Genoa Labs’ Maverick flight school compliance and recordkeeping app debuted in September, proposing to solve problems top of mind for flight school owners operating under Part 61.
While those flight training organizations that have secured Part 141 approval have structure and a number of potential templates to follow—including many that have been commercially developed—Part 61 schools must make their own way to a great extent. This can lead to issues with compliance tracking when compared against FAR requirements and Airman Certification Standards (ACS) metrics.
Genoa Labs founder Noah Lencki is one of those Part 61 flight school denizens—as chief instructor and an active MEI/CFII—so he knows the unique challenges they face. So Lencki dove into the development of the app as a personal mission.
“I developed Maverick, with the help of my brother, because of the lack of record-keeping, compliance, and flight school training software available to smaller flight schools at an affordable price, with many schools still using spreadsheets and paper logs,” said Lencki in a statement for AvBrief. “We’ve been using it at my own school, Celestial Kinetics Flight Academy in Waupaca, Wisconsin, for a few months now with great success, and I’m excited to bring it to flight schools and independent instructors nationwide.”
Maverick coalesces flight logs and student records all into one place, with the ability for instructors to have cross-visibility to each other’s clients. Student accounts allow them to see upcoming lessons, study materials, lesson debriefs, and utilize a personal minimums tool.
That connects with one truly unique attribute to the software: It ties real-time weather to the flight logs, showing both the average conditions—and most demanding ones—flown. This comes in handy, for example, when an instructor needs to fly with another CFI’s student, and can track what conditions the student has flown in before, objectively.
Endorsement, medical certificate, and test expiration tracking has been derived from the current AC 61-65K templates with instructor credentials auto-filled, providing alerts before 90-day solo endorsements, medicals, and knowledge-test windows expire.
Maverick also integrates a CRM tool to manage prospective students—another weak spot for a lot of schools, as many aspiring pilots have found. Response rates can be dismal when one person is wearing too many hats and can’t reply to prospects in a timely fashion. The software also assists management of school administrative reports and incorporates a safety reporting tool.
Plans are based on the school size and start at one airplane at $49/month, with each additional airplane priced as it’s added. An aircraft owned by the school owner is free and not counted.
