Finding Students
 

Hi new CFI, Just got a job instructing at a local 61/141 FBO looking for some good ways to recruit new students (where to find them, what sells them, etc). Let me know what has worked for you.

Printing business cards, posting them everywhere, and having a website has worked for me.
- www.flyintallahassee.com -

Don't just looking for people that are willing to start flight training. Find anyone that wants to go up in an airplane and some of these will end up as your students. Word of mouth goes a LONG way. More than 1/2 of my students are referrals from older students.

Get into the school's records and call EVERYONE on their list. Some gave up flying, some are not current, etc. All they need is a little push. I've seen new CFI's get 1000 hours in a year after doing this.

Where are you flying out of?

When I was in your shoes, I went over to the local community college where this guy had been teaching private pilot ground school for years. Turns out, no CFI had ever come in a pushed flight training. I got three students out of 10 in the class. Or, maybe you could find a school that would let YOU teach a PPL ground class as a non-credit course.

Have a nice business card made up and make some flyers you can post at unaligned FBO's, airport cafes, college campuses, workout clubs, Safeways, ect...

Craigslist. Maybe even Ebay.

As much as I hate sales, I'd love to take a crack at selling GA flight instruction. I just don't want to do all the flight training. You're not around Spokane, are you?

Business cards work. I put them up everywhere. I put one up at a "jet center" wx breifing room. Not a good place to find students, but a guy called me and offered me a right seat corporate job over the phone.

As a comm. pilot who will be done with his CFI soon, what do you guys suggest putting on the business card? Should I list down what I can do? For example, I will have the following:

-Commercial single and multi-engine land, and commercial single-engine sea.
-Instrument Rated
-CFI/CFII/MEI

If you live in the same city as your high school, call the administration and see if you can set up a 'career talk' with some juniors or seniors. Or perhaps, just see if there are any career exploration events going on at nearby high schools, colleges, universities.

Of course the easiest thing to do that will make you feel accomplished in actively recruiting would simply be to put up flyers around coffee shops and any other gathering space of people. Wealthy neighborhoods are the best of course.

Thanks for the good ideas, I am in Seattle.

Landings: Aviation's Databases

Use this database and direct mail people local to you offering to finish their ratings,BFR etc..

Still wondering about this:

As a comm. pilot who will be done with his CFI soon, what do you guys suggest putting on the business card? Should I list down what I can do? For example, I will have the following:

-Commercial single and multi-engine land, and commercial single-engine sea.
-Instrument Rated
-CFI/CFII/MEI