Freelance CFI's Step Inside

[sbav8r]

Wow, that's dedication.

 

[Skyline]

Do what you have to.

sbrv8r,

It was during the resession of the early 90's. No one was hiring. I made enough in one summer to pay off the plane and got my first air taxi job by flying into a remote AK village to give instruction to a drunk. I got to know the owner and they had a vacancy. Two years later I did the same thing with an Apache. Sometimes it takes a lot to get going to nowhere.

Skyline

 

[convair007]

I've posted this before, but set up a ground school. I was never a freelance instructor, but while teaching at the company I was with, I talked to a local high school and set up an accredited ground school. It was great! First of all, they paid me $5000 per semester. I had 27 high school students in my class that took the course as an elective. Jeppesen donated text books, and the school supplied me with anything else I needed. The class was held during first hour, then I would leave to go flight instruct. It was a great gig and recommend it to anyone who is flight instructing. Anyone who wants to try this feel free to PM me with any ?'s.

 

[pilotmiketx]

I hung a flyer on the FBO's community board, and the next day I get a phone call from the airport's only flight school manager. He says: "I saw your flyer and I wanted to call and wish you luck on you endeavor. By the way, as a head's up, the village has a minimum standard policy that you need to adhere to if you don't want to end up in trouble."

In what kind of trouble? What's he gonna do, evict you from you non-office? Use the $10 extra dollars per month that his flight school is clearing to hire an attorney and sue you? If you're not leasing space from the airport, I'm pretty sure all he can is sit in his too-big office and worry that you'll take business away from him.

When I started a small flight school (after freelancing, because for some reason most folks don't own their own planes) I had a lot of empty threats from the other flight schools when their customers started migrating to my place.

One thing I did to promote my business was download the FAA pilot database and sent professional postcards to certain pilots in a geographic area around my town. Not sure why more flight schools don't do this, but my guess is that it takes a little work and costs a little money. You could target people with just private pilots w/ no instrument ticket and offer instrument instruction or BFRs or just Student Pilots and offer finish up courses. The possibilities are endless. Also have some professional business cards printed. Stay away from the airplane clip-art and cloud background--you want yours to stand out and not look like every other CFIs.

Find a pilot supply distributor to sign up with. There's a couple who don't require any minimum purchase and take credit cards and do phone orders, etc. That way, when you get a new student and he needs $200 worth of pilot goodies, you can sell it to him instead of sending him off to buy it elsewhere. And when times are slow, you can Ebay all the headsets and E6Bs that you want!

Good luck, have fun and fly safe!

 

[FN FAL]

In what kind of trouble? What's he gonna do, evict you from you non-office? Use the $10 extra dollars per month that his flight school is clearing to hire an attorney and sue you? If you're not leasing space from the airport, I'm pretty sure all he can is sit in his too-big office and worry that you'll take business away from him!

Free lancing out of a managed airport that requires a formal airport agreement to conduct business there is not an FBO thing, it's a government thing.

Suing isn't what's going to happen if the FBO turns you into airport management authorities for operating as a flight instructor or revenue generating flight operation at an airport that requires an operating agreement.