I Wish Our Website Was As Good As This

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

Sandy Stevenson wrote:

So, Dan, any chance we could get a look at your website for scheduling?
Sounds intriguing.

Sure, it's at http://cavershamweather.org.uk/ffb.html

Play around with it as much as you want. I haven't touched it since the
summer so I hope it still works! The only issues I didn't overcome is
that people can't cancel without going through me, and that old
bookings stay in the system (I'd need to go through the back-end once a
week clearing out old dates).


Dan

Sandy Stevenson wrote:

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.

I think there's too many slots in that system (four a day?). Cambridge
have only am/pm slots and I think that's the best way (you can see
their booking page at www.glide.co.uk by going to Member's Area-Two
seater booking. TBH all they're doing is rostering two instructors a
day, then letting four trainees book for am and four pm). I think they
might also keep one two-seater outside the booking system for "turn up
and wait" people, check flights, trial lessons etc.

Regards the post-solo-xc period, one idea I really liked the look of
was from a Canadanian club where small "teams" of a couple of suitable
trainees were formed with an instructor, and were then dedicated a good
GRP glider to use. Each trainee got a flight of up to two(?) hours,
while the trainee(s) who weren't flying "crewed" (in case of landout).
I think they also did ground school on xc theory together. It sounded a
very effective system.


Dan

I'm not familiar with the booking system being mentioned... Our club does do
a "sign up" sheet each training day. Students sign up for a one-hour block,
first-come first-choice. In that hour they can do several patterns or one
(sometimes two) higher flight, but they're not supposed to go over their
hour (much). If they want to go again, they sign up for another block AFTER
everyone else.

Private pilots who want to fly a ship also sign up for an hour block, and
try to pick the hour they want. Again, first arrival gets to pick their
hour. If two pilots want to go together, they can get a two-hour block. If
you're the last signup of the day, the sky's the limit... but if you come
back really late you may have to push back by yourself.

How to ensure there are people around to crew? That doesn't seem to be a
problem. We make it clear to new members that this is a CLUB, not a service.
You're expected to be there as much of the day as you can, and help with one
or more of washing, preflighting, pushing out, pushing in, tying down, and
maintenance (as you are able). Peer pressure keeps this honest. If someone
is warming the bench more than helping out, it's mentioned to them. Your
friends in the club will do anything for you once you've demonstrated you'll
do your share. Soon enough everyone finds out that there's much to be
learned on the ground from other members, so they stick around all day.

As one writer said earlier, not everyone has the drive to make it work for
themselves. There is a LOT to learn both on and off the field.


"Michael Ash" wrote in message
...
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