run ground start starting in January that ends in May just in time for the good weather to begin. Next year is looking promising. We have over 60 people signed up right now to attend our ground school starting first week of January. Plus we usually tend to have another 10-20 walk-ins throughout summer. In the first week of June every summer we hold our Summer Celebration. We invite the public to come join us for a day of fun. We have a spot landing competition. A bomb drop and a poker run that is open to all members. We also give rides to the public during this day. We also have entertainment in form of skydivers from a local airport that come jump and gliders from a local airport also come and land that day. This is a huge marketing tool for us. It is always announced in the paper the week leading up and usually draws a large crowd who come out to see what all the fuss is about. This generally leads to some new flight school sign ups. Another revenue generator we started this summer is a partnership with a dutch flight school. Since we aren't 141 we can't offer instruction to internal students but we found a good way to get them to come fly at our airport. We started a time building program. The dutch school has a manager that we gave office space to at our airport. He brings over usually 5 or so already certified pilots at time and they stay for 3 months flying 100 hours then leave and a new batch comes over. The reason they do this is because over seas for them to add their commercial they need many more X-country hours then we do and flight training is extremely expensive over there. So we got them a special deal with a local hotel and they come here to build hours. It really works out great. We are looking into getting a 141 certificate so that we can expand on our international contracts. I hope this helps some others out there find new ways to generate business. I personally thinks our prices are our main draw point. Where else can you get your private for under $3000. If you want to check out our airport the website is www.flyskypark.com we are located in Wadsworth,OH.
 
It should pick up again if fuel stays at a realistic level.

I hope so. My paycheck has been 1/6th of what it was in the past. People are pointing fingers at the weather, and also saying after the 1st of the year things will get better but i just feel that with the economy where it is, people are starting to watch their spending.
 
We had one instructor log over 1300 hours of instruction this summer. www.flyskypark.com we are located in Wadsworth,OH.

I am not trying to call you a liar, but I think this might be an exaggeration for summer work. That CFI would have to work almost 1/2 a year, max out at 8 hours a day and seven days a week. Even if i had the students, I would collapse from exhaustion after a couple of days.
In the month of June I billed 154 hours of Dual and Ground. I was exhausted and took plenty of time off for the fourth.
It's just not sustainable and 154 hours is not even close to the max allowed.
 
The 1300 hours isn't just summer sorry if I made it sound that way. His 1300 hours is from January up till now. He does a lot of specialty training and is very well known in this area for tail wheel training which keeps him extremely busy. But its not unusual for him to be at the airport during a good weather day from 8am till 8pm flying pretty much non-stop. He is a older gentleman I'm guessing in his mid 50's who does this for a living. A few have asked how he gets this many students and it is simple. As I said we already have 60 students signed up for next year ground school and we only have right now 3 full time instructors plus 3 or 4 who show up every now and then and have a student or two. The reason we only have that many is the owner of the school doesn't like to bring in outside instructors. Usually the only new instructors the school gets is guys who got their CFI through skypark which as I stated before is rare because we don't get many career guys who come through. So its keeps the 3 full time guys pretty busy. We just had our Christmas dinner tonight and the other two full times guys both had in the area of 700 hours given this year. Another plus about instructing here is that we have over 80 hangar units all full and most of them are pretty active fliers. So instructors here do quite a few BFR and IPC every year. We also have 5 aircraft that are based here that are used as business aircraft.(3 arrows, 1 210, 1 206) They all hire the instructors here to fly their aircraft. Three of are part time instructors all have corporate flying gigs which is why they aren't around much but they still do their fare share of training also. Any other questions regarding how are school is run just ask on here of PM me of course.
 
Jbroz--thanks for the perspective. It sounds like a very unique operation.

To sum it up, to me it appears your atmosphere, cheap rates, and word of mouth reputation in the local area are what keep you going. I'm not sure if the techniques Skypark uses to be successful would necessarily transfer over to a more traditional flight school like my location, simply because of the differences between trying to turn a profit versus breaking even with a club, but I'll see what I can do. I like the idea of organizing some fly-outs.
 
I like the idea of organizing some fly-outs.

:yeahthat:

At my places, they have really turned the airport into a strict work environment.
One of the flight schools I went to turned the airport into a hang out spot.
There was always something going on. Now I just go out when I have a student and leave as soon as I am done.
I think fun is key, because that is why we started doing this in the first place.
 
I agree that keeping these interesting is a must. I have experience from both sides of the ball. Obviously at Skypark we keep things pretty casual and people have a lot of fun. I also fly out of Ashland (3G4) because that's where my uncle keeps his cherokee that I fly. There in the past it was strictly business. You showed up to fly and you left when you were done. Now that I am involved with that airport we are starting to organize more get togethers to get people out at the airport. We started a fly-in at Ashland two summers ago. The first summer wasn't what we expected but we learned a lot from it. This past summer the fly in went great. To draw non pilots out to the airport we had a car show that ran along with the fly in. We had food, games, plane rides. It really had a festival atmosphere and drew a bigger crowd then even we had expected. It worked out so great we organized a clam bake in the fall that drew in a good crowd too. This next year we are looking to expand on this. I'm a firm believer that in aviation to draw more people into it, we need to change back to when it was fun. I understand the business like approach that some flight schools take to it and I appreciate there reasons. But in my experience the best way to draw people in is to make it a unforgettable experience. Make the airport into a family atmosphere. Organize trips. At Skypark we have a spring and fall trip. For the fall trip this year we all flew down to Nashville. One of the interesting things I have been told by pilots about why they don't fly more is they say they have a hard time finding new places to go and that they no longer want to go up to just fly they want a reason to fly. This is were organized flying events come in handy to get them excited about flying again. My favorite thing we do is poker flight. We set crews up with playing cards a 5 different airport. Then pilots fly to each airport and try to make the best poker hand. They can fly to the airports in any order they wish. Another fun one is we do what we call accuracy flights. Everyone plans a trip in their plane to the same location. The idea is you have to try and estimate exactly how long you will be gone. The person who gets back closest to their estimated time wins. Given some people will just estimate longer and circle to get back close to time but its always fun to see who can get the closest. There's lots of other ways to bring back the excitement of flying. Sometimes I think people forget why they started to fly in the first place. It's to have fun people. And I think to be a successful FBO you need to bring the fun back.
 
:yeahthat:

At my places, they have really turned the airport into a strict work environment.
One of the flight schools I went to turned the airport into a hang out spot.
There was always something going on. Now I just go out when I have a student and leave as soon as I am done.
I think fun is key, because that is why we started doing this in the first place.

No kidding. I've never understood how some schools can so efficiently zap the fun and excitement out of flying. It seems a bit more prevalent at college/university flight programs, but even some FBOs get boring, too. I do my best to keep the one-on-one training interesting for my customers...a lot of times we'll take courtesy cars and go out to eat on cross countries, or fly in to an air museum or something, but it would be nice to get more group activities organized.

I could tell stories all day of the amazing group trips I've had in small planes. Some of the best memories came from my time in a college flight program when we'd load up 2, 3, or even 4 planes and take trips just for the heck of it. Trips to the coast, out to eat, to see a hockey game, to go camping, to a big air show, you name it. Gosh, those were good times! They always got me excited about being a pilot.
 
yeah, when I was a student, we would load up a couple of planes on Tuesday night and go to redwood falls mn, because the casino would give us credit that we could use towards a free buffet just for flying in.
That stuff was a ton of fun.
I am trying to put something together for my students right now, so we would load up and head to a local museum then to another nearby airport for lunch.

group stuff would be fun.
 
Going into summer I thought we would slow down a little bit as a result of high gas prices but we still had 50+ students complete their ratings at different levels over summer. We had one instructor log over 1300 hours of instruction this summer. But historically we have always been one of the more busy part 61 flight schools in the country. Part of this is due to the fact that we have the lowest airplane rental rates in the country. C-150= 48.90 wet C-152= 52.62 wet C-172= 79.08 wet C-182RG= 142.18 and PA-23-180= 193.29 wet. This gets us a lot of business. You can get your private certificate for under $3000 flying a 152 here. We tend to get a lot of retirees and business men coming to our school to learn to fly. We don't have many students come who are looking to make a career out of flying so we aren't effected by the turn down in hiring. Even though if you look there are still jobs to be had. I agree that finding a airline job is hard right now( I have a buddy furloughed from Express Jet ) but there are numerous 135 operators hiring plus some good paying time building jobs such as pipe line patrol etc. I personally have been offered a pipeline job that runs from next aug-april that will pay over 20k for that short stretch. The key to finding a job in this economy is networking and knowing where to look. Corporate jobs are out there to be had also. A KCAK there is one operator who is constantly adding new jets to his corporate roster. Back to the flight school though, part of what makes our flight school so appealing outside of the ridiculous low rates is that fact it has a family atmosphere to it. It is a private air park owned by the owner of the flight school. We have our own movie theater and two hot tubs plus a tiki bar that are all free to members. Membership is only $50 dollars a year. You simply can not beat the price. Most of our flying is done from May through November due to harsh winters. We run ground start starting in January that ends in May just in time for the good weather to begin. Next year is looking promising. We have over 60 people signed up right now to attend our ground school starting first week of January. Plus we usually tend to have another 10-20 walk-ins throughout summer. In the first week of June every summer we hold our Summer Celebration. We invite the public to come join us for a day of fun. We have a spot landing competition. A bomb drop and a poker run that is open to all members. We also give rides to the public during this day. We also have entertainment in form of skydivers from a local airport that come jump and gliders from a local airport also come and land that day. This is a huge marketing tool for us. It is always announced in the paper the week leading up and usually draws a large crowd who come out to see what all the fuss is about. This generally leads to some new flight school sign ups. Another revenue generator we started this summer is a partnership with a dutch flight school. Since we aren't 141 we can't offer instruction to internal students but we found a good way to get them to come fly at our airport. We started a time building program. The dutch school has a manager that we gave office space to at our airport. He brings over usually 5 or so already certified pilots at time and they stay for 3 months flying 100 hours then leave and a new batch comes over. The reason they do this is because over seas for them to add their commercial they need many more X-country hours then we do and flight training is extremely expensive over there. So we got them a special deal with a local hotel and they come here to build hours. It really works out great. We are looking into getting a 141 certificate so that we can expand on our international contracts. I hope this helps some others out there find new ways to generate business. I personally thinks our prices are our main draw point. Where else can you get your private for under $3000. If you want to check out our airport the website is www.flyskypark.com we are located in Wadsworth,OH.

Not to spark any tension, but the talk around these parts is that it is hard to find an aircraft over there that isn't riddled with placards.
 
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