Billings Montana Flight Instruction

[teamcoltra]

My mom who works for a major airline just got transferred from Seattle to Billings Montana (which probably greatly narrows done which airline), and I was thinking a nice house warming gift would be to get her a discovery flight at a local school. However, I didn't find much and like many aviation related things the websites I did find did not provide much detail and were out of date.

Does anyone know a good school to do a discovery flight at?

 

[denverpilot]

Here's every phone number on the airport. Ain't going to be a ton of options in a small town.

 

[skidoo]

Ain't going to be a ton of options in a small town.

I find it interesting that perceptions of small and large can vary so much when this "small" town happens to be the largest city in the 4th largest state..

 

[LoneAspen]

Take this completely with a grain of salt, because I don't even have my PPL yet, nor have visited this place.

But...I've been doing some research on where I'd like to move to back in the Rockies in a year or so, and start training, and I ran across Summit Aviation in Bozeman:

Web site: http://www.flysummit.net
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SummitAviationInc

Their FB page really impressed me because it's one of the few flight school websites I've seen that actually keeps things up to date. I've seen far too many sites where the last update was months old.

Since Bozeman should only be a couple hours from Billings, perhaps Mom would be up for a (relatively) short drive over there for a discovery flight. Although driving to Bozeman might be impractical if she were to actually start lessons, it might make for a good discovery flight to see if she wants to continue, and they might be able to give an opinion on schools and instructors more local to Billings.

Anyway, thought I'd toss out Summit because they impressed me so much as I've been doing my research.

Good luck!

 

[denverpilot]

I find it interesting that perceptions of small and large can vary so much when this "small" town happens to be the largest city in the 4th largest state..

There's 3 million people living within an hour's drive of me and I consider it very overpopulated. No offense but Billings has just over 100,000, right?

 

[skidoo]

There's 3 million people living within an hour's drive of me and I consider it very overpopulated. No offense but Billings has just over 100,000, right?

No offense taken. You are correct. And it is also the most populous city in the state. This means all other cities in the state are even smaller, just the way I like it!

I used to live in the Denver/Boulder area long ago and it was awesome, but I just don't do well with crowds...

My point was simply that large and small perceptions are all relative, as your point validates....

 

[N321SR]

You want to train at 6S8, Laurel airport just a few minutes down the freeway from billings. Much less expensive then BIL.

 

[timwinters]

Their FB page really impressed me because it's one of the few flight school websites I've seen that actually keeps things up to date. I've seen far too many sites where the last update was months old.

So your choice of a flight school was based on who had the coolest facebook page.

Ooooooookay. (in the voice of a 53 year-old who is definitely not of the Facebook generation)

I guess the 14 to 16 year-olds, who are leaving Facebook in droves, would eliminate this school from consideration because they're too old-fashioned and are still on Facebook.

Facebook is soooo yesterday!

 

[One Short]

No offense taken. You are correct. And it is also the most populous city in the state. This means all other cities in the state are even smaller, just the way I like it!

I used to live in the Denver/Boulder area long ago and it was awesome, but I just don't do well with crowds...

My point was simply that large and small perceptions are all relative, as your point validates....

I have put off going to shop in Billings for the last 8 months because I don't care for BIG town traffic.

And I second checking out Laurel for instruction. One of our POA members used to instruct there.

 

[F01LA]

Even though I consider Billings the "big city" of Montana, I'm not aware of any flight schools based at BIL (other than Rocky Mountain College's program). I'll put in a second for Laurel, less than 25 minutes from most of Billings. I got my private there at Northern Skies Aviation, and rented for awhile after that. It's a fairly quiet airport, but Billings is right there so you get good towered experience too.

Give them a call, I'm sure they'd be happy to do an introductory flight gift.

 

[LoneAspen]

So your choice of a flight school was based on who had the coolest facebook page.

LOL - not at all. In fact, I detest Facebook.

However...Whether it's Facebook, or their own web page, I would expect something like a flight school to have relevant, and UPDATED information out there so that prospective clients at least think they're up to date with their information.

Assuming they want their web presence to attract more students, and future business, as a prospective future student, a cobweb-covered outdated website makes me think they don't care. Well, if they don't care, why should I care enough about them to give them my business? If, however, they don't really care about a web presence attracting more business because maybe they get most of it via word of mouth, then take it down.

A place could be the best flight school in the world, but when I see a web presence with year-old information on it, it sure doesn't make a good initial impression to me.

Just my .02

 

[denverpilot]

Wouldn't be too concerned about that. Most older pilots aren't particularly computer savvy. Present company excepted.

But I've run into plenty that think they are.

"I just bought me a Mojo 8000 with quad-core zippadee-doo-dah processors and a gazillion gigachunks of ROM!"

"Yeah, what do you do with it?"

"Check my Gmail"