 It seems that over the last several years we have seen a lot of discussion about the decreasing number of pilots flying in the U.S. I am sure if you spend any time at your local FBO you have noticed this too. So what’s the big deal? Why are people not flocking to flight schools for lessons? What has happened to that desire to fly like the birds?
Well, it depends on who you ask -- and be ready for a good story. The answer to the question usually touches on the economy, fuel prices, flight schools, and flight instructors. For the sake of this writing let us focus on flight schools and instructors. Now, we at Simple Flightcertainly believe that there are a lot successful flight schools and passionate flight instructors out there doing a fantastic job. A lot, yes; but not all flight schools are successful and not all flight instructors are doing a fantastic job. How, then, does every flight school and CFI, nationwide,crack-in to this secret code of success. I am not sure it is even a secret. It seems like this day and age anyone who is not at the top of the game wants to believe the problem is caused by something beyond their control. It’s always someone else’s fault. What if, instead of blaming someone else, we all stepped back, took in a broader view, and tried to refocus on what is important and the tasks we can complete to reach not only our goals, but our customers goals? With student retention rate at an all-time low, our main focus should be the customer and providing them with the best value possible. I strongly feel that most of these issues are derived from within the source (flight school or instructor) itself and with a little guidance a complete shift of mentality could change flight training. If you see these issues in our industry as I do, you know the time to make a change is now!! I am sure everyone has heard of the KISS or keep it simple silly (we will use silly instead of stupid) theory. Let's apply that idea within the flight training industry. Here is a list is to suggest how flight schools and CFIs (myself included) can refocus what we are doing. Basically, I’ve tried to use the basics of Business 101 to focus on retaining the customer and keeping him/her motivated to enthusiastically believe there is value to the service we are providing. If you want to build pilots, here we go! CFI - Find the passion to help your students achieve their license in 40 hours not 80. Develop a syllabus personally for each student. It pays to keep them happy and flying or they may go buy that boat instead. What did that Fundamentals of Instructing book say? Oh, yes adjust to your students! FBO/Flight School Owner/Management - Be a level 5 leader, plan for the future, and find the right people to put on the bus. If your employees see your passion and involvement in the program less motivation and management is needed for morale. CFI - Learn to enjoy where you are right now and your clients will too! Yes we are all building time to move up the ladder, but don’t give that impression. FBO/Flight School Owner/Management- First impressions are important! The dog pee stain on the carpet in the lobby, or the interior of your Cessna 152 falling apart because no one has the initiative to take action is not very inviting to new clients walking through your door (yes we have seen it). CFI - Remember you also wear a sales hat. Help keep your work area (airplane & office) very inviting to customers. Hey, you never know the boss may notice too! FBO/Flight School/Management - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or at least a well thought out website with contact information can help prospective customers find you. Social Media has proven to be a huge marketing tool. Simple changes of business strategy and finding the passion to help others is really the key to a successful operation. Now I agree there will always be outside forces that affect the business weather, maintenance, fuel costs to name a few. Work those hiccups into the business model. Simulator or ground instruction on weather days is one example. Think outside of the box and bring in fresh ideas from everyone that is associated within the organization. As you can see the list above which is fairly basic could go on and on. Maybe we need a gigantic suggestion box that we all could drop a note in to. Would anyone read them? What would yours say? Travis Ammon Twitter: @tbammon
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 Do you remember the last time you finished writing something and something was over? I do. Like my last English final that was a 4 essay hand written final that stood between me and graduating college. How about signing a credit card reciept? At that point dinner is over and you are looking for those incredible after dinner mints that kinda melt in your mouth like powder. Well I had the pleasure of writing a sentimental airport in somebody's logbook for the last time before the airport is closed by the city. BOOOOO!!! Where is the Dislike button? Anyway, it was a lot of fun flying with well known aviation blogger Todd McClamroch creator and writer at MyFlightBlog.com. We had a mission to make one last trip around the pattern at the airport Todd learned to fly out of - The Blue Ash Airport (KISZ) in Cincinnati Ohio. It is always sad to see airports close, but this one is more especially hard to see go. Blue Ash is a faded flagship of great airports. Its a stick and rudder airport. Places like PWK and TEB are great airports but, they are flashy airports, fun places to hang out, but they have shinny jets and air conditioning. Blue Ash, was a little different. A type of aviation still exsisted here that you RARELY see any more. I call it stick and rudder aviation. Regular people, flying regular airplanes for the heck of it. Grease monkey's, war heroes, young aspiring aviators pumping gas to pay for flying lessons, all sitting around and enjoying the sights, faces, and sounds of a perfect little airport. The funny thing is, this airport had heavy turbine equipment sitting on the ramp. Blue Ash is settled on a bluff in a heavy hitter industrial park. Near by are tons of manufacturing businesses all the way from Ma & Pa places up to General Electric Aircraft Engine manufacturing plant. Its location is so valuable to aviation, business aviation that is as well as the private aviators that fly out of Blue Ash. General Aviation is broken. I have been trying to figure it out, and it is a lot of things. Blue Ash opened my eyes to another reason why. General Aviation currently is a luxury item. Municipalities see that too. General Aviation isn't being held to its highest and best use. It is a tool, a tool for the economy. The Airport Authorities have gotten lazy and not promoted the best asset of their airport to its highest and best use. Blue Ash will be a airport full of memories to be bulldozed for land development. Great, the property tax income for the new development wont do much. Maybe some slick looking buildings will stand tall in the shadows of the airport? :( The airport is a tool for the economy, its for the other businesses to grow their businesses using aviation. Its just sad to see that the current best and highest value for the Blue Ash airport is land development, when it really can be so much more. Is it kinda weird that I shed a tear while writing this knowing a great piece of aviation history is about to finish writing its story? (Once again, I am proving that I am a nerd, but an aviation one with a heart). Once Blue Ash is done writing, it'll be all over. RIP Blue Ash! If anybody else finds an airport where you can taxi like a zig zag through the woods, please let me know. Al 
Another nerdy moment shines in me with trying to find the perfect flying sound track. There are so many different moods you can be while flying. Flying situations have their own moods too. Things can be relaxing, beautiful, stressful, scary, happy, sad, intense and everything in between. When I am flying, I think of what I am doing as a movie. Movies have sound tracks in them. The sound track is just as important to the movie as what you are seeing visually. There is a constant exciting struggle for me finding the perfect song to match my flying mood. When they are meshed together, no doubt, you'll get goosebumps! It's so awesome. One of my favorite memories flying was flying from New England to the Mid Atlantic. The person I was flying with and I had been working on hitting our take off roll exactly to a moment in a song so that the engines were producing max power just as the song started to explode. The result was unbelievable. Getting jammed back into your seat by powerful engines, an awesome song really kicking it and taking off on our last leg of our trip was something else. Climbing out over New England as the sun was setting, doing a merry go round climb over some of the busiest airspace in the world and adding the fact Christmas was 2 days away was the perfect collaboration of how we felt about flying at that very moment. After the song was over, I looked over at my partner and said "Wow, that gave me goose bumps!!" I am doing a very horrible job using my words to explain this. There were so many things going in those few minutes that were absolutely perfect. It could take a life time to write about every little detail. All I am going to continue to say is that this will always be a forefront memory in my flying career. Think about your favorite songs right now and match them with some of your favorite flying memories. You'll find that there is something comforting about it. You're love of flying will increase dramatically and your desire for more will be off the charts. Below is the song that I had matched up with my flying counterpart that day. We nailed the timing with having the engines push us back into our seats for take-off just as the song goes to "JUST LIVE YOUR LIFE!!" around 30-32 seconds into the song. The song is called "Just Live Your Life" By TI. What songs do you think are awesome for flying? If you can't think of any, you are lying. See this other video below too. I feel that the music in this familar tune, grabbed the exact mood of the flight that was being flown in the movie. Let me know what your favorite songs are and I'll try and incorporate them into a flying video for you. Please comment below! Enjoy! Al We all are curious what it really looks like out of the front of the airplane. Be it a 747 or Cessna, the curiosity really strikes almost anybody and everybody. Lately I have been very interested in making videos of flying. I don't know what my facisination about it is but its fun, and I love sharing them. If you really look at it, being a professional pilot or even a recreational one at the very least, is pretty secluded. What I mean by that, is your family, friends, or significant others can't really come and visit you at the office while you are at work. The only information that they can get is from your stories of what things are like. Believe it or not, this breaks my heart. Being so passionate and so loving towards aviation, I would love to show my parents, sister, and friends what I do for a living. Unfortunately they are the ones that get the brunt of my quick departure and vanishing act for a few days. Upon arrival back from my duties, they get to experience a cranky and tired Al. Even though I am gone doing my work, having an aviation career really boils down to always trying to be somewhere where you are not. I love it though, and why not share my experiences with the people who helped me get where I am today? It has gotten easier than ever to share your experiences on the road. Its fun doing so, because its so easy. The single item that I believe has made it easier than ever is the cell phone. Now, I am an iPhone user. I love the camera on it, the quality is really up there. If you take a picture, the pictures are almost 2-3 MB. That's huge for a phone that came out in 2010 (iPhone 4). A lot of this can be done on the ipad but, the size makes it a little more difficult to get the shots you want and the camera isn't as good as the phone. Never the less, there are some great apps for the phone to enhance, take, edit and publish any pictures or video clips you may have taken. My favorite for videos is iMovie. Its just a few bucks in the app store. It allows you to combine and edit any video clips you may want to add. One of my favorite things about this is it allows you to add songs that are on your phone/ipod right to the movie. Two clicks and you have a professional looking video. The tricky part is the editing, a typical approach landing or takeoff can take 10 minutes. Non aviation people will get bored. You can edit all of your footage down, but try to keep video clips to 10 seconds or less. This will keep the video interesting for the viewer and they'll think its a lot cooler. Let's face it, 5 minutes of flying in the clouds with the camera just capturing a white mass and having Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody playing is boring. I'd rather be at the Queen concert than watch the video. If you have a Droid phone, the video quality is great but I am not sure on if there are any apps you can use to edit your videos or enhance your pictures. Finally the best feature about the cell phone is that you can publish your material to email, text message, facebook, or youtube right from your phone! No more transferring to your computer. Write a whimsical note, hit send, put it in your pocket and wait to get replies. Its great! One last thing. You can see a definite difference between my video on the right and this other video on the left. My goal is to be able to do something like the one on the left. I found that a big part of that is having some kind of tripod or stabilizer to mount your camera in the cockpit. I was easily able to go onto ebay and find a suction cup tripod and iphone adapter for the tripod. Total I spent about $50 on the two pieces. Right now, I am playing with them to see how it improves the video quality. Check out both of these videos, the best part is picking out the sound track. My King Air video is still in progress. I need more footage but its half way done. Cheers! Al |
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