Friday conference lunch participants enjoyed a a presentation from Matt Keelen, Managing Principal from the Vogel Group who has been engaged on behalf of FSANA and our members to represent the flight training community as a government affairs partner.

The deep experience of Matt and the Vogel Group brings significant bipartisan contacts in Washington D.C. legislative circles to FSANA. Vogel has already helped our industry connect with and inform the elected branch as they work on legislative issues that affect our industry.

Matt highlighted how important pilot training, safety, and staffing issues are to a very bipartisan and bicameral grouping when working with U.S. House and Senate Representatives. Direct FSANA efforts have included the inclusion of language on issues directly relating to pilot staffing and certification in the recent FAA reauthorization bill content, with some of it specifically addressing pilot age, pilot experience limitations, and remedying the backlog and sourcing of airman practical testing.

While much in Washington D.C. is highly partisan, Matt highlighted how much pilot safety and sourcing is bipartisan and one of the few issues that find representatives on both sides of the aisle coming together. It is currently expected that the FAA reauthorization may again be delayed, facing a continuing funding resolution (click here to see the bill that may extend funding authorization), but when it does pass there will be considerations in the language that were directly the result of interaction with legislators and FSANA and its members expressing their needs, concerns, and support.

The goal of FSANA in working with Matt and the Vogel Group is to continue growing both national level influence from the association level, but also connect members with local representatives to help them understand how flight training activities affect their home districts and the national level concerns in flight training.

An additional program event included a video briefing from Senator Tammy Duckworth, Chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations and Innovation of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and transportation.

Senator Duckworth noted how important pilot training standards, quality, and production to meet demands for our system is to the U.S. Senate and House. She highlighted the bipartisan efforts that are underway as a part of the Senate Subcommittee on Aviation to help craft legislation that helps improve and empower our aviation training system as it works to deliver quality aviators for the future of the aviation needs of the United States.

There is no doubt that continued and expanding roles exist for FSANA and its members to remain in contact with legislators and express our industry concerns. With more information to these representatives and their staff, we can better inform their decisions and efforts to enhance support for our industry.

FSANA is planning its first "Flight Training Advocacy Day" in DC for late Spring early Summer.

Representatives from the FAA’s Airmen Training & Certification office who directly work with management of formalized training programs authorized as 141 training providers gave Friday morning attendees a more in-depth update on current efforts, going beyond what some shorter briefing from the federal agencies panel Thursday.

Directly related to the pressure point of securing enough testing services for pilot rating and certificate candidates, the team addressed self-examining authority for 141 training operations. Currently, of the 521 certificated pilot schools, only 29 are approved to hold examining authority for at least one of their training courses. Examining authority remains an under-utilized tool for qualified training providers in the view of the FAA. To be eligible for this, it is important that schools qualify under 14 CFR 141.63 and are able to show how they will organizationally manage testing activities if they are approved. A recent FAA Notice 8900.675 offers some new flexibility for local FAA offices working with applications for examining authority that were potentially restricted in the past.

The panel also spent some time discussing the current backlog in processing 141 approval requests, common things that hold up applications for 141 curriculum approvals, and how schools might best navigate through approvals if they would like to become. a 141-approved flight training provider. Some of the big hiccups applicants encounter that indicate they are “not ready” to get approved is not following guidance, lacking a full and complete training course outline, not having a qualified Chief Pilot, lacking the equipment they need including but not limited to available aircraft, and not having in place safety management processes to name a few. The key here is to know what the requirements are and be fully ready to meet them when an application is made to get through the certification processes most expeditiously.

There is no doubt that the standardization that comes with being a 141-approved training provider improves training quality and efficiency. It also offers those providers access to resources that may not be available without being an approved provider. FSANA will continue to work with the FAA staff to share information with members regarding any changes in the 141 training regulations or management landscape.

Filled to capacity, "Flight School Roundtable Workshop" sessions on both Wednesday and Thursday at the conference offered attendees an opportunity to openly speak about any challenges they are experiencing in the flight training environment.

Attendees got to share discussions on topics ranging from the software they use to manage and track training, where to source parts for their aircraft, how to manage staff dynamics and turnover, and how to work best with airport management as operators to name a few areas covered. Every year these round table sessions bring out concerns that some operators are facing, others have solved, or become broader discussions that affect the entire industry is participants realize they aren't the only ones facing particular challenges.

These round tables are key to FSANA's efforts to help understand what priorities the association needs to address on behalf of members. The sharing of information between participants has in many cases allowed others to learn from each other's practices, make changes to their own operations from they have learned, and improve standardization within the training industry.

Offering a variety of breakout sessions between general sessions, the 2024 FSANA conference allowed participants to attend presentations and discussions that specifically focused on topics they wanted more information about. With topics ranging from how to get going as a new training provider, how to grow a training operation, topics on airman testing and talent management and human behavior, maintenance challenges and safety management, to a discussion with aviation insurance underwriters, information opportunities were present that take place no other place in the aviation training sector.

These breakout sessions are designed specifically to allow attendees to interact with exports in particular topic areas and find resources they can take home to their own operations.

"No one runs the perfect flight training operation, and these sessions are something we try to provide so we can all leverage resources to improve our operations," said Robert Rockmaker, FSANA CEO and President. "Highly focused, intimate format discussions allow these sessions to help attendees get more information in areas they want to improve."

A final session for the conference highlighted a discussion of both current and future technology that is likely to become available in upcoming years for the flight training industry. The question of what a flight school will look like in terms of the assets (aircraft) it uses for training is one that is very open currently and one that is likely to have very different answers than we might have thought of even a few short years ago.

FSANA remains engaged with multiple OEM's working in this space to provide new and emerging technology. In the afternoon session representatives from Tecnam Aircraft, Vashon Aircraft, and Bye Aerospace highlighted the work they are doing in this sector and how they envision options might be adopted by flight training providers.

Many of these aircraft will eliminate the need for petroleum based fuel and reduce the number of component parts for the aircraft, and drastically increase times between engine service requirements. These and many other benefits are going to increase efficiency, uptime for aircraft, and overall effectiveness to keep aircraft operating in the flight training environment. We all know that more uptime for aircraft allows the flight training community to deliver more training hours and as such, more pilots.

Hydrogen was also discussed as an energy source by representatives from Air Products and Chemicals Inc based in Allentown, PA. There are several companies already in the hydrogen aviation application space and it appears that hydrogen will play a role in powering aircraft as the technology advances.

A landscape change in assets utilized in flight training is likely on the very near horizon, and FSANA and its members will be closely watching what assets can be used to improve training. First adopters will likely have a leg up on their competition, so the more information that can be gained early in the process, the more likely it will become that FSANA members are at the forefront of these changes.

In the last weeks of 2023, FSANA endeavored to again conduct a survey of flight instructor compensation factors around the United States. With some help from AOPA and NAFI to spread the request for information, we received 782 responses from industry members who are involved with the flight training process. Over 80% of those that responded were CFIs themselves, and the remaining approximately 20% were business owners or managers that employ CFIs. Breaking down what sectors of training they represented, most were with stand-alone independent training providers with a little over 20% representing either collegiate or FBO based training sectors. With this mix of represented parties, a general sense of how and how much CFIs are compensated can be inferred from the survey data gathered.

Particular interest for those in the flight training industry might relate to questions of how much CFIs earn, what providers charge customers, and if CFIs are staff for whom taxes are withheld or paid as contractors.

When considering how much customers are charged for CFI time, and how much CFIs earn for that time, it makes sense that the CFIs are paid less than the customers are charged. This accounts for overhead, taxes, and hopefully for the flight training providers, some profits. You can see this relationship in the following graph.

It is interesting in this graph how we have seen both of these rates trend up over the past few years. The data show the rates that customers are being charged averaging well above the$50/hour mark at this collection point. This represents an obvious increase compared historically with the overall costs associated with flight training for customers.

We always ask the question of if CFIs are paid as staff for whom taxes are withheld, or if they are paid as independent contractors. You can see the relationship from this survey’s responses in the following graph.

This question is always important considering the potential legal implications for providers who are paying CFIs as independent contractors but may not fully understand if their staff truly meet the requirements of being an independent contractor or if they should properly be withholding and paying taxes on their service as staff.

Related to this, we asked if operations charged different rates for more advanced training. Only approximately 40% indicated they charged a different rate for more advanced training. This might be something more training providers consider doing in the future, and might be a way to allow for higher pay rates for more experienced instructors, potentially helping keep them longer in a particular flight training operation.

In the past couple years there has been some additional interest in the sourcing of CFIs. With regard to this question, a little over 34% indicated they were having no troubles hiring instructors with the remaining over 60% indicating they were either having troubles sourcing enough, or more prominently, enough experienced and qualified instructors.

With active turnover of CFIs in our industry, it seems there is concern that even when we have enough CFIs, we may not have enough experienced and qualified instructors. This should be a point that as an industry we have concern about with regard to how it affects the training that will be provided the next generation of pilots.

There is always interesting data to highlight from these surveys as we work to understand and evaluate the health of our flight training industry. We greatly appreciate everyone who helped provide responses and insight. While these are a few of the highlights, there were more questions and we welcome you to see the full data series and what it showed.

You can see the full data report on a pdf tabulated summary sheet by clicking here.