How about running a really well organised and posh PPL school which goes after the "BMW Z4 crowd", and operates nice clean shiny and nice-smelling DA40-TDis or even DA40-180s?
I know several schools like this in the US. They do tend to be located around the major affluent metros.
You would think there would be similar attractive markets around several parts of UK & mainland Europe.
One of the great lies of private GA: "Flying is affordable for everyone".
One of the great lies of private GA: "Flying is affordable for everyone".
Well, one of the first things I researched before starting my PPL was the cost. I knew it would cost me about 10 000 €. What I didn't know is what POS the aircraft were going to be! You can't open a driving school around here unless you have a modern car but you can charge students more than 10k€ and put them in the worst spamcans imaginable.
Still, I wouldn't have gone for a posh school even if I did have the money for it. Everything posh seems to attract mostly idiots, better to go for the honest thing and meet some nice people.
Everything posh seems to attract mostly idiots, better to go for the honest thing and meet some nice people.
You clearly don't like controversy
I actually strongly disagree.
Most human activities are self-selecting by the character profile, and the way the business is configured is a more powerful factor than what the actual business is. This is the same in any business - whether it is PPL training, or selling electronic interface converters.
... better to go for the honest thing and meet some nice people.
You haven't met me yet ;-) (at least not knowingly, we might have crossed paths in the GA terminal many times)
But I'm really glad that the real rich people don't get their own PPLs, otherwise our business flying business jets would be even worse than it is...
I remember in the early 1990ies when I was starting to instruct, getting a flying license was very much en vogue with doctors and dentists. That was before half a dozen "health reforms" and they still had a decent income - now the poor guys need to emigrate to Switzerland or Norway if they want to earn enough for flying. The parking lot at our ground school building was full of Porsches and even some Ferraris, but the real decent ones didn't bother to go to the flying school at all and had an instructor come to their home for private lessons instead (on the invoice these visits had to be declared as "IT consulting" so that they could deduct them from their taxes, same as the flying lessons which were all "business flights"). Of course the C152 that everybody else was using for his PPL training was too small, so we always flew in a 172 or 182 with them. Which finally brings me to my point: Old or new doesn't mater much, for rich and beautiful people it is important that training aircraft are roomy. Therefore the C162 would not be appreciated much by this clientele. To everybody else cost matters and if flying in a 1965 C152 will bring the total cost down by 1000 Euros, they will be happy enough.
Needless to say that almost no one of our medical/dental students revalidated his PPL after two years. For most it all ended at their first flying weekend when they couln't get home Sunday evening due to weather or forgotten early sunset and the wife or girlfriend refused to ever fly again with them... One proudly flew to Zürich right after picking his new PPL out of the mailbox to impress some buddy there. An hour later a phonecall came: "Can you please send an instructor to fly me home, they won't let me depart..." because his german-only radiotelephony license (and also proficiency) failed not impress the controllers at LSZH. I think he never flew again after that, it was too humiliating.
The other thing is that - judging from reading many articles on this topic in the UK Flight Training News rag for a decade or more - many instructors do not want the "BMW Z4" type students, because they are allegedly arrogant and refuse to listen. But maybe there is a way, because most of these people are good at something where they work.
Making a sweeping generalization here, but this is probably the problem: they are a high achiever at $FOO and therefore they think they will automatically be high achievers at anything, (which may or may not be true).
This is compounded by the utterly daft EASA regulations on flight schools we have now. The best flight instructors, and the flight instructors who taught me PPL, instrument, multiengine etc. in the US when I lived there were all freelance instructors who did it part time because they enjoyed it. Instructing pays badly, and nearly everyone doing it full time (or for a formal FTO) will be some kid building hours for the airlines. Now a few of these sausage-factory instructors genuinely enjoy instructing, and have a genuine interest in GA, and genuinely try to make sure they have a good breadth of knowledge, but most of them aren't. Certainly the ones at the big US schools I saw had never seen anything other than the training environment. None of them had real practical real world experience. They are mostly regurgitating what they just picked up purely in the training environment and has more than its fair share of old wives' tales. Already in this thread we've talked about leaning the mixture on the ground. My grizzled old ex-air force freelance instructor who instructed maybe 6 hours a week after work and on weekends - guess what he taught me the first time we fired up the engine? Leaning the mixture on the ground, and why we do it. Using that red knob from the first minute, when many students who have been through the FTO sausage machine just shove it full rich before starting the engine and leave it that way till they shut down.
The regulations here though for practical purposes outlaw that type of flight instructor. The result is that the extra regulations we have here make our training environment less safe and turn out less competent pilots than the lighter regulated US flight training environment.
Now imagine you're a BMW z4 type person in your mid 40s who has plenty of worldly experience of some kind of complex business, profession or whatever, and you roll up at a flight school, and your instructor is a 23 year old who has never seen the outside of the training environment, who then tells you things that your world experience would suggest are bullshit, or makes you do procedures that make no sense (such as using a 15 page checklist for a C152 and using it as a 'to do list'). You're probably not going to be silent about it especially if you're one of the types who are going to remain in aviation (I think what marks most people who stay with private aviation is we are all obsessed to some extent, and try and learn all we can about what we're doing) and perhaps have read a few Pelican's Perch columns on AvWeb. I imagine the FTOs hate this type of person the most.
I think that is a very accurate description.
I think what marks most people who stay with private aviation is we are all obsessed to some extent, and try and learn all we can about what we're doing
Very true. We're a bunch of nerds. Just witness the exchange between the two excited gentlemen in the "RS232" thread. Also the word "fluxgate" has been used > 10 times on this board.
And yes, I myself have typed "ATDT" many times on the command line back in the 80's.
You'd have to be somewhat obsessed w/flying to stick through it all.
The regulations here though for practical purposes outlaw that type of flight instructor.
Luckily not. EASA-FCL (same as JAR-FCL bef) mandates a certain number of full time employees per FTO, especially the postholders, but every other instructor can freelance just as always. At our FTO there are a lot of current and retired business and airline pilots who instruct in the free time (including myself)!
Just witness the exchange between the two excited gentlemen in the "RS232" thread.
I get paid very well for this stuff. You don't get paid for learning and speaking Klingon. That's the difference between a nerd and a geek 
And yes, I myself have typed "ATDT" many times on the command line back in the 80's.
We had to type "ATDP" in West Germany until the mid 90s because all the investment went to the East...
We had to type "ATDP" in West Germany
