If public schools had a drop-out rate of 70 to 80%, the outcry would be deafening. Yet that is what America’s flight schools overall face, and is a significant contributing factor to why the pilot population continues its downward trend, according to officials at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).
“The past 20-plus years have been filled with dozens of well-intentioned attempts to increase the pilot population by enticing more people to try flying,” said Craig Fuller, president and CEO. “Some have worked better than others, but none was the silver bullet people hoped to find. So AOPA, through the AOPA Foundation, is reopening and reframing the discussion of how to build the pilot population, focusing on helping existing student pilots succeed.”
AOPA has commissioned a research study to model the flight training process and identify the key factors that affect student retention. The study involves both quantitative and qualitative research, using surveys and focus groups with student pilots (including those who have quit training), certificated pilots, flight instructors, and flight school operators, to help identify why so many students give up on the dream.
AOPA will present the study’s findings to experts and stakeholders from throughout the flight training industry – from the FAA to course content developers to aircraft and simulator manufacturers to the people on the flight lines doing the actual training – at a daylong Flight Training Summit, presented by AOPA’s Flight Training magazine, at next month’s AOPA Aviation Summit in Long Beach, Calif. The Flight Training Summit is anticipated to be the first in a series of ongoing meetings and discussions with the industry to discuss what the findings mean and how to overcome the barriers that they identify.
The public, both in the exhibit hall and online, will get to hear the findings as well as initial results from the Flight Training Summit during the opening day keynote presentation at the AOPA Aviation Summit on Thursday, Nov. 11, at the Convention Center in Long Beach, Calif. (All three days’ keynotes will be streamed live beginning at 9 a.m. Pacific time/Noon Eastern time on AOPA Live.)
This new approach attempts to fix the badly leaking pipeline that refills the pool of pilots, AOPA officials said, noting it differs from previous efforts in a number of ways:
- The research will provide detailed, objective data, rather than relying on old assumptions to try to formulate new solutions.
- Instead of trying to entice new people to try flying, this effort focuses on keeping people engaged who have already proven their strong interest by starting training.
- It actively engages the broadest possible spectrum of GA stakeholders to gather information and ultimately to implement solutions.
- It focuses on what works. Solutions have to function in the real world – a world where weather can bring training to a halt and aircraft go down for maintenance.
The study and subsequent meetings are intended as a first step in a long-term process to develop a new flight training paradigm – one that can increase the chances of helping someone who has the aspiration to experience the freedom to fly become a pilot.
Meetings and discussions will continue beyond the AOPA Aviation Summit, into 2011 and perhaps beyond. All along the way, AOPA will share what is learned with the industry – especially the flight schools and instructors – with the goal of helping more student pilots navigate successfully to their pilot certificates.
“I am encouraged as we do the work necessary to develop well-researched and well-thought-out solutions,” concluded Fuller, “because we find people and organizations across the country that are dedicated to successfully growing the pilot population.”
For more information: AOPA.org
The above was paid for by the RNC.
Subject: The “demise” of aviation and flight instruction
I’ve long researched and documented the “decline” of aviation in America. More specifically flight training. Aviation’s “demise” is not a secret, nor has it ever been. In my view, AOPA has broached this issue as a “big mystery”, which it certainly is not! If those at AOPA don’t have the answers, shame on them for not paying attention (Nero fiddled while Rome burned, comes to mind!).
The “causative factors” have been well known for many years and the “source of the problem” of aviation’s decline has been well documented and understood by many in the aviation industry, particularly those who have engaged in the day to day operation of flight schools/flight instruction. I am both surprised and amazed that “at this late hour” AOPA has just now decided to “look in to the problem”! I find it absolutely incredulous that they didn’t have a “definitive answer” to this question, “formulated a solution”, raised the alarm and speedily placed it into practice, two decades ago, when the “second warning” of the “colossal collapse” of General Aviation and the flight training industry began with a vengeance!
I have attended ASF FIRC’s biannually since they began offering them and the question of “a dying industry” has long been discussed there, among the “most senior” of instructors and aviators in the business. The hosts (which are the best in the business) at these events have even placed emphasis on the fact that the “population of instructor attendees”, has clearly demonstrated that it is “a dramatically aging group”. The number of younger flight instructors now being confined to a small minority. Yes, older flight instructors, who posses the “bulk of aviation knowledge”, don’t instruct with the regularity they used to. However, it’s not because they don’t want to. Flight schools don’t hire older instructors with any regularity. Instead, they choose to hire younger ones they can influence more easily and pay less, with the expectation that they will stay longer. A handful of “older instructors” still instruct, as I do, in they’re own “aging” aircraft to a “specific audience”. That “audience” is small, specific and well motivated. It was long ago recognized that a huge “resource” of aviation knowledge is being lost with the “declining numbers” of these “aging” members of the aviation/flight instruction community.
The “bottom line”: The de-regulation of commercial aviation during the “Carter Era” and the inception “Death of General Aviation” taxes of the 1990’s, along with their “attendant hyper-inflation of aircraft prices and repair costs” (a new Cessna 172 now costs $300,000.00…still the most popular trainer, but who can afford to buy an aircraft of that cost and expect to stay in business). The “harsh regulations and taxes” of 1990’s by Democrats, has inextricably led to this “collapse” in the aviation industry and to flight training and aircraft ownership specifically! Until those devastating regulations can be reversed and the “other factors” they brought about, be permanently eliminated, aviation in this country will soon be only a “distant memory”!
I’ve conducted study after study on this subject and the conclusions are always the same! I liken it to the statement made by John McCain during the 2008 campaign, who’s opinion I did not share: “Those jobs have all gone to China and they’re not coming back!” That pretty much say’s it all! “Those jobs” he referred to, amount to 45 million of the “best paid” and “best benefited” jobs in America! I even totaled up the wages lost (in the trillions of dollars) and the state and federal taxes (in the trillions of dollars as well) to our nations economy and it’s both “staggering and debilitating” to even a robust economy! Those wages and taxes that would have been paid by those 45 million “lost jobs”, is why there is no aviation industry left in this country! Add to this the fact that Cessna has taken some of its “most promising business” to China. It’s where “our dollars are”…trillions of them!
I have no doubt, soon Wichita will look like the “rust belt” along the Great Lakes. That “demise” was brought to American workers by the same group of politicians that has been working to destroy the aviation industry and most recently the manufacture of light bulbs in America (The last light bulb plant closed in Virginia last week, signaling the loss of another 150 thousand plus jobs, in an industry that has supported this nation for 100+ years), sent to China, by legislation “forced” upon the American people by Democrats and environmentalists.
Don’t see the “connection” between light bulbs and flight instruction? Then you are a liberal and have been voting for Democrats too long! They were too ignorant to see what the de-regulation of commercial aviation during the Carter Era, the Luxury taxes of a Democrat controlled Congress in 1990, the WTO, Favored Nation Trading Status and NAFTA in 1993-94, by the same people again, was going to do to General Aviation and Flight Instruction! It takes a job and money to fly folks! If you don’t have a job, you can’t afford a home or groceries and forget about flying! Everything in our economy is tied to everything else. Destroy a person’s ability to make a living the rest of the economy is right behind him!
Thus it goes that there is “no pipeline” of pilots to fill “non-existent jobs”. At this moment there are over 100,000 well-trained pilots looking for work in the aviation industry, who can’t find work or a full time job! It is the jobs these people vacate during their “upward mobility” that makes the “new openings” for the newly trained pilots and there are none, thence no “stimulation” for those wanting a career in the aviation business, to thus encourage them to enter training!
That leaves only the “occasional” entrepreneur who has the “bucks” to afford “prohibitively expensive flight training” (it’s not what the Flight Instructor is making, it’s the cost of aircraft, maintenance, insurance and fuel) and even more “outrageously expensive” aircraft. The numbers of this class of individual now hang by a thread with the “economically debilitating” regulations “forced” upon the American people in the last 21 months, that now threatens our entire way of life and could quite easily lead to the complete demise of our entire economy!
The “Great Goose of Aviation”, that “laid the Golden Eggs” of aviation jobs of the 1960’s and 70’s (I know, I was in the middle of it and it was a great time!), has been butchered, by Democrat politicians in Congress, who could care less about the future and the people of this nation, only what they could steal!
Greed and avarice have become the way of life in the political arena in our country, that has destroyed the aviation industry and until “that resident evil” is gone for good, forget about “bringing back the good ‘ol days” of aviation and a wealth of jobs in the industry!
ITS SO EASY TO SEE WHY NO ONE IS GETTING INTO FLYING. FIRST OF ALL, WHO IN THE HECK CAN AFFORD THE HIGH PRICES FOR AN HOUR OF FLYING PLUS THE INSTRUCTOR. DO YOU REALLY THINK A YOUNG PERSON CAN AFFORD THOSE RATES. MAYBE A SON OR DAUGHTER WHO HAS MILLIONAIRE PARENTS BUT THE AVERAGE JOE CANNOT. RAISING THE HOURS ON THE COMM FOR FLYING COMMERCIALLY UP TO 1500 IS OUT OF THE WORLD ON COSTS. IT IS SAFER BUT WITH NO PILOTS TO FLY, SAFETY MEANS NOTHING. EVERYTHING COMES AT A COST. EVEN TO OWN A SMALL C-150 PLUS MAINT IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. CAN A YOUNG PERSON ON MCDONALDS HAMBURGER STAND AFFORD THE DREAM OF BECOMING A PILOT. NO!!! AND TO TOP IT OFF, TO GET A LOAN FOR FLYING IS TYPICALLY OUT OF THE QUESTION. DOES THAT PERSON HAVE ENOUGH CREDIT TO HAVE A HIGH CREDIT SCORE FOR MAYBE 20 -60 THOUSAND DOLLARS? NO!! THEN PEOPLE WONDER WHY THE PILOT POPULATION IS GOING DOWN. AND THE ECONOMY TO SAY NOT THE LEAST. ONLY THE RICH CAN FLY NOWDAYS AND NOBODY IS THINKING ABOUT THE LESS FORTUNATE WHO REALLY WANT TO BECOME A PILOT AND ACHIEVE THE DREAM. THERE ARE MANY OUT THERE WHO COULD FLY AND BECOMES A TOP NOTCH PILOT BUT THE COST ARE WAY OUT OF REACH. NOW, WASNT THAT SIMPLE. IT DIDNT TAKE A GENIUS TO FIGURE OUT WHY THE PILOT POPULATION IS DECLINING. BUT MAYBE NOBODY WANTS TO ADMIT IT BECAUSE IT WOULD FURTHER STOP PEOPLE FROM STARTING TO FLY BECAUSE THEY WOULD KNOW IN ADVANCE THAT THEY MAYBE COULD NEVER FINISH AND NEVER AFFORD TO CONTINUE. EVEN THE INDOCTRINATION FLIGHTS ARE OUT OF THIS WORLD. $65.00 FOR 15 MINUTES OR SO, HELL, WHAT ARE PEOPLE THINKING. THERE WALLETS ARE EMPTY BEFORE THEY EVEN THINK ABOUT STARTING TO TAKE A FLIGHT LESSON. END OF STORY, NOW, TAKE IT FROM THERE!!! ITS ALL ABOUT MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!