So, Dan, any chance we could get a look at your website for scheduling?
Sounds intriguing.
Concerning our current plans, we may refine it some more, but as I
currently understand it, our plan is to book only one of our two
seaters with an instructor and students this tightly. The other two
seater and both single seats will be able to be booked, but are
available for ad hoc flights if they are not booked.
The primary users of the other two seater are intro rides, solo
students, and licenced pilots wanting to take family or friends up.
The points made about weather scrambling schedules are right, so we
plan to rotate each group through the 8 available slots each weekend to
give each student a fair chance at some soaring flights, and equal
exposure to the risk of weather delays.
Part of the flexibility of the system we're trying to achieve, and I
doubt it's going to be a perfect system, just better than what we have
had, is that nothing prevents a second instructor from using the second
two seater for additional instruction if it's not otherwise booked.
Given that our field has facilities for campers, and many people do
overnight at the field, if the lift is poor many of our cross country
pilots are also instructors, so there are days when the additional
instruction opportunities do come about.
Hopefully we'll make our ab initio students feel that their time and
contribution is valued and we'll improve our retention rates.


Dan G wrote:
I've spoken to many club members who didn't come back for a second year
of gliding. The main reason given was, indeed, the intrusion of "real
life". However drilling down it was more that they could not afford to
invest a whole day on the airfield, *especially* given that they only
got two or three flights out of it. (BTW, no-one told me they'd left
because it seemed too hard or there was too much to learn, although I
understand that could potentially be a factor.)

These scheduling/booking systems mentioned only amount to making sure
that there's x number of instructors on the field for a period of a few
hours, with y number of students to fly with. We're not talking slots
of 9.15, 9.30 etc.

I spent a weekend at Cambridge last summer and talked to, well,
everyone about their system. As Martin says they have less people on
the field, but no-one deemed it a problem, more something that just
needed to gotten used to.

This one simple system could have a dramatic effect on membership
progression and retention. The problem is getting it introduced. Anyone
in the UK who watched "Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS?" knows exactly
what I mean when I say that anyone I talk to tells me "but it's not the
way we do things". I understand Cambridge had this problem, and
conviced the large majority people before railroading the remaing
stubborn few :-).

Let me give an example. Last summer I organised flying on Friday
evenings. Via e-mail I'd arrange winch drivers and instructors. Then
I'd let three students come per each instructor, and everyone got to
fly three times in just three hours (instead of the usual six+).

Then I wrote a webpage (Zoho Creator) which basically did all this for
me. Every time an instructor signed up, the system allowed three more
students to book. It even has RSS feeds so students can be alerted as
soon as more slots are available.

Could I get this introduced? Could I heck! People couldn't grasp that
it wasn't any different from what I'd been doing manually. Luckily a
more forward-thinking instructor has "seen the light" and we're working
on getting it running this summer. My dream is that eventually the
whole club will use the system for all days...


Dan