Gregory N. Brown - The Savvy Flight Instructor: Secrets of the Successful CFI

The engine is the heart of an aeroplane,
but the pilot is its soul.

Sir Walter Raleigh
The War in the Air, 1922

The Savvy Flight Instructor, Second Edition
by Gregory N. Brown

Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc.
7005 132nd Place SE
Newcastle, Washington 98059-3153
www.asa2fly.com

2015 Gregory N. Brown
All rights reserved. This book, or any portions thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.

Published 2015 by Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc.
(First Edition 1997 ASA, Inc.)

ASA-SFI-2-EB
ISBN 978-1-61954-301-0

Cover photo 2015 Gregory N. Brown, Clouds Kiss the Earth, near Albuquerque, NM. Available as a fine art print via the authors website, GregBrownFlyingCarpet.com.

Interior photo credits and acknowledgments: The author and the publisher wish to thank Dianne Johnson, Matt Rhoades, Julia Hoylman, Travis Lawson, Mark Harris, DeAndre Jamison, Suzanne Golub, Amber Phillips, Shawn Richens, Camille DeJorna, Victoria Coleman, Jim Pitman, Yogini Modi, Gianni Jacuzzi, Tyler Allen, Sergio and Max Schaar, and Nicole and Alex Chambers for contributing and/or consenting to appear in photographs. All photography is by the author ( 2015 Gregory N. Brown) unless otherwise noted, as follows: Page xvii, Hunter Horvath; p.7, 29, 248, Amber Phillips; p.13, courtesy of Western Michigan University; p.14, iStock.com/kasto80; p.40, Jay Cordero; p.61, Fred Gibbs; p.74, production photo courtesy of Gloria Winters via Airport Journals; p.102, (top) Julia Hoylman, (bottom) Maribel Russo; p.112, Matt Rhoades; p.200, Daryl Dawkins; pp.219, 367, Greg Robbins; p.252, Manny Escobar; p.254, Keith Wigan; p.259, Ingrid Karolewski; p.289, (left) Emma Carter, (right) Camille DeJorna; p.293, photo courtesy of Shadi Wadi-Ramahi; p.297, photo used with permission of Nicole Chambers; p.375, photo by Jean Brown.

Historical aviation illustrations 1996 Zedcor, Inc., used with permission.

Preface

to the Second Edition

The regulations and the Aeronautical Information Manual rest battle-worn on your shelf, and youve finally wrapped up one of the toughest orals of your flying career. Youre sharp on the fundamentals of instruction, and can identify every student personality type. You can now fly and talk at the same time, all from the right seat. You can write lesson plans in your sleep, enter mysterious endorsements in student logbooks, and actually explain the finer points of a lazy eight. Thats everything youll ever need to know in order to flight instructno more questions, right? Just get on with the instructing, and finally you can get paid to fly.

Yeah, right! Like being all dressed up with no place to go, as the saying goes. This book is designed to help with all those other flight instructing questions, like why and how to become a CFI in the first place, and how to get your first instructing job. Where do flight students come from? And once youve got them, how do you keep them flying? How can you optimize your students pass rate on checkrides? And how do you get flight customers to come back to you for their advanced ratings?

Along with tips on how to attract and retain flight students, well examine professionalism in flight instructing. In short, how to use your instructing activities to increase student satisfaction, promote general aviation, and advance your personal flying career all at the same time.

Among the challenges of writing a book about flight instructing is the tremendous diversity of our profession and businesses. Practitioners of our art range from freelance flight instructors to small flight schools, to university degree programs and large private flight academies. Specialties run the gamut from primary flight training of pleasure fliers, to airline instructors and everything in between: tailwheel endorsements, glider and seaplane ratings, aerobatics, and type ratings. Ours is a vocation and an industry where the exception truly is the rule.

Yet over the years Ive learned that despite widely differing management requirements between providers, the marketing, customer service, and delivery of training on the flight line where the boots hit the ground must by nature remain remarkably similar.

Therefore, while occasional parts of this book may be outside the direct activities of any one reader, instructors of all flight-training backgrounds should find value in every chapter when it comes to professionalism, customer satisfaction, and business success by applying its central themes, methods, and philosophy.

Whats New in this Second Edition

New in this edition are nearly 20 years of additional wisdom, experience, and know-how. While this edition retains the key marketing, pilot training, and customer support concepts that made the original edition required CFI reading, those areas have been refined and expanded to incorporate the latest industry philosophies and techniques. The intro-flight chapter, for example, has been extensively updated to include the latest guidance on how best to sell todays prospects on flying.

The single biggest development since writing the first edition is the advent of online marketing and social media, the effective use of which is thoroughly detailed throughout this book. Sure, our flight training sales messages and customer service objectives have evolved, but not nearly as much as the technology for delivering them. Our greatest current marketing challenge is to offer our services with the sophistication of other competitive activities beckoning from just a click away on our customers computers and mobile devices.

In this edition there is a new dedicated section addressing aspiring flight instructors, including why and how to qualify, and how to get hired once you earn the certificate. Theres extensive new coverage of techniques for systematizing customer success and satisfaction policies, strategies for pricing and structuring flight training to fit todays market, integration of affordable simulation technologies into your training programs, and tips for coping with the CFI shortage.

For those wanting to delve deeper, Ive called upon five highly qualified contributors to share their specific expertise as Finer Points in this new edition. Learn how todays flight training innovators promote their services and serve their customers in Heather Baldwins case-studies chapter. For guidelines on crafting effective customer service policies, learn how flight school owner and marketing guru Dorothy Schick puts customers first. Longtime DPE Jason Blair shares insights on checkrides and CFI specialization opportunities. Ever wonder how the big academy and collegiate pro-pilot programs operate so efficiently, and what can be learned from them? Then dont miss Ben Eichelbergers flight training standardization chapter. And no one is better qualified to project future flight training trends than renowned aviation writer and editor Ian Twombly .

There is also a new place online to continue exploring many of the materials referred to in the new edition: The ASA website has a special page dedicated to Reader Resources for this book. These will be indicated throughout by the following symbol:

Reader Resources asa2fly.com/reader/sfi

Go to the corresponding web address to find additional reading, helpful articles and further examples of the social media tips, flight instructing stories and teaching aids discussed herethere is even a bonus article called Gregs Pilot Training Tips that you can download from that webpage.