Flight School Business

[check six]

Doing some research on starting a flight school. I've flown out of many flight schools for years. Some well run operations and some bad. Trying to evaluate if any of these schools make any money. Obviously Flight Safety has done well. Can't find any info on AllATP's or American Flyers or some of the other big ones.

If anyone knows of a good business model to run and be profitable, please advise.

Thanks,

Check Six

 

[Amish RakeFight]

Someone once quipped, if you want to make a small fortune in aviation, you have to start with a large one.

Aren't student starts way down?

 

[LegacyDriver]

They are.

Working with a friend trying to prop up his flight school..............

Even among dedicated people the numbers are going down. Nobody can afford it right now.

 

[BeeFCaKe]

Having a straight flight school I don't think you can make any money. If there is a flying club, where people pay a monthly or yearly to get access to the airplanes at a slightly reduced rate, I think you might make a little.

The big killers are FUEL and MAINTENANCE. If your flight school is part of a larger FBO which sells Fuel and does Maintenance, those services help offset the expenses of owning and operating the school. Or at least they allow the overall business to have a flight school.

If I were thinking about opening a straight up school, I would do it near a prominent aviation college, (Rhymes with Humpty-Diddle). A large percentage of students at those universities can't afford or won't get into the limited number of school owned-operated airplanes.

 

[sleddriver71]

Doing some research on starting a flight school. I've flown out of many flight schools for years. Some well run operations and some bad. Trying to evaluate if any of these schools make any money. Obviously Flight Safety has done well. Can't find any info on AllATP's or American Flyers or some of the other big ones.

If anyone knows of a good business model to run and be profitable, please advise.

Thanks,

Check Six

Why would you want to get into this business now? Haven't you done research on all the flight schools that have gone out of business? You're not serious are you?

 

[LegacyDriver]

If anyone knows of a good business model to run and be profitable, please advise.

Thanks,

Check Six

Wal Mart, bud.