Flying school - where art thou?

OK, so I thought this was going to be easy! Turn up at a large General Aviation (GA) aerodrome, knock on a few doors, ask a few questions, and sign on the dotted line to spend in excess of $10,000 with someone for a few weeks work.

Oh how wrong was I!

'Customer Service' and 'flying schools' are two terms that should not necessarily be used in the same sentence. The whole proposition of someone (a customer no less) actually coming to you, unprompted, with no spend on advertising, wanting to part with money in their pocket, seems to have missed 9/10 flying schools.

Most businesses would throw out the welcome mat, embrace you as a long lost son/daughter, and sit you down to talk over the finer points of how they are going to extract the money from you in return for their teaching.

But not flying schools in the Sydney basin. Why is this so? I ask the Internet the rhetorical question - and should someone read this, I would value your input and opinion.

I visited five schools this time and only one was in a position to help me when I came through the door. Others seemed to be run on such a shoe string that the only people hanging around were students awaiting their instructor - bodes well for someone undertaking their instructor rating [note to self, get business cards printed ASAP]

So my quest will continue next weekend. For the time being a little more searching on the Internet and a few phone calls may help bring about a more satisfactory result. In the meantime I'm off to put together the business plan for owning and operating my own school - one that recognises the customer.... and at the least can greet a perspective customer.

Cheers.

Welcome to the first post... Let's get started

I'm currently undertaking my Instructor's Rating here in Sydney, and thought others may benefit from my experiences, and together we can learn a little.

So far I have over 500 hours of total flying time, a Commercial License, Instrument Rating and endorsements in the Islander and Navajo Chieftain.

Got my first license back in 1994 from Hunter Air in sunny Cessnock before continuing at Bankstown with Whitworth Aviation. Along the way I've picked up a tailwheel endorsement (Curtis Aviation at Camden) and done some glider towing out at Bathurst, flying the trust Piper Pawnee. That's a post by itself.

Anyway, the current process is looking for a suitable school that will take me on part-time... proving to be harder than I anticipated. I'll visit Bankstown this weekend and see what I can throw up!

Ok, back to the research and planning the next post.



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