Cessna Pilot Centers Archives

Feedback, information on what students have done correctly, where they need work, and how to make the necessary improvements, is key to any educational program. Its quality and value depends on a flight instructor’s ability to immediately measure performance against quantifiable standards and articulate specific corrections the student can act on.

Providing it in flight is an unappreciated challenge because CFIs must, at the same time, ensure safety by maintaining situational awareness, keeping track of traffic, and communicating, as necessary, with ATC. Instructors are better able to focus on student performance in a simulator, but they must still be present, which is why Cessna’s new Guided Independent Flight Training program, developed with King Schools and Redbird Flight Simulation, is a gift to student pilots.

Available exclusively at Cessna Pilot Centers, GIFT covers all private pilot maneuvers, from steep turns and traffic pattern entries to short field takeoffs and landings. Students will not need to schedule an instructor for simulator sessions. John or Martha King teach each maneuver, demonstrating it from different video viewpoints on the sim’s visual display. As they practice the maneuver, the program provides feedback by measuring their performance again Practical Test Standard parameters.

GIFT does not replace instructors, it augments the time students spend with them in flight. Students, says CPC Manager Julie Filucci, “get the benefit of lessons on specific maneuvers…and are able to fly them as many times as they wish, allowing them to perfect [thanks to immediate feedback] their aircraft handling skills at their own pace in the low-cost environment of a simulator.” And the innovation doesn’t end here.

Customer service, as the AOPA student retention survey recently reaffirmed, plays an important role in the student pilot dropout rate. As anyone who has called or visited more than one flight school can attest, the quality of customer service—good, bad, or mediocre—depends on the school’s owner.

Over the past couple of decades I’ve visited more than a few of the 270 Cessna Pilot Centers and found their service predictably positive. This didn’t happen by accident, says CPC Manager Julie Filucci. Cessna launched its flight school network in 1973. Since then it has assessed the practices of its more successful affiliates and shared the accumulated knowledge through various training programs.

A critical component is “delivering a customer experience commensurate” with the other services Cessna provides, she continues. “As the primary point of contact with students,” to CPC customers, “flight instructors are the face of Cessna.” To ensure that CFIs put their best face forward, they each receive training that sets a how-to baseline and establishes “the core customer experience.”

Understanding how flight schools compete, Filucci’s predecessors focused on “a few key areas that we knew were differentiators.” Early on, the training was face-to-face, but it is now delivered by a 15-minute video, Checklist for Success.

Cessna Gives Students an Elegant GIFT

CPC Training Sets Customer Service Baseline