Not long ago I received an e-mail from Greg Brown, one of the many friends made during my time at Flight Training magazine (and Greg, the 2000 CFI of the Year, still writes his popular “Flying Carpet” column for it.)
It was a short note to let me know that his excellent book, The Savvy Flight Instructor: Secrets for the Successful CFI was now available on Kindle. Happy for my friend, I immediately started kicking myself because his book, which is all about the business side of flight instruction, getting new students—and keeping them flying—was the perfect answer for those seeking specifics in the many comments to Aviation has the CFIs is Deserves, Fixing Flight Training: What You Can do Now!, and CPC Training Sets Customer Service Baseline.
By meeting the FAA’s requirements for the certificate, flight instructors are only half trained. All they possess are the operational knowledge and skills defined by the practical test standards and taught by the FAA handbooks on instructing and applicable flying machines.
But CFIs don’t survive by flying alone. Whether they are on a flight school faculty or an independent, they only exist and prosper as whole instructors who exercise effective business practices daily. Among the the 14 chapters on the book’s table of contents are Where do New Student Come From?, Converting Prospects into Flight Students, Keeping Your Students Flying, and The Business of Flight Instructing.
So, if you’re an instructor, or know one interested in completing his or her education, get a copy of The Savvy Flight Instructor. Published by ASA, it’s $19.95 in paper and $9.99 as a Kindle download. And if if CFIs want to make an individual effort to help general aviation recover from its death spiral of public apathy, actually read the book—and put what it teaches into practice. — Scott
I don’t have a Kindle; but I have an HTC Evo which has an electronic book reading feature (which supposedly includes Kindle books). Is your variant likely to work on my “look-a-like” non-Kindle book reader?
Richard, you can access and read “The Savvy Flight Instructor” (and all Kindle books) by downloading the free Android Kindle app for your Evo.
I don’t have a Kindle but use the Solid FX8 for Jepp IFR Charts. The device uses IREX Digital Reader 800S and came with several ebooks from http://www.feedbooks.com. Can I purchase and download “The Savvy Flight Instructor” and read it as an ebook on this device? If so how?
You might want to check directly with the Kindle folks at amazon.com, but as far as I can tell, Richard, your device cannot download and read Kindle ebooks. That still leaves you possible ebook reading options of 1) installing free Kindle software onto your Mac or PC and reading it there, or 2) Installing a free Kindle app onto your smartphone and reading it there. Hope they get all this ebook stuff standardized one day!
IMPORTANT: I have just learned to my disappointment that “The Savvy Flight Instructor” has become temporarily unavailable for Kindle while file improvements are made. I will post below when the Kindle version again becomes available.
“The Savvy Flight Instructor” is once again available for Kindle. To all those who wrote me in the past few weeks asking why they couldn’t order it, thanks for your patience! Download “The Savvy Flight Instructor” for Kindle here: http://tinyurl.com/4ramglg