What did your flight school do to cut costs...

[SlantG]

• Initial aircraft rental prices enough to counter maintenance, preventative maintenance, cleaning, hangars, and so on. The top and the bottom make money, the middle starves. It's just as expensive to offer junk as it is to offer new planes.
• CFI hourly and daily rates high enough to keep career instructors. On their own and without a rental fleet, flight school would make a profit.
• Profit motivation. A business exists to make a profit. A flight school is a business, not a charity.
• Deciding on and knowing your market. Do you want everyone? Zero-to-airline pilots? White collar pros? Blue collar everyman? The rich and affluent? Celebrities? Adult entertainment pros?
• Well-written contracts for aviation services (instruction), aircraft rental, and aircraft leasebacks. Setting the clients' expectations early, and over-delivering.
• Having an aircraft manufacturer send leads and support works very well for new students, but when their sales are down, so are yours.
• Remaining independent of a manufacturer thus allowing one to make the proper decisions regarding aviation safety. Millions of dollars saved here.
• When rent tripled, school closed "fancy" office. When school found a new location with reasonable rent, even though the office was a closet, they took it, and didn't add furniture or anything else until they had the revenue to support it.
• Online scheduling and accounting through MyFBO. Somewhat more expensive with accounting, but really cheap when it comes to tax time.
• Location, location, location. Outside of "Enhanced Class B" thus not shut down on for months on the whim of some idiot in Washington.
• Good relationships with your lawyers, regulators, and other government entities.
• Having good mechanics, both able and willing to do the work, let you know when things are not safe, and they have a good relationship with the regulators and other government entities.
• Having good instructors that know how to work the IFR and TFR systems, aren't afraid to cancel flights when needed, and don't cancel flights for stupid reasons.
• Good management that works with the instructors, mechanics, clients, regulators, and other government entities.
• A good marketing plan that is carried out. No marketing = no sales = no money. Not paying for JC advertising if you are not interested in the type of folks that visit JC, or any other website or media that attracts folks that are not in your target market. Same with the fancy phone book ad, newspaper ads, TV shorts, and so on.
• A war chest fund.
• Really good insurance.
• Working the jet and recurrent training market.
• Specializing in an area and being experts in that area.
• Figuring out a way to reach (i.e. sell to) more than one client at a time.
• Cheap, fast, or quality. Choose any two.
• Progressive maintenance on aircraft flying 50+ hours per month.

 

[Barty]

We've never had a problem with the strainers, but people do tend to steal or destroy our checklists. Buying one is not that big of a deal. They could also keep them inside and check them out to students. If it is not returned the same way as it when it left, the student pays for it.

First school I went to just had basic checklists on some reasonably durable card stock that could be printed on a cheap inkjet. If one went missing or wore out, they just printed another one, probably cost them no more than 25 cents at time.

The club I fly with now checks out the checklist, strainer and fuel dipstick with each rental. You become responsible for returning everything when you check the plane back in, otherwise you get to pay to replace it. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

 

[youngflyer]

They stopped renting the plane wet, but neglected to tell me until the completion of a 3-hour flight wherein I topped off the tanks...:banghead:

Dude! There is a VERY large sign on the wall!!

 

[Holocene]

Dude! There is a VERY large sign on the wall!!

NOW there is...

 

[Holocene]

Don't know if this is true, but I heard a story about a school forcing their primary students to participate in "taxi practice" on < VFR days. Imagine paying for the airplane and never leaving the ground!

 

[Maurus]

I guess there arent too many tricks out there that don't effect customer support.

One trick we had found to help save money on maint. is to get an Aerometer STC for our aircraft. When the aircraft gets above 23 knots it will start a hobbs meter and that hobbs meter will be used for maintenence only. A normal 100 hour on the tach could turn into a 110 hours on the tach as a result.

Yes it is an STC and is legal.

 

[Goonie]

Be willing to invest in instructor currency. The price of paying for an instructor's IPC is worth it, compared to having them cancel ten flights because the field is IFR and they aren't instrument current.

I agree with all of these except this one. It is the instructors responsibility to keep current. If flights start getting canceled then its gonna hurt the instructor more than the school.

We have a flight sim that we let instructors use for free.

 

[jrh]

I agree with all of these except this one. It is the instructors responsibility to keep current. If flights start getting canceled then its gonna hurt the instructor more than the school.

How can it *not* hurt the flight school? A canceled flight is a canceled flight. Lost revenue no matter how you cut it.

Not to mention the customer service end of everything. One is that if I were a customer doing instrument training and my flight got canceled because my CFII wasn't current to fly in actual, I'd be upset. Or, on the other hand, if my instructor "demo'd" an approach or landing every now and then because he had no other way of staying current, I'd be upset that he's staying current on my dime. And it really doesn't even have to do with money at that point, it's more the principle that I'm not the focus of the training any more.

We have a flight sim that we let instructors use for free.

So you *are* providing instructor currency, you're just doing it cheaper than using an actual aircraft. Kudos to you


Also, to clarify, I'm not talking about spending massive amounts of time training to ATP standards. I'm talking about allowing the instructors to do three takeoffs and landings at night every 90 days and one IPC every six months. That should take about 2 hours of aircraft time. We're talking about $200 every six months...I consider it a cost of doing business.

And the final point I should add, I consider this as part of the deal with professional flying. You don't see corporate, charter, or airline pilots paying for any of their recurrent training. I don't think flight instructors should be treated any different.

Not saying you're wrong, these are just the reasons I think the way I do.

 

[Goonie]

How can it *not* hurt the flight school? A canceled flight is a canceled flight. Lost revenue no matter how you cut it.

Not to mention the customer service end of everything. One is that if I were a customer doing instrument training and my flight got canceled because my CFII wasn't current to fly in actual, I'd be upset. Or, on the other hand, if my instructor "demo'd" an approach or landing every now and then because he had no other way of staying current, I'd be upset that he's staying current on my dime. And it really doesn't even have to do with money at that point, it's more the principle that I'm not the focus of the training any more.



So you *are* providing instructor currency, you're just doing it cheaper than using an actual aircraft. Kudos to you


Also, to clarify, I'm not talking about spending massive amounts of time training to ATP standards. I'm talking about allowing the instructors to do three takeoffs and landings at night every 90 days and one IPC every six months. That should take about 2 hours of aircraft time. We're talking about $200 every six months...I consider it a cost of doing business.

And the final point I should add, I consider this as part of the deal with professional flying. You don't see corporate, charter, or airline pilots paying for any of their recurrent training. I don't think flight instructors should be treated any different.

Not saying you're wrong, these are just the reasons I think the way I do.

I hear what you're saying and agree with you. I guess my whole problem with your scenerio is if an instructor lets it get to a point where he must cancel flights then he is not doing his job. He should know when he is about be out of currency and not let it get to the point where he is not servicing the customer.

The flight school paying for it is debatable and I would be fine with both outcomes.