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