Greg,

The FBO I trained at uses MyFBO. This is a flight school with four or five
planes, and maybe 100 students. I would say this system is no better or
worse than its peers, each has their advantages and quirks. As a customer,
I think this is one of the best things the FBO did for business. I almost
never call to schedule a plane, instead I just book online at my
convenience. Actually, since I own I mainly schedule instructors these
days, as do several other students. There is a modest learning curve, but
overall the system is not that difficult to use. There are other advantages
you didn't mention, such as printing out dispatch sheets, record keeping
(allows customers to track hours and account balance), and so on.

The MyFBO site has been fairly reliable, I can think of only a handful of
times when it was down, and usually not for more than a few hours. When
this happens, the FBO reverts to pencil and paper scheduling. If your
internet conneciton is flakey, then this is a concern as flight instructors
and desk staff will be using this system frequently. If you can't improve
the connection, then this system is probably not for you.

Somewhat off topic, but the other addition the FBO made was to install a
wireless router to open their connection up to customers. This has been
quite useful for flight planning in the FBO lounge.

best of luck,
mark

"Greg Esres" wrote in message
...
Our flight school is currently trying to move to an online, internet
based scheduling system, using a service provided by "MyFBO".

The idea is to schedule via the internet (even when standing at the
counter at the flight school) for all flights that occur after the
current day. Every morning, the staff will print out a schedule for
the day and any changes for that day must be done to the paper
schedule.

The consensus of the flight instructors and staff is that the
interface is extremely difficult to use, and slow. There will be only
one computer available for all users to make changes to the schedule
and the internet connection is a bit flakey. While frequent users
will probably be able to learn the system, it seems unlikely that
students/renters will develop any kind of proficiency with the system.
As far as I can tell, there are no contingency plans about what to do
when the system goes down.

Does anyone have an experience with online scheduling with large
flight schools? How well did it work?

Thanks for any thoughts.