FSANA CONFERENCE NEWS
 NTSB Member Earl Weener Speaks to Conference about Aviation Incident, Accidents, and Safety Updates
Speaking about the NTSB most wanted list for safety, Member Weener highlighted some of the key factors that keep resulting in pilot accidents, and worse, pilot and passenger deaths every year.
Some might wonder why this is relevant to flight training providers, who typically experience fairly low accident rates during training, but the fact is that those who train providers affect the pilots who may end up in an accident or incident later in their career. if flight training providers work to make sure their training process includes highlighting these major factors, it can become a part of continuing to improve overall pilot mindset and reduce accidents further along in a pilot's experience path.
Between 2004 and 2016, more than 40% of fatal accidents still were attributed to "Loss of Control". Maintaining control through various regimes of flight is still the primary skill that flight training providers can instill in their customers that has the potential to reduce fatalities in aviation.
Highlighting just how much of the accidents this segment represents, a slide noted the accidents by type of operation as follows:
The aviation training community has the strong potential to help influence change in the fatality rate of accidents if they work to help the customers they train understand what happens when the pilot fails to maintain control of the aircraft for any reason. So, let's all take that challenge and make sure that when we are teaching stalls, aircraft maneuvering, traffic patterns, or any other regime of flight where the pilot needs to maintain those basic flying skills and keep themselves from losing control of the aircraft. It has the potential to significantly reduce the fatalities in, and especially in, the general aviation pilot operations community.
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CONFERENCE NEWS
Flight Schools Need to Adapt to Culture of Younger Generations, say Speakers at Flight School Conference
Presenters at this week's Flight School Association of North America (FSANA) ninth annual Operators Conference address a paradox in the industry.
Two staggering, and conflicting, statistics are well known to flight school operators. The number of pilots needed by the aviation industry in the next few years is incredibly high, and yet the number of students that actually complete flight training is incredibly low.
"Over the next two decades, 87 new pilots will need to be trained and ready to fly a commercial airliner every day in order to meet our insatiable demand to travel by air," said Jon Ostrower in CNN Money.
At the same time, AOPA and General Aviation News report that 80% of students who begin flight training never complete it.
Brian Lewis of Wolfhound Interactive, Pamela Olson of King Schools, and Mark Leeper of Flight Schedule Pro addressed the issue in a General Session at the Flight School Association of North America (FSANA) Operator's Conference.
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Afton, FSANA's new youth envoy talks with conference participants about her interest in aviation. An example of how youth can be interested in aviation careers even at young ages. |
"Young people will overcome a lot of obstacles to complete their flight training," said Leeper. "They find ways to finance their education, they don't have a problem with the rigorous course materials and regulatory requirements and check rides, they often willingly overcome many challenges because aviation is something that people get very passionate about." He said.
It's no surprise that their biggest concern is often money. They knew the cost of the program before they started, but what they are uneasy about is whether they will complete the program on time with the amount of money they have budgeted, or have financing for.
The amount of time and training required for a flight student to master a skill can vary based on his ability to perform certain tasks to the satisfaction of an instructor or examiner. At $200-270 an hour, (which pays for the plane, instructor and fuel) a delay can really add up. Adding to the uncertainty and complexity is the fact that most flight students have multiple instructors who may interpret the course materials differently.
"Young people have also grown up with everything online. They do their banking, schoolwork, shopping, entertainment, and even their workouts online. My son prides himself on earning most of a bachelor's degree without ever buying a paper book. So when a flight school doesn't give them transparency into their training program, they get really frustrated." He said.
Many business owners fail to grasp how large this cultural shift is, and what it means to them. Consider that colleges are having trouble getting students to football games if the bandwidth in the stadium isn't good enough. Students would rather stay home where they can use their phones and tablets WHILE they watch the game.
You can work with, or fight against this cultural change, Leeper explained. Flight schools should want their customers and students to be connected and to have complete and transparent information about what they've completed, what to study next, and how far they've come- it's an advantage to provide this information online and have students looking to your company for information online and stay connected.
Flight schools can leverage this cultural shift by using standard course materials delivered online, with online scheduling and visual progress indicators. Schools can use programs like Flight Schedule Pro that manage these tasks online so that students, instructors, flight school managers and other stakeholders like parents (who may be paying the bills) and advisors can access records securely while maintaining student privacy.
Other speakers at General Sessions included Bruce McCall of Triad Aviation Academy, Chris Erlanson of Nashville Flight Training and Lisa Campbell of Air-Mods Flight Training Center; all of whom have developed programs for young people (ages 12 and up) following FSANA's service-marked AeroCamp model, designed to provide much-needed visibility to young people, who have few opportunities to engage with aviation. Presented as a STEM-focused educational opportunity, students and parents are embracing aviation.
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CONFERENCE NEWS
Educational Malpractice Briefing Related to Flight Training Provision
A topic no-one likes to think about, but is critical for flight training providers, is the question of what happens if a student becomes injured, or worse, and how the liability of the training that is provided may allow the provider of that training any liability as a result.
William F. DeYoung, from Chuhak & Tecson, P.C. in Chicago, briefed attendees regarding a case he had worked that dealt with instructional liability in a case he worked.
Educational malpractice is a concept that when applied to training might highlight that "training" provided resulted in a case where the flight training provider did something wrong that resulted in something like an accident. This can be a little bit of a terrifying thought for a flight training provider, but Bill's briefing helped attendees understand that educational malpractice represents an unlimited liability potential and that in the courts opinion (in this case, in Illinois), that it is not possible to determine whether the training was not provided properly, or if the student was unable to retain information that was properly taught, or if the pilot acted negligently. The even better news, is that the majority of states agree with this interpretation.
This is a very positive point that flight training providers should be aware of with respect to their liability of students who at a later day (not during the provision of training) have an accident or incident. The liability of the training is very limited in many of the states. If you have questions about the interpretation of this liability potential in your state, check with a legal professional who is familiar with educational malpractice.
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CONFERENCE NEWS
In a briefing from the TSA, FSANA conference attendees were presented with some statistical highlights relating to flight training conducted under the Alien Flight Student Program under which the TSA administrates approvals of training for students.
In the last year, the AFSP program has had over 5400 flight training providers (both individual instructors and larger businesses), with this group providing training for students from 192 countries. Of these students, only 11% of them were permanent resident non-US nationals, the majority of them being approved to come for the training on a transient basis. Of the requests seen, between 24,000-25,000 were in smaller aircraft, approximately 8000 were type rating requests, and around 20,000 were for recurrent training requests. This strongly highlights just how much training is happening for non-US citizens at training providers around the country.
Training of foreign national students in the United States is a key part of the business of many flight training provider business models. As we work to understand this market segment, it also shows that our understanding of its footprint is critical to the success of flight training providers around our country.
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TRAINING NEWS
Current Trends in CFI Certification - A CFI Shortage?
by Jason Blair
Trends in the overall pilot population are closely tracking to what is being experienced in the CFI community, with one significant difference, that of the total population.
While the overall certificated pilot numbers have trended downward over the past few decades, the overall numbers of "active" CFI certificates on a yearly basis has actually trended upward.
If we look at the number of active CFI certificates, defined as having been renewed within the last two years (which is required to remain a current CFI certificate), we see that the overall number of CFIs has increased by nearly 25,000 CFIs in the last 15 years. Over the same period of time and beyond, the overall certificated pilot population has decreased.
To contextualize this, we see that over the same time period there has also been an "aging" of the CFI population with the average age of the CFIs over the same time period increasing from under the average age of 44 to the age of 48.
With this being the case, we are finding that these middle aged CFIs are less likely to be actively engaged in providing flight training in the training providers that are engaged with throughput career-focused training in the majority. Many of these middle aged CFIs are employed as professional pilots in jobs such as airline service and keep their CFI certificates active simply in an effort to not lose them based on FAA regulatory requirements.
With the increasing number of CFI, but the aging of the grouping, we see that a significant percentage of the CFI grouping is over the age of 40 and that the average age of the CFI is increasing.
Along this same time period, we are actually seeing a decrease in the number of the CFI certificates being issued on a yearly basis. This is visible in data on both the number of CFI knowledge tests being administered on a yearly basis and in the number of initial CFI certificates being issued on a yearly basis.
As the trend of CFI certification numbers decreases, and the overall age of the population increases, we are left as an industry with a CFI population that is aging, does not consist of CFIs who are actively engaged in the day-to-day provision of instruction, and in general, decreases the number of available CFIs to be employed by flight training providers. It is typically younger CFIs who are engaged with highly active CFI activities in an effort to gain experience to become employable in other professional pilot career options.
With this change in dynamics of the CFI community, we find that there are fewer potentially employable CFIs to be hired by flight training providers and that they have a harder time filling needed employee positions to provide training to customers seeking training for pilot certificates and ratings. This directly affects the business processes of flight training providers.
Staffing the Training at Production Scale Flight Training Providers
Considering the fact that there is a general downward trend in CFI certification on a yearly basis and an increasing average age of the CFI population, we can correlate this with an assumption, if not assertion, that the CFI population, while up in overall numbers, is not increasing in numerical relation to those CFIs that actually are providing training to future pilots in largesse. Most of the CFIs that are "currently" certificated are older and either actively employed as professional pilots and keep their CFI certificates "active" instead of losing them, in many cases using Flight Instructor Refresher Course (FIRC) based renewals. Many are beyond retirement ages. These CFIs are not typically providing training at what I will call throughput training providers.
In fact, a minimal percentage of the overall CFI community meets what should be considered "active" CFI levels. While the FAA defines an "active" CFI as one that has a current CFI certificate which must be renewed every two years, a more functional definition when considering training throughput potential might be one that considers if a CFI has signed off an applicant for a pilot rating or certificate within the past two years.
But data on what exactly is an "active" CFI has hard to come by or drill down to in order to figure out how many really are "active".
The FAA doesn't report or track CFIs that are actively engaged in training. What we do know is that while the overall number of CFIs has been growing numerically on a yearly basis, the number of "new CFI certificates issued" each year is relatively low and from a percentage basis small. Considering the fact that a CFI must renew their CFI certificate every two years, and that historically we haven't seen more than approximately 10-15% of CFIs signing off students for practical tests within a two year period, we can back into a number that may approximate the number of CFIs who are more or less active.
If we considered the number of "active" CFI certificates on a given year as defined by the FAA, being those that are still current and have not expired, we can then extrapolate considering the number of new CFI certificates given in a particular year. I will consider these CFIs who recently obtained a CFI generally active at least for a given year. They have bothered to get a CFI certificate, let's at least assume they are going to use it for the first-year. From here, I will postulate that if we considered what has been historically seen as a maximum of 15% active CFIs who sign applicants off for a practical test could be added to that number and result in a relative number of CFIs who might, and I stress we are erring on the high side I believe here, might be actually engaged on a regular basis with flight training provision to applicants for ratings and certificates. With these assumptions in place, the data would look something like the following chart:
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( (Active Flight Instructor Certificates x 12%) + New CFI Certificates Issued = Assumed Active Maximum)
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From this data, we find strong probability that far less than 20% of CFIs are probable to be engaged with what we will call "throughput training" for pilots seeking ratings and certificates. On a yearly average, it would indicate that approximately 17% of the CFIs who have certificates may be actively engaged in providing training on any given year.
At the time of the writing of this paper, of the 104,382 CFI certificates that are current, only 80,688 have an active medical certificate (that data point provided by the FAA). This means that approximately 77% of CFIs could provide training for pilots seeking ratings or certificates that require the CFI to have a medical, which is most of the certificates and ratings that develop throughput training at flight training providers. While some will argue that the other 23% "could" be providing training for things like CFI certificates and/or commercial pilot certificates, it is my practical experience in the industry that this is a very small minority of CFIs who engage in this type of training without a medical certificate. What is more likely, is that the vast majority of these CFI certificate holders are of a senior age and no longer actively engaged in flight training provision, but keep the certificate active instead of losing it through a renewal process such as a flight instructor refresher course that must be completed every two years.
In another "gut check" of this level of activity, we can consider how many CFIs actively renew their CFI certificates based on completion of a FIRC course because they do not meet student sign off activity levels required to renew on that basis. To qualify for renewal of a CFI certificate based on student sign-off activity a CFI need only sign off a minimum number of 5 students in a two-year period (with a greater than 80% pass rate). CFIs who are not doing this minimal number of sign-offs in a preceding two year period are doing little to impact the real production of new pilots into the system.
While the FAA does not publish data specifically that indicates the number of CFI renewals based on FIRC course completion, I have been able to closely approximate the number of CFIs who complete online and in person FIRC courses on a yearly basis through discussion with FAA staff and the FIRC program providers. A reasonable estimate seems to indicate, within a 5% deviation. that on a two year basis around 78,000-82,000 CFIs are completing a renewal based on a FIRC within recent years. This further backs up the approximation I have proposed above by closely correlating to the numbers of estimated CFIs who would be actively engaged in providing training that results in a signoff for a rating or certificate. It is these CFIs that are providing throughput based training that is creating newly certificated and/or rated pilots that are potentially seeking professional pilot careers based on the training they have received.
These factors typify our understanding of the fact that it is percentage of instructors who have been certificated for longer periods of time, and a majority of instructors who are "newly" certificated that are providing the highest percentage of training in businesses that base their model of flight training on career-focused customers. With the exception of a few long term senior instructors at these businesses or academic institutions, the bulk of these instructors are employed after recently accomplishing their CFI certificates and use this work as a method to gain the requisite experience to become employable at other professional pilot employers.
With this in mind, as soon as these CFIs gain the requisite experience to be employable in alternate pilot positions, such as airlines, they leave their CFI positions for other jobs. This has created active and aggressive turnover in CFI positions for many flight training providers in the United States as their CFI employees stay in those positions only long enough to gain the experience to move on to other employment options that provide better pay, better benefits, and longer term career options.
In a recent FAA Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) report, it was noted:
"The turnover of CFIs across the nation is tremendous and there are very few full-time/permanent CFIs. The flight instructor profession is a transient position for the vast majority of pilots on their way to fly jets professionally. As a result, instructors are moving fast to Regional Airlines; our turnover (and the turnover across the training industry) is approaching 90% annually." (The full ARAC report is available by clicking here)
When this turnover was evaluated considering the length of time that a flight instructor is typically staying in a flight instructor position, it was found that when averaged across a variety of flight training providers, most instructors stayed in a CFI position an average of 9-10 months. This means that a flight training business needs to "rehire" a position at a minimum of every year. With this rehiring comes costs to the business to recruit, retain, and standardize those staff members who are CFIs to provide training to their customers.
If we put this math to the test and assumed a middle-sized flight training provider would need to have 50 instructors on staff at a given time, we can estimate the number of CFIs they would have to hire over a period of time. To make the point, let's evaluate a 9 month turnover average for such a provider over a 5 year period. The math would look like this:
Staffing rate = 1.25 staff per position per year
50 instructors x 1.25 staff per year x 5 years = 312.5 instructors required
over the 5 year period
This strongly illustrates the effect of turnover over a period of time to keep positions staffed. It becomes an exponential staffing effort.
An additional challenge beyond just keeping enough staff with this active turnover of CFIs is present when considering the fact that CFIs are not able to train new CFIs without meeting requirements of FAA regulations that require a CFI to have been a CFI for more than 24 months. The ARAC addressed this in a further note that highlighted the following,
"This turnover is severely limiting the number of flight instructors available that meet the requirement of 61.195. This regulation sets the requirements for an instructor pilot to train individuals in the CFI course. As of right now, we have about 40 students waiting to start their CFI training who cannot start due to the lack of human resources that meet the requirements of 61.196 (and the backlog is growing)."
This turnover and the limitation on who can train new CFIs further exacerbates the constriction of employable CFIs for flight training providing businesses. These businesses are finding that the pool of CFIs to be largely tapped out as hiring by airlines became aggressive and are the same time unable to train CFIs internally due the fact that the turnover has left them with few experienced CFIs who meet requirements to train other CFIs. With this all in mind, these conditions are affecting the overall ability of flight training providers to increase or even maintain overall pilot training throughput in our aviation system.
This was further noted in the ARAC comments when it stated that,
"A shortage of CFIs increases the training time of new flight students thus increasing the time it takes for new pilots to complete their flight training and ATP requirements. This delay further exacerbates the pilot shortage problem."
Flight instructors and the ability for flight training providers to employ and maintain sufficient numbers of flight instructors is currently a restriction on the overall pilot training output within the U.S. flight training system.
This trending data is was discussed at the 2018 FSANA International Flight School Operators Conference this week and further correlated to a presentation and discussion about what some Possible Solutions to the CFI Shortage may be considering how these affect flight training providers staffing efforts. A full whitepaper on the subject is also available at:
http://www.jasonblair.net/?p=1983
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Director of Flight Operations Sought at Kansas State Polytechnic
A full-time position that reports directly to the CE and Dean of the Campus, this position is responsible for the succesful operation of the flight school. A salary range between $80,947 - $145,704 highlights competitive salary ranges that will be adjusted based on applicant qualifications and experience. Click here for a pdf of the job posting or by visiting
Check Airmen Wanted - $45,000 at AeroGuard Flight Training Center inPhoenix, AZ)
Main reponsibility includes conducting FAR 141 recurrent training, check out flights on new hire CFIs, spot checks on line CFIs, perform remedial training, and observation flights. Must have CFI, CFII, and MEI certificates with 6 months experience as a CFI and be able to pass a Part 141 stage check pilot proficiency check for both single and multi-engine airplanes.
AeroGuard offers a variety of benefits: Paid PTO, medical, dental, vision and 401K with company match.
Flight Instructor Sought
Wanted CFI for 141 flight school, added ratings a plus, but not required.
When not instructing, right seat on Navajo available for qualified applicant.
Respond to Moyer Aviation, Inc. Pocono Mts., Pa. 800-321-5890
vern@moyeraviation.com.
Charter Captain Wanted
Wanted Captain for 135 charter operation in Northeast. Flying Navajos & Seneca Minimum 1500 TT, 200 MEL.
Respond to
Moyer Aviation, Inc. Pocono Mts., Pa. 800-321-5890
vern@moyeraviation.com.
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