I Wish Our Website Was As Good As This

Ian wrote:
Absolutely. A quick glance at the statistics in S&G will show that
gliding attracts plenty of people - and then loses them again. Even
though many customers have no intention of taking more than the trial
lesson (not a joyride. dear me not a joyride. certainly not a joyride.
a nice, legal, trial lesson), the attrition rate for those who do join
is dreadful.

I started out with my club this past summer. By an interesting
coincidence, three other guys also started out at almost the same time as
I did. We didn't all show up all the time, but we often shared our
instructor, helped push each other out, had ground instruction together,
talked over our different experiences, etc. I even started carpooling to
the airport with one of them who happens to live nearby.

Now only my carpool buddy and I are left. Some times I even have my doubts
about him, but that's probably because he's progressing slower and isn't
able to fly as often. Of the other two, one had Real Life intervene and
the other got frustrated with the amount of not-flying he was doing. (He
was keeping a running count of the number of times he had come to the
airport and not been able to fly, due to some bad luck with scheduling and
mechanical problems. I think he got up to five or six.)

And I am afraid that's down to clubs and members, many of whom think
that learning to glide is a) a good trial of character and b) a source
of unpaid ground labour for private owners. Let's face it, learning to
glide - or trying to learn to glide - can be a miserable experience.

I don't have experience with other operations, but as far as I can tell my
club is very good about this. And yet I still see a lot of fresh faces
come... and go.

Maybe it's just inherent in a complicated activity that takes a lot of
dedication that people will drop out. We always hear about how gym
memberships surge after the New Year, then 90% of the new members stop
going after a little while.

I have a bit of perspective from the other side. I did powered training
many years ago, up to and a bit past solo, then quit. The reasons are
complicated but I think a big one is that it was just too daunting. Flying
looks (and is!) fun, but there are a lot of rules and procedures and
little details to know.

When we imagine flying before we start learning it, it's often the classic
"kick the tires and light the fires". The reality can be a letdown from
that, whether it's remembering all the right things to say on the radio or
getting up before dawn so you can help wrestle the club ships out of the
hangar, then sit around for a couple of hours before it's your turn in the
tow list. Of course the plusses far outweigh the minuses, but this sudden
realization that there is actual work involved can be a downer.

The club environment can be a big help there. When you're not flying you
get to talk about flying with a variety of interesting people with
contagious enthusiasm, and see and hear the kinds of things you'll be able
to do as you become more advanced. But even then, a lot of people don't
stick with it.

What more can be done? (An honest question, not rhetorical.)

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

It's interesting to see that this is apparently a world wide problem.
The post below could have been written from my club in Canada.
My view of it is that we have to improve support for new member-pilots
by
improving the number of flights per day that they get, and by
shortening the
solo and licence cycles. We've seen Cambridge's booking system, and
started a simplified booking system of our own last season. This year
we're trying to
improve it by assignng students to an instructor and a two seat
aircraft in
pairs for 90 minute blocks. When there's no lift, we're hoping this
will get each
student 2 to 3 flights each during the block.
Since we can only fly six months of the year, we're hoping to solo and
licence people sooner with this system.
From a previous post on this topic, it appears that there's some
circumstance in the UK where trial flights must be introductory lesson
flights. We don't necessarily have that as a formal restriction, but
obviously we do make the first lesson available to people coming out
for a flight. We are able to recognize, however, that some people just
want to go up for the sake of saying they've done it. They never intend
to learn to fly. We try to look after them as well, since we make
money from their flights.
Hopefully Mel will write back in a few months and let us know what the
results from her website have been. It certainly puts anything we have
in our club to shame, or anything else I've seen in Canada, even York
Soaring's site, which is pretty decent.





Michael Ash wrote:
Ian wrote:
Absolutely. A quick glance at the statistics in S&G will show that
gliding attracts plenty of people - and then loses them again. Even
though many customers have no intention of taking more than the trial
lesson (not a joyride. dear me not a joyride. certainly not a joyride.
a nice, legal, trial lesson), the attrition rate for those who do join
is dreadful.

I started out with my club this past summer. By an interesting
coincidence, three other guys also started out at almost the same time as
I did. We didn't all show up all the time, but we often shared our
instructor, helped push each other out, had ground instruction together,
talked over our different experiences, etc. I even started carpooling to
the airport with one of them who happens to live nearby.

Now only my carpool buddy and I are left. Some times I even have my doubts
about him, but that's probably because he's progressing slower and isn't
able to fly as often. Of the other two, one had Real Life intervene and
the other got frustrated with the amount of not-flying he was doing. (He
was keeping a running count of the number of times he had come to the
airport and not been able to fly, due to some bad luck with scheduling and
mechanical problems. I think he got up to five or six.)

And I am afraid that's down to clubs and members, many of whom think
that learning to glide is a) a good trial of character and b) a source
of unpaid ground labour for private owners. Let's face it, learning to
glide - or trying to learn to glide - can be a miserable experience.

I don't have experience with other operations, but as far as I can tell my
club is very good about this. And yet I still see a lot of fresh faces
come... and go.

Maybe it's just inherent in a complicated activity that takes a lot of
dedication that people will drop out. We always hear about how gym
memberships surge after the New Year, then 90% of the new members stop
going after a little while.

I have a bit of perspective from the other side. I did powered training
many years ago, up to and a bit past solo, then quit. The reasons are
complicated but I think a big one is that it was just too daunting. Flying
looks (and is!) fun, but there are a lot of rules and procedures and
little details to know.

When we imagine flying before we start learning it, it's often the classic
"kick the tires and light the fires". The reality can be a letdown from
that, whether it's remembering all the right things to say on the radio or
getting up before dawn so you can help wrestle the club ships out of the
hangar, then sit around for a couple of hours before it's your turn in the
tow list. Of course the plusses far outweigh the minuses, but this sudden
realization that there is actual work involved can be a downer.

The club environment can be a big help there. When you're not flying you
get to talk about flying with a variety of interesting people with
contagious enthusiasm, and see and hear the kinds of things you'll be able
to do as you become more advanced. But even then, a lot of people don't
stick with it.

What more can be done? (An honest question, not rhetorical.)

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

I think the main problem with dropouts is that people decide to start
soaring with insufficient information about the requirements and/or
insufficient thought about what the process will demand from them. Part
of this stems from the fact that the clubs don't want to scare off
prospective members, while other parts of it are due to wishful
thinking and even outright laziness on the part of the prospect.

Perhaps we should sell soaring more like the military special forces
sell themselves to potential recruits: people know going in that
it's very tough, and that most won't make it. The elitism, of
course, present problems of its own, but the special forces don't
seem to lack recruits. Another time honored way is to treat family
members, good friends and neighbors to an orientation flight, and then
closely mentor them through the difficult learning phase if they show
true interest in flying.

In my case I was willing to endure practically anything to become a
pilot, due to my dreams, temperament and family history. Need to wait
for good weather? No problem. Need to study hard to pass the FAA
written exam? No problem. Need to make lots of flights to master the
various required flight skills due to being middle aged? No problem. I
didn't need a mentor, and I didn't mind the monetary or time costs.

Obviously, I don't have an answer to the problem. What I do know is
that the number of pilots in the US are dropping year by year. Most
people who show up at a glider port are not as single minded as me, and
creative means must be devised to attract new pilots to the sport.

-John

Sandy Stevenson wrote:

solo and licence cycles. We've seen Cambridge's booking system, and
started a simplified booking system of our own last season. This year
we're trying to improve it by assignng students to an instructor and a two seat
aircraft in pairs for 90 minute blocks. When there's no lift, we're hoping this
will get each student 2 to 3 flights each during the block.

I'm a Cambridge pilot who went solo before the booking system was
introduced and then, for reasons that are not relevant to this thread,
needed to re-solo last year. As a result I've done the pre-solo thing
both with and without the booking system in place.

The upside is that ab initios get to fly with minimal waiting around.
The downside is that students and club members wanting two seat time are
much less likely to turn up "on spec", so the launch point is more
likely to be short-handed and, worse, people who know the ropes are in
short supply. This is probably more of a problem with winching than for
aero towing but it certainly makes smooth operations more difficult if
you're trying to run both flight lines.

A side effect is that there are many fewer people around the launch
point to talk to, so the perceived friendliness of the club is reduced.

This isn't an attack on the booking system which, in general, works
well. However it does flag up the issues I've mentioned. Maybe my
experience makes then more obvious than they would be to a first time
student: I can't tell. I've thought about it and can't see an easy
solution to these downsides but maybe somebody cleverer than me can come
up with good ideas.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

gliding attracts plenty of people - and then loses them again. ....
the attrition rate for those who do join is dreadful.

This is a long standing (and known) issue in the airplane training
community, although I expect it's worse in gliding. From the National
Association of Flight Instructors
http://www.nafinet.org/news/2002%20-... o%20FAA.html
-

the new US sport pilot rating: "Lower entry barriers could reverse
the long-standing dropout rate of student pilots"

and

"A major problem in flight training is the “drop-out” factor; a
situation that sees many people complete a few hours of training,
perhaps even through solo flight, then lose interest. We need to uncover
why that occurs and take steps to remedy it...."

Tony V.

Sandy Stevenson wrote:
It's interesting to see that this is apparently a world wide problem.
The post below could have been written from my club in Canada.
My view of it is that we have to improve support for new member-pilots
by
improving the number of flights per day that they get, and by
shortening the
solo and licence cycles. We've seen Cambridge's booking system, and
started a simplified booking system of our own last season. This year
we're trying to
improve it by assignng students to an instructor and a two seat
aircraft in
pairs for 90 minute blocks. When there's no lift, we're hoping this
will get each
student 2 to 3 flights each during the block.
Since we can only fly six months of the year, we're hoping to solo and
licence people sooner with this system.

The idea of a booking system seems like a good idea. I don't know if our
club is big enough for it (3 gliders, 1 tow plane) but often this summer I
was out at the field getting one flight per day, with my fellow students
who were also getting one flight per day, thinking that it work just as
well and be a lot less driving if we came out half as often and got two
flights per day.

Martin's point about a booking system making for an emptier airfield has
some merit to it, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Maybe having
better instructor/student coordination would be better, but it's hard to
see how. We can e-mail the instructor ahead of time and ask if he has room
for another student one day, but there's no good way for two students to
notice that they're both flying on both Saturday and Sunday and arrange it
so they each fly one day, but with more flights.

Simply flying more often overall would be good as well, but I'm not sure
that can be done without obtaining more equipment or people, as our
gliders/instructors tend to be completely booked all day when a number of
students are at the field.

From a previous post on this topic, it appears that there's some
circumstance in the UK where trial flights must be introductory lesson
flights. We don't necessarily have that as a formal restriction, but
obviously we do make the first lesson available to people coming out
for a flight. We are able to recognize, however, that some people just
want to go up for the sake of saying they've done it. They never intend
to learn to fly. We try to look after them as well, since we make
money from their flights.

Officially, our club only offers instructional flights, and only to
members. (This being club rules, not government.) Unofficially, anybody
can be a temporary member for a month for a reasonable fee, and our
instructors are happy to accomodate anything from "teach me to fly!" to "I
just want to get some good pictures". And as you say, we make money from
it so we like them all.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

Gliding, by its very nature is dependent on weather and as such, very
resistent to precise scheduling. Schedules usually go hayware by the second
hour. Flight training is time intensive and its made worse by the
one-to-one relatioship of instructor to student. The need to get glider,
instructor and weather aligned so that some instruction can take place is
very frustrating to the student. The student may take some solace in the
fact that those trying to provide instruction are frustrated by the same
things.

It even seems to me that trying to force flight instruction into a
pre-conceived time structure lessens the value of instruction. Often the
schedule forces and end to a session just as the studnet is achieving some
breakthrough. The student who could benefit from some intense follow
through is chased away to make time for the next student. This is really
not a good use of either the students time or the instructors.

Well, what can be done? Lasham seems to have had good experiences with
wintertime instruction using a flight simulator. However, I don't have
acccess to that equipment. What I have done is use Condor Flight Simulator
as an "animated white board" to illustrate maneuvers in an interesting and
entertaining way in a ground school setting. This produces a well prepared
student whose actual flight training progresses much faster than without the
ground school. Ground school is a LOT easier to schedule than flight
instruction.

Ground school can take place much closer to where most students live and
classes can have ten or more students. This doesn't in itself solve the
scheduling problem but it does accelerate the students progress which
lessens the frustration.

If really good simulators were widely available, they might have some real
impact on student retention. I've had some speculative conversations with
students along the lines of asking how they would feel if every maneuver was
practised on a simulator before is was attempted in flight. I sensed that
this would provide great releif to students fearful of certain maneuvers.
Im sure that this sense of unease has driven off more than a few students.

Bill Daniels

In typically impeccable timing (for this discussion at least!), our CFI
has just put out a proposal for accelerating pilots through to the XC
phase (See the newsletter at
http://www.londonglidingclub.co.uk/gliderpilots.xml). In particular it
highlights a coordinated booking and instructor system aimed at keeping
students flying with the same instructors. To me it looks like a good
balance.

Perhaps, though, we are all so focused on the flying that we forget
that most of us still fly because of our friends. (Admit it it's not a
sign of weakness!) And, in this vein, it's great to see that SOSA (the
friendliest club I've ever flown at) is doing so well. I wonder how
much of their growth and success is because it's really very welcoming
and relaxed?! Lets face it, who wants to spend a whole day somewhere
where people don't even bother to learn your name?

Let's attract people who have a better idea of what gliding actually
is, then make sure they don't leave by bringing them into the
community. Let's not ditch them at the worst point in their flying
career (endless post solo check flights), and let's share our
enthusiasm with everybody who walks onto the airfield!

It is a great sport after all - why are we so shy at talking to people
who haven't proven their long term staying power? (Or who can only
just spare enough time to book a slot!)

Mel
[sorry, couldn't resist the touchy feely today!]

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

Bill Daniels bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:

If really good simulators were widely available, they might have some real
impact on student retention.

From what i have seen, the problem is not only student retention, but
also retention of people at all levels of experience. Here around Paris,
young students frequently succeed in doing the whole formation in just
one summer holidays, but will they come back next year? Supposing they
come back and do the 50km, 300 km next year will they continue up to
500km and further? In many cases after some years people get tired and
drop out. A much bigger influx of newcomers would be necessary to
support persistence of activity. Last summer i went visit a club in
south of France, near Bayonne, which i know has several plastic gliders,
Pegase, ASK21, etc. There was fine wheather, and it was during holidays.
I found closed doors! I am convinced that drastic measures to augment
attractivity to young people, reduce price, etc. are absolutely
necessary for survival of this sport.

--

Michel TALON