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How Can We Increase Funding in Aviation Training?

So many of us want to grow the aviation industry.  Check that, so many of us want to get more people excited about flying.  I want people to get out and experience how much fun it is to be at the controls of an airplane.  To feel what it is like to lift off into the air when you are the one taking the plane there.  To be cruising along at 10,000 feet by yourself, land at a few different airports, and realize that you too are a pilot.

I see so many people talking about this all of the time, but we see very little change in the numbers out there.  The number of pilots has gone down by roughly 25% over the last 40 years, and the number of female pilots has remained stagnant during that time at somewhere around 5-7%.  AOPA put together an interesting “State of General Aviation” report that gives a lot of numbers that show the decline of interest in aviation, which just makes me sad.

With so many of us talking about it, and wanting it to happen, why aren’t we seeing more change?

I don’t know.

But I do have a few thoughts that have been running through my head.

It seems like most of the stuff I see written about is how to make flight training less expensive which is definitely one side of the coin.  Unfortunately, I don’t see the cost of training going down anytime soon.  The cost of gas isn’t going to plummet all of a sudden.  As there are fewer serviceable planes, the cost to rent them will continue to go up.  And, as the supply of instructors remains low, they will continue to demand relatively high fees.

The problem with most of those things is that it would take action by the FAA to change them, and they have not shown much interest in making changes in that direction, so we probably shouldn’t count on that.

So if we can’t find ways to significantly lower the cost, then the other option is to find more sources of funding to get people flying.  There will always be those who want it so bad that they will find a way, and we need to find more ways to support them.  There are a handful of scholarships out there to help people with training, and while they are super helpful to the few that get them, they are not going to make a massive dent in the shortage that already exists.

The problem I see is how do we attract more people who may be more on the fence about becoming a pilot.  They think it would be interesting or fun, but they either have never looked into it because they assume it is so expensive, or they have looked into it and they don’t know how they would ever have enough money to follow that path.

It is interesting to me how many people are willing to take on massive costs to become doctors and lawyers and such, but there are seemingly fewer people willing to do the same to become pilots.  This makes no sense to me, though I am obviously biased, as flying has an incredibly fun dynamic to it that I just don’t see in legal or medical concerns.

It seems like there has actually been a perception change of what it even is to be a pilot.  Has flying become such a normal part of life that pilots are simply seen as airborne bus drivers?  Yeah you can make a good living, and go cool places, but is commercial flying really that exciting?

To be fair, flying for an airline or other business aviation company is not as exciting as flying in the Red Bull Air Races.  With increasing automation and regulation it does feel like it has lost some of its sex appeal.  I am in no way trying to diminish the value of what pilots do, or their vital role in keeping air travel safe, but even as a die-hard avgeek I can see why other career paths would be more appealing.  Especially ones that don’t require so much initial investment, with relatively limited funding options.

There must be a way to offer more reasonable funding options to get more of those fence sitters to give it a legitimate try which will lead them to realize how awesome it can be.  There do seem to be more and more airline cadet programs popping up around the world where the airline pays for your training, and then you work for them for a certain number of years.  That is a great idea, but it is apparent that airlines are not actively pursuing this route, at least not at scale.

In a similar vein to something Dan Pimentel wrote about a few years back, I would love to see the Elon Musk and Richard Branson’s of the world throw their weight behind some aggressive changes in the general aviation world to help get more people excited about it.  I realize though, that their aspirations are a little more focused on the end product at the moment, and not so much the grass-roots part of the industry.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a more grass-roots movement that could be effective.

In the last few months I have watched Savannah Raskey, aka @thesavytraveler on Instagram, as she asked people to donate to a Be Kind aviation scholarship.  I recall the number starting pretty low, around $1,000, but the number quickly reached $6,000 thanks to donations big and small from other individuals.

That is one person, who admittedly has a rather large following, who simply asked people to apply for a scholarship, and other people decided to donate to make that scholarship bigger.  I realize $6,000 isn’t going to get someone all the way to an airline, but it is one heck of a start to get someone excited about flying so they find a way to get the rest of the way, or even just become a lifelong private pilot who goes out chasing $100 hamburgers a few times a year.  Either way it is a win because we need both types of pilots to keep aviation strong.

So if one person can do that much with one ask, how much more could be done if the same method was carried out at scale?

It may do even better if it was a pay it forward type of model.  You get training paid for, and then when you reach your goals you return the favor to the next person.  I know there have been models like this in other industries with varying success, but I see aviation as being a little different since there is so much more of a community of people who actually care about the other people, and not just about making money off of it.

Now, getting a major seed fund from an Elon Musk or Richard Branson would be a huge boost to an effort like this, but I think it is possible even with the efforts of the every day pilots out there.  It would naturally start small, but I feel like it could be a snowball that could just continue to grow over time as the benefits of the individual turn into the benefits of the industry and more people get behind it.

Maybe this whole idea is a little out there, but maybe we need to start going a little “out there” if we are ever going to make a change in the right direction.

January 5, 2020 I Written By

I'm Dave and I am a proud Avgeek. It goes way beyond liking airplanes. It is a passion that cannot be subdued.

Creating Change in Aviation

Recently I have been reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of podcasts about business and personal development. There are some incredibly inspiring stories out there that I just sit in awe of as I hear them play out.

All of these people do amazing things to make the world a better place and to pursue their passions. Many of them make ridiculous amounts of money, but the part that always strikes a chord with me is how happy and fulfilled they all seem, and how that only inspires them to help more.

The person who is quickly inspiring me the most is Gary Vaynerchuk. If you haven’t heard the name you really should look him up on Twitter or Instagram or on his blog or podcast. The man has made his whole life around helping other people succeed and find happiness, and in turn, he has found unbelievable success. He also just released his fifth book, which is what inspired me to write this post.

The book is entitled Crushing It! and I have been enjoying it thoroughly since I got it. I will spare you the review for the time being and simply share the thoughts that it inspired in me as I read. Forgive me if they seem a little disjointed, but I wanted to share them now while they were fresh in my mind and heart.

He talks a lot about having a passion, which I honestly do have for aviation, as well as teaching, but he also talks a lot about providing value to customers, or as I see it, the people you care about, whether they be customers, or people you want to inspire, or people you want to help. Only when you provide value can you possibly have any real, lasting impact on the world.

I feel like this is an area I struggle with.

I want to provide value, but I often feel like there are people in aviation who simply know more than me, or that have more to offer than me so I will just keep quiet and let them do it. While there are tons of people who know more than me, I still have value to provide to the community, I just need to figure out what my niche is. Maybe it is the lesser known parts of the industry, seeing as how I am a navigator who has a very small, and shrinking, footprint in the industry. However, it is often some of the smallest footprints that can have the biggest impact when the time is right.

The area that I would like to create an impact in, is in the creation of pilots. I intentionally didn’t use the term flight training because I think we need to change the conversation and stop just looking at the problem or else we will never see the solution (one of my favorite scenes in the movie Patch Adams if you recognize the concept). I could be wrong, but not a whole lot has changed in the realm of pilot training in decades. Sure sims are becoming more common, and there are some cool advances in VR that may bear some fruit, but at its heart, it is still the same process.

Change for the sake of change is never a good idea, but it seems apparent to me that the creation of pilots could use an overhaul. I don’t know what exactly that looks like, but I find I learn more and create when I vocalize and discuss, so that is what I am trying to do here. I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts on the matter.

One idea I had was to create a system where students are able to get their early ratings, or maybe even all the way to an ATP, on a sort of scholarship fund that funds itself on a portion of the pilot’s salary from their dream airline job for maybe 10 years or something, just to throw out a number. It would obviously need a starting seed fund, and would take some time to bear real fruits, but I have learned that the best organizations are built around a community that cares about each other, and that is something I don’t think the aviation community takes advantage of nearly enough. Sure we are friendly with each other, for the most part, and we are happy to share a $100 hamburger run together, but I think there is a lot more we could do to truly foster and mentor the younger generation. Interest in aviation as a whole has waned as air travel has become more commonplace, and only the effort and passion of those of us that love it will ever re-excite this generation.

Another area that intrigues me is in fostering the growth of aviation in developing countries. Admittedly, flying a plane is a bit of a stretch for people who hardly have food and water, but if we can educate and inspire these people they will inevitably be the tide that raises all of the other boats around them. This doesn’t even necessarily have as much to do with flying as it does with teaching skills to these people in line with an education that will help them truly change the world. This train of thought definitely stems from having recently read the incredibly inspiring The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun, who has built hundreds of schools in some of the most poor parts of the world to allow kids to pursue their dreams of an education. Another must read if you enjoy learning about the greatness of people and the good going on in the world. They want to learn so bad that we are missing a great opportunity by not teaching them the skills that would dramatically change their lives forever. These thoughts may be straying from my message a little, but I wanted to share all of the insights I had today.

Originally I had one more thought, but decided it should have its own post so you can see that later, along with a sweet video I filmed on my flight today.

As you see, I don’t have some grand design to solve the pilot shortage, but I wanted to share my thoughts in a forum where maybe we can have some discussion. I just love this industry so much, and I hate the idea that anyone who truly loves it should not be able to be a part of it for something as trivial as money. There is plenty of that out there if we can just direct it properly.

Thank you for humoring me, assuming you made it this far, and I look forward to having some dialogue on the subject.

February 1, 2018 I Written By

I'm Dave and I am a proud Avgeek. It goes way beyond liking airplanes. It is a passion that cannot be subdued.

Discipline and Positivity Will Help Improve the Pilot Population as Much as Anything

Conditions are often not ideal, but when you work amongst positive people you can do amazing things.

Conditions are often not ideal, but when you work amongst positive people you can do amazing things.

There is an article I have seen circulating on social media about the pilot shortage and how airlines have largely brought it upon themselves through the way they treat their pilots.  While I don’t doubt that the airlines couldn’t treat all of their employees better (what company outside of Google couldn’t?), I found the article to be mostly a bunch of whining with a whole lot of contradiction.

The one area that I wholeheartedly agree with is that flying is becoming too darn expensive for the vast majority of people to pursue.  A select few may be able to secure scholarships, have rich parents, or survive a career in the military before going to an airline, but for the rest it will be a massive financial sacrifice to secure a good job flying planes.  No matter how much pride or excitement someone has for flying, if you can’t afford it, it will never happen.  That is the real challenge when it comes to people not becoming pilots.  I know it has been for me.

It all went downhill from there.

She goes on to mention how airline executives talked a lot about discipline in last week’s IATA conference and how that translates into cutting costs and charging passengers more.  However, the definition of discipline she provided was, “requiring punishment for bad behavior…”  So who exactly behaved badly here, the passengers who are being punished with increased fares and fees, or…yeah, I don’t see anybody else mentioned in the following paragraphs except for employees.  That is the real focus of the rest of the article.

I find it interesting that she chose to use that definition of discipline since she followed that up with plenty of examples of employees that could use a little discipline of the type she mentioned.  She also states that, “discipline is something you force, not something you earn.”  Which I completely disagree with because of the definition of discipline that I feel is far more applicable in this situation.  I prefer, “willing behavior in accord with rules of conduct.”  This likely stems from my military background and how I have seen both good and poor discipline affect outcomes. 

"Just a few people with a positive ideology can change the world."

“Just a few people with a positive ideology can change the world.”

When personal discipline is present amazing things can be accomplished and the organization as a whole functions more efficiently, and with higher morale.  The exact opposite occurs when a lack of discipline is exhibited, which is when her definition of discipline comes into play.  Personal discipline is in fact earned through hard work and determination to do your very best against all odds.  It is exactly the type of discipline that allows the diligent pilot to wade through all of the crap the article mentions to get to that cockpit they dreamed about their whole life. 

If that discipline then fades away because of the actions of an employer, that is an indictment of the individual, not the employer.  So you don’t make a ton of money at first, neither do most people coming out of college with mountains of student loan debt.  You have to spend time away from your family?  So does every military member in the world, and I’m not just talking about deployments.  But that was part of the job I signed up for and I knew what I was getting into.  If you didn’t take the time to understand the demands of the industry you are entering then once again, that is your problem, not your employer’s.

A story is then shared about having a vacation cut short by the company that was scheduled by the company at the expense of the author.  That really sucks, and if I was there when you had to cut your vacation short I would empathize with you, and probably agree with your complaints, and then go about doing my job the right way, because that is the kind of discipline that makes a successful company from the bottom to the top.  Instead she proceeds to describe how she regularly wasted company resources such as fuel by extending flights, provided poor customer service because “why should I care about the passenger who will miss the connection…”, and brags about how, “there are things I could and did do which cost the company thousands…”.

She submits that employees “aren’t doing anything wrong” when they act in these ways but therein lies the problem.  Just because you haven’t technically broken any rules does not mean you didn’t do anything wrong.  In fact the greatest contradiction in the article came right before that last quote, and it was easy to spot because it included the word “but”, “I was proud of my position, and I have a deep appreciation for my comrades, so I would never do anything to harm my professionalism, but there are things I could and did do which cost the company thousands…”

You are not proud of your position when you reject your own personal discipline in favor of petty retaliation that has no impact on the person that upset you.  There is no professionalism in admittedly costing your company thousands of dollars because you didn’t like the way you were treated.  We all have aspects of our jobs that suck, but you deal with it if it means enough to you, or you find a new profession.  Discipline is not just punishment, it is a willingness and determination to do your best and to do the right thing because that is who YOU are, not because everyone else gives you what you want, or what you think you deserve.  That is what true pride in your position entails, standing tall because you did your absolute best despite the challenges you faced.

We live in a world right now where people call foul when everything doesn’t go quite their way, even when they signed up for it.  Many people are quick to point out the shortfalls of an industry or company or person, and want to place the blame for everything squarely on somebody else’s shoulders.  Nobody wants to take accountability for the role they played in the situation no matter how minor.  It is no wonder that we see this in our leaders because so many of us exhibit it ourselves.

Fortunately, she actually provided the answer to her own contradictions near the very end of the article, and I could not agree more with the assessment.  “Just a few people with a positive ideology can change the world.”  WOW!  Those are powerful words that could not be more true.

The only way the next generation will be as passionate about aviation as we are is if we exhibited pride in our profession and discipline in our actions.

The only way the next generation will be as passionate about aviation as we are is if we exhibit pride in our profession and discipline in our actions.

If you stop and think for a minute, almost all of us can think of at least one person, if not many, that had a positive influence on our life that changed our world.  Maybe it was a teacher, coach, or family member, but their “positive ideology” inspired us to set and achieve goals that we never thought possible.  We saw the impact they had on us and we wanted to be like them.

We wanted to have an impact for good, but somewhere along the way many of us lost sight of that.  Instead we focus on the things that suck and how we were wronged by this person, or that stupid supervisor, or some company that screwed us over, and that is the ideology we have chosen to sell to anyone that will listen.  The relative anonymity of the internet has allowed us to project that negativity in ways never before possible, but there is absolutely no reason we can’t turn the tables  back in the other direction.

We can look at people like Ron Rapp who is quick to call out the FAA and other organizations when they damage the industry he has such a passion for, but also immediately follows that up with a solution that will meet the intent of proposed changes while at the same time improving the industry as a whole.

Or Eric Auxier who actively promotes the wonders of aviation to anyone that will listen.  He acknowledges the challenges he has faced, and continues to face, but chooses to have a positive outlook and focus on the good.

To quote something attributed to Abraham Lincoln in the movie Pollyanna , “If you look for the good, you will surely find it.”  That is true of everything in life, but is something that can be a great challenge if you never look for it.  It takes a concerted effort to get past all of the crap that happens and choose to focus on the good.

It bears repeating what the author said near the end of her article because it is the message she should have shared instead of the paragraphs of complaining and negativity that she chose to focus on.  I will be the first to admit that I struggle with this same challenge, which is maybe why I was so quick to recognize it, but all of us would be a lot happier, and our industry would be a lot more appealing if each of us would commit to the following phrase:

“Just a few people with a positive ideology can change the world.”

June 17, 2015 I Written By

I'm Dave and I am a proud Avgeek. It goes way beyond liking airplanes. It is a passion that cannot be subdued.