Challenges of Running an Aviation School Business?
- Thread starter ritch11
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Cause of the low margins?
RussR
En-Route
https://www.amazon.com/Savvy-Flight...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0J6CAD7RWA4RCDWC6FSW
This is an excellent book that contains many types of marketing ideas and actual interviews with flight school owners about how those ideas worked.
This is an excellent book that contains many types of marketing ideas and actual interviews with flight school owners about how those ideas worked.
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
Insurance costs
Maintenance costs
Effects of weather on revenue
Just to name a few.
You're competing with video games - why should I sweat thru my shirt and clothing while bouncing around shoulder to shoulder in a traffic pattern in a crappy beat up 152 when I can sit comfortably at home in my boxers flying an F-18 onto a carrier deck in my living room ?
Maintenance costs
Effects of weather on revenue
Just to name a few.
You're competing with video games - why should I sweat thru my shirt and clothing while bouncing around shoulder to shoulder in a traffic pattern in a crappy beat up 152 when I can sit comfortably at home in my boxers flying an F-18 onto a carrier deck in my living room ?
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
labbadabba
Pattern Altitude
While I like the book, many of the strategies are pretty dated. Lots of paper adverts and yellow pages.
That said, his service-oriented model for students would still be effective.
JOhnH
Touchdown! Greaser!
When my wife was looking for a CFI for her PPL, she finally selected the only one that returned her calls. He met with her and gave her an honest description of flight lessons, cost and the time and dedication required. He wasn't shy about discussing the impact of age on the learning curve (she was 54 at the time) but also the advantage of maturity in the cockpit. Once she met him, she stopped looking for anybody else.
When we were looking for a CFII to do transition training to the Bonanza and for IFR ratings, we went with a recommendation from the Bonanza Society and were glad we did.
JOhnH
Touchdown! Greaser!
One good start is to keep posting and contributing here, and if you earn a good reputation, you may find some prospective students calling you.
If you are a good CFI, and offer advice here without a sales pitch, you will earn that reputation. But realize that if you offer anything but good solid advice, you will definitely be called out on that.
RussR
En-Route
The first edition came out what, 20 years ago (?) and is quite dated regarding advertising however the customer-service advice is still good. He came out with a second edition last year (that link is to the second edition) where he includes all the updates you'd expect - web pages, social media, etc.
I now own both editions, and they offer really great advice for most of what the OP is asking about - how to attract and retain students, marketing, keeping people coming back after they pass their checkrides, etc.
I have directly applied many of the principles he discusses in my freelance, part-time CFI work and now have more requests for instruction than I have time for.
labbadabba
Pattern Altitude
Nice! I wasn't aware of a 2nd edition, I'll have to take a look.
AggieMike88
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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
Once you get a student (aka, a customer) in your system, always market to them additional opportunities to expand their knowledge and them spending money with you. AKA, create brand loyalty.
US Aviation at Denton, TX is where I got my PPL. Great facility, aircraft, instructor. But absolutely no interest in keeping me spending my aviation dollars with them. They are very wrapped up with their contracts to train overseas pilots (mainly from China) in their Part 141 professional pilot program and exhibit no interest in training local domestic students as Part 61. They are right here on my home field and it would be great to use them for CP and CFI. And we have a large local pilot population who would also seek out a "within 15 mile" solution for advanced training. But he doesn't want us. And he doesn't want Part 61 folks like me to return and spend money with him.
So a successful school owner needs to market to his existing customer base and encourage them to return. Hosting the free WINGS seminars, sending out mailers, offering deals on block rental rates, etc. The existing student already knows and appreciates your brand. So you should do what's necessary to keep him informed of what more you offer and the high value of staying with you versus a competitor.
US Aviation at Denton, TX is where I got my PPL. Great facility, aircraft, instructor. But absolutely no interest in keeping me spending my aviation dollars with them. They are very wrapped up with their contracts to train overseas pilots (mainly from China) in their Part 141 professional pilot program and exhibit no interest in training local domestic students as Part 61. They are right here on my home field and it would be great to use them for CP and CFI. And we have a large local pilot population who would also seek out a "within 15 mile" solution for advanced training. But he doesn't want us. And he doesn't want Part 61 folks like me to return and spend money with him.
So a successful school owner needs to market to his existing customer base and encourage them to return. Hosting the free WINGS seminars, sending out mailers, offering deals on block rental rates, etc. The existing student already knows and appreciates your brand. So you should do what's necessary to keep him informed of what more you offer and the high value of staying with you versus a competitor.
George Mohr
Line Up and Wait
Yeah, I have no experience running a school, but being an A&P/IA must be a really big advantage.
jesse
Touchdown! Greaser!
For me? Mostly political. Airport politics don't make it easy to operate.
At the end of the day it's a business that takes in a LOT of money and spends a LOT of money with very little margin to work with. Monthly costs add up per airplane quite a bit when you start talking about $4,000 insurance policies on a 172. Sometimes you'll have a huge pile of money in the business account and you need to avoid to the tempetation to spend that on upgrades...There will always be a $5,000 problem that you need to deal with. The problems always come in sets. Have X problem on Y airplane? Well that sucks, but what sucks more, is that you're probably about to have that same problem on every airplane in your fleet.
The main thing..you've got to keep the things flying...do that and you'll stay alive...if you have a rental plane flying less than 400 hours a year..you've got a problem.
At the end of the day it's a business that takes in a LOT of money and spends a LOT of money with very little margin to work with. Monthly costs add up per airplane quite a bit when you start talking about $4,000 insurance policies on a 172. Sometimes you'll have a huge pile of money in the business account and you need to avoid to the tempetation to spend that on upgrades...There will always be a $5,000 problem that you need to deal with. The problems always come in sets. Have X problem on Y airplane? Well that sucks, but what sucks more, is that you're probably about to have that same problem on every airplane in your fleet.
The main thing..you've got to keep the things flying...do that and you'll stay alive...if you have a rental plane flying less than 400 hours a year..you've got a problem.
MichiPilot
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MichiPilot
The biggest challenge? Making money!
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
Second biggest challenge....financing.
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
Remember the old axiom and be sure to start with 2 million dollars !
Social media, word of mouth and once you have part 141 approval training contracts.
To some extent, being a CFI is a distraction from running a flight school. The temptation is too big to sit in the plane yourself with students when you should be out drumming up business working on your part 141 application or making sure you get the best deal on spare parts.
After staff, maintenance, aircraft leases, hangar lease, and gross receipts taxes to the airport, the margin for the actual school itself is pretty slim. The good thing is that CFIs are sort of transient and usually paid on a per hour taught basis. Leaseback planes can usually be found and the airport will give you tiedown space as long as you make them money (fuel flowage, user fees). This allows flight schools with a good marketer to grow rapidly. What many owners seem to forget among all the growth is that they still want to make money. If you lose money or barely break even, you are not going to 'make it up on volume'.
If flight schools were a good business, banks would loan you money to buy one.
Based on my experiences as a SP student, getting students is less of a problem than getting (and keeping!) CFIs. The airlines are hungry for pilots and luring CFIs away from the flight schools. I'm on number 4.
If the flight schools paid a salary with benefits, they would have no problem retaining qualified instructors beyond the first regional offer. They don't do that because the margins dont allow them to do so. It all comes down to money.
Yep.
If the schools paid that, they'd have to charge so much they'd have very few students. Thus would begin a downward spiral.
To make it all work, the schools would have to have other revenue streams with better margins. Aircraft sales and rentals, retail sales, etc. Organizing trips to interesting places, doing photography, drone training, a pilot's lounge with topless waitresses, whatever else they can think of.
Many flight schools do exactly what you're referring to (except the topless waitresses part). Maybe not so much aircraft sales but they'll sell gas, do maintenance, aerial photography, flight training, charter flights, etc. That's life for an FBO operator at the typical small town airport. It often seems to me that the flight training part of the business is pretty much a break even proposition but if you can keep the airplanes flying and have access to cheap gas and maintenance it can work.
Personally, I think the guys down south where the weather is better for more of the year have things a bit easier than those of us up north. Between thunderstorms, snow, icing, wind, etc. there are a fair amount of days where the airplanes never fly. It sometimes makes it hard to get past the point where the airplanes are flying enough that they're actually making money.
Does part 141 schools focus on getting new students locally as well? Or is it more profitable getting new students through contracts fro foreign countries?
Also why so many flight schools do aircraft sales? Is it because they're going out of business or that they're upgrading their gear?
Sorry if these questions sound silly.
James331
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James331
Depends on the population of the town and how much "security" BS is at the airport, a non towered filed with a decent chunk of people living around, should be able to make a website and do some free marketing and SEO and be plenty busy.
Just keep a handle on what's really needed, I've noticed people spending money where they don't have to.
Just keep a handle on what's really needed, I've noticed people spending money where they don't have to.
Some local students may elect to go through the part 141 training. There are some benefits, e.g. you can start instrument training earlier.
You mean that they sell trainer aircraft ? Some just buy and sell when they have a good opportunity or they need to scale up and down as student numbers and contracts change.
There used to be Piper and Cessna flight schools. They trained pilots from scratch and then sold them the respective aircraft. Today, we have no concept of how big of a business GA was at some point. Piper dealers would buy their planes through a regional wholesaler, not even directly from the factory. It wasn't like today where every aircraft is a custom order and you get a build date. When you had your private ticket, you just had to decide whether your 182 would be puke green with purulent yellow or orange and brown. The flight school or the regional distributor would have one in stock, just sign here.
What are the most profitable areas of an FBO and how flight training stack against them?
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
I remember reading an old brochure that stated when you buy your Cessna we will pay for your private license.... I think it was from 1971.
RussR
En-Route
@ritch11 , maybe you could let us know why you're asking these questions and maybe we can give more direct answers. Are you thinking about opening an FBO? Are you already running one? Just curious? Looking to help someone else who's in the business? Your questions are so general that it almost seems like you're trying to get material for a college term paper (which is usually fine, but if that's the case just come out and say it).
I do digital marketing services, so occasionally I look into different niches to see what's going on in there. Since I wanted to become I pilot myself back when I was in high school and I knew the costs, naturally I presumed that a student(to a flight school) is really valuable. However, when I looked over a bunch of industry websites, it didn't seem that way.
Most of the sites were old, the navigation was terrible, they had no analytics etc. Not to even mention marketing related stuff. That got me curious.
Why aren't they doing anything about it? Is it that they don't care? Many schools are owned by elder people, perhaps they're not aware? Or is it that getting more students isn't something that they're generally interested in? Of course, I could've messaged 3000 business owners with a spammy email. But there's a better use for their and my time. Why offer someone help if he doesn't need it. The bottom line was - what's their struggle and could I even help them?
If you want old peoples opinions, you have come to the right place. Lots of opinions, and you'll get all of them.
Yes most flight schools suck when it comes to digital marketing services. Those who dont suck are owned by IT professionals who run them as a hobby.
Yes most flight schools suck when it comes to digital marketing services. Those who dont suck are owned by IT professionals who run them as a hobby.
I didn't mean "elder people" in an offensive way. Just that in digital space things change left and right, so for someone who isn't regularly paying attention to it all, it can seem unnecessary to dive into.
About owners being IT professionals, I don't think I can agree with that. You don't have to be an IT professional to do digital marketing as most businesses outsource that. Look at Wayman aviation, they have a strategically built website to lure more students in, plus they're ranking in top of google for bunch of keywords such as flight school in Miami, aviation school in miami etc. and I know for sure that they've used an outside agency.
I was just wondering why there's so many flight schools that don't do this.
Most of the small FBOs and flight schools that are established and profitable are run by an older generation. Many don't seem to care about online presence because the business comes whether they have a website or not. This is still very much an industry that relies on word of mouth, paper advertising (think trade-a-plane), and telephone calls. I can't tell you how many times I've been told to "call this number and speak with somebody" but when you search online you can barely tell if there is even a business that is still there.
Unlike other businesses, flight schools often get local students because they want to learn to fly and the school is the only one around. It's not because they have a great website or great instructors and nice planes to fly. Attracting accelerated students from elsewhere can be a little more challenging but after the first few come through more will come based on word of mouth if everyone was happy with their training.
It was a dig on the the mentally old people who frequent this forum. Some of them are 35 but have a the 'get off my lawn' attitude of someone twice their age.
No, it has been my observation that the schools that have a good web presence are in fact owned by IT and advertising professionals who do the flight school thing for reasons not related to making money.
He is also around for a while. Probably pays quite a bit to get those rankings.
Did I mention low margins ?
It costs money. Pilots are cheap (you should see the discussions here where pilots justify not giving the kid who fuels their plane a tip).
Harold Rutila
Pre-takeoff checklist
Wasn't there a school in California featured in AOPA Flight Training that only had salaried flight instructors? Anyone remember which one it was?
There is definitely a lot of room for innovation in the flight training industry. A lot of schools have not taken advantage of simulators. Most do not use any real data when presenting their program(s) to prospective customers. Too many still rely on the old "2-hour block" model. A high number of them have outrageous financing costs for their aircraft. Other issues include overly restrictive weather minimums, hyperactive oversight of CFIs, and horrible process optimization.
Total cost estimates for training a new private pilot are all over the place, usually fictional, and could be improved by tracking real data from real customers and presenting it in an understandable form to new customers. Average time-to-completion for students should also be presented in this way, as should first-time checkride pass rates of the individual CFIs and the school itself. Schools are often too afraid of the presence of outliers in their real data, when in reality the median costs expended, median time-to-completion, and median pass rates would likely reflect rather favorably on the company.
Many schools and CFIs are too afraid to recommend with precision a good ground school program with which they are familiar for fear of making the customer think they are earning a commission on the sale of X product. In this day and age, that's actually an acceptable thing to do: Recommend products with which you are familiar and that you know get real results. I have been to countless flight schools and heard the "You can use whatever ground school program you like" speech and discreetly roll my eyes as I'm pouring a cup of coffee on the other side of the room.
All of these things contribute to ambiguity with new customers. If you can establish their expectations for flight training up-front, you eliminate 99% of the problems students complain about on this forum about this industry. The simple fact is most flight schools are terrible at establishing expectations.
Like any other business, it's important for flight school managers to ask their front-line CFIs about potential areas for improvement -- on the clock, of course. No CFI who is just trying to get to the next rung on the ladder is going to freely volunteer this information for a number of different reasons, the first of which has to do with maintaining their appearance of being a non-complainer.
There is definitely a lot of room for innovation in the flight training industry. A lot of schools have not taken advantage of simulators. Most do not use any real data when presenting their program(s) to prospective customers. Too many still rely on the old "2-hour block" model. A high number of them have outrageous financing costs for their aircraft. Other issues include overly restrictive weather minimums, hyperactive oversight of CFIs, and horrible process optimization.
Total cost estimates for training a new private pilot are all over the place, usually fictional, and could be improved by tracking real data from real customers and presenting it in an understandable form to new customers. Average time-to-completion for students should also be presented in this way, as should first-time checkride pass rates of the individual CFIs and the school itself. Schools are often too afraid of the presence of outliers in their real data, when in reality the median costs expended, median time-to-completion, and median pass rates would likely reflect rather favorably on the company.
Many schools and CFIs are too afraid to recommend with precision a good ground school program with which they are familiar for fear of making the customer think they are earning a commission on the sale of X product. In this day and age, that's actually an acceptable thing to do: Recommend products with which you are familiar and that you know get real results. I have been to countless flight schools and heard the "You can use whatever ground school program you like" speech and discreetly roll my eyes as I'm pouring a cup of coffee on the other side of the room.
All of these things contribute to ambiguity with new customers. If you can establish their expectations for flight training up-front, you eliminate 99% of the problems students complain about on this forum about this industry. The simple fact is most flight schools are terrible at establishing expectations.
Like any other business, it's important for flight school managers to ask their front-line CFIs about potential areas for improvement -- on the clock, of course. No CFI who is just trying to get to the next rung on the ladder is going to freely volunteer this information for a number of different reasons, the first of which has to do with maintaining their appearance of being a non-complainer.
paflyer
Final Approach
Most flight schools are run by horribly inept "businessmen" that know squat about concepts like marketing, and especially, customer service.
Jonathan Osorio
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Jonathan1Osorio
Student pilots are very valuable for flight schools however flight schools depend heavily on referrals. And it was a trend in the 80s and 90s but with the internet, things have changed. Before prospect pilots were obligated to visit a flight school to learn more about how to become a pilot. The information was limited and flight schools were the gatekeepers of the information. Today, prospect pilots don't need to leave their homes to learn more about how to become a pilot. They educate themselves with the ins/outs, create a list of the best flight school options out there and finally start calling them.
The problem is that flight school has not understood how their student (customer) has changed and the schools that are actively working to create content to help prospect students are the ones that will generate more demand for their flight training.
Jonathan Osorio
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Jonathan1Osorio
Yes Ritch11, I'm the owner of the agency behind Wayman Aviation. We helped them to generate demand for student pilots. I've got a case study you could find in our company website explaining how we accomplished all that. You can Google our business OnFocux.com or the case study "Flight School Marketing Case Study - Wayman Flight Training"
Crashnburn
Pattern Altitude
Sounds like Attitude Aviation in Livermore, CA.