The Interview

Flight schools are judged based on how much money they make and how many students they churn out. If you operate a school and don’t bring in the pesos and poop out the pilots, you will never succeed.

The debate has been going on for some time between those who want to make aviation education a calling and the people who want to make it a cash cow and a pipeline that can provide the very best in minimally qualified yankers and bankers to the airlines.

These schools tout the number of students getting hired by the majors, or worse, sell their program to customers by promising a job interview with one low-grade air carrier or another.

Students are trained and tested to the FAA’s minimum standards, then foisted on an unsuspecting public that equates a pilot’s license earned with a 70% on their written exam with perfection. 

Smaller, mom-and-pop Part 61 flight schools don’t have the same efficiency, funding, or hype of getting their students an interview at “Whiz-Bang-Air,” but they follow many of the same steps for student recruitment and retention.

Ah, retention, that bugaboo that no self-respecting flight training shop wants to talk about. Studies have shown that roughly 80% of people who start flight training in the United States drop out before getting a rating.

Can you imagine a more flawed business model than one that loses eight out of every ten customers? Self-appointed aviation experts, internet posting tongue-wagglers, and industry “experts” constantly cite rising costs, scheduling problems, and other hazards to prospective pilots getting to their first checkride. Still, I agree with my friend Jim, a successful CFI who says they have it all wrong.

“Everything works just fine if you pick the right students,” he told me.

He had invited me over to his one-room, one-Cessna 172 flight school nestled at a rural airport with a five-thousand-foot runway, a GPS approach, and self-service fuel. 

“I have been involved in flight training for a half century, going from a dewy-eyed 19-year-old CFI with a dream and no instrument rating to a gnarled, bushy-eyebrowed airline pilot examiner,” he said.  “The model for flight schools has not changed at all during that time.

“The way that all general aviation flight schools pre-qualify their students is this: If somebody walks in with a dollar and is willing to spend it on flying lessons, they are in. Once a student is signed up, the process becomes one of pairing them with a CFI, trying to get them to schedule and pay the moola necessary to keep the flight school’s herd of trainers airworthy.”

I thought I could see where he was going with this, but I, for once, stayed silent and let him go on—he was clearly on a roll here.

“This kind of skullduggery has been going on since the Wright Brothers gave their first one-dollar introductory flight,” he said. “After I left my last airline, I decided to try another way. What if a flight school stopped all of the highly advertised tap dancing trying to sell themselves to disinterested and flaky students and started requiring the students to sell themselves to the flight school?”

“I think I see what you mean,” I said. “The military goes through a lot of trouble to vet and pre-qualify their pilot candidates, and their dropout rates run an average of 10%, not 80.”

Jim nodded. “Yeah, and their students never cancel a flying lesson because they have a hot date or a lack of money.

“Here is how this works, and it has been successful for me. When people ask me about becoming a student, I offer to meet with them at a local coffee shop. We get to know each other, and I say I’ll get back to them soon. After I do a little checking up on them, I let them know if they are in. I probably accept one out of every three or four students I interview.

“I want to know a few things about them beyond the fact that they say flying is cool,” he continued. “Why do they want to fly? Are they willing to stick with a plan and commit to the program? What are the names of three people I can call to confirm that they do what they say and will continue to show up?

“If they balk at this kind of thing, I tell them I get where they are coming from, but they must understand that I am not running an average pilot mill. I am turning out the best qualified and best-trained pilots in the world. If they want a below-average education with minimal skills, they can go anywhere else that trades mediocrity for money.”

I was intrigued. “OK, what kind of qualities are you looking for in a pilot candidate for your one-plane school, and how much money do you make?

“I’m glad you asked that,” he said. “Here is a short list.”

• If they mention mommy or daddy paying for it all, they are out.
• If they begin answering the question about why they want to fly with how much money they think they are going to make, they are out.
• If they have no idea or no answer to the why fly question they are out.
• They are in if they can’t remember a time when they didn’t want to fly. 
• If they say they will block out the necessary time and are OK with my three-strikes-you’re-out policy on no-showing lessons or failing stage checkrides, they are in.
• If they swallow hard at my fees but then give me a firm look and commit to paying the costs they are in.

“As to money,” Jim concluded, “I only teach private pilot students and charge $10,000 for my fee along with reasonably low aircraft charges. I can comfortably teach ten to twelve students a year and don’t waste my time waiting for students who don’t show up, have mommy issues, or quibble over costs.”

I had to say the numbers didn’t add up. He stopped me before I spoke by saying, “I can scrape by with a hundred grand a year in pay and the aviation world benefits from my small efforts by gaining ten or twelve motivated, highly trained, committed pilots.”

“Also,” he concluded as his first student of the day showed up—on time—”I have a 0% dropout rate. Let the license mills and so-called aviation experts suck on that.”