If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline,” said Sir Richard Branson. Not everyone with an aviation business wants to be a millionaire. Aviation businesses can be a lifestyle or operate as a not-for-profit. However, no one wants to go broke.
In our May-June 2021 article Five Tips for Success, we discussed how marketing determines the success of flight schools. The tips given included: a focus on customers, making your school the place to be, creating an appealing online presence, plus finding and owning your school’s market niche.
Another key determinate is the way the business is run. Yes, flight schools or clubs are a business and need to be run like one to survive, or even better, flourish.
Often owners are pilots without business, accounting, finance, legal, economic, insurance, or technology backgrounds. Complicating factors include: a difficult business environment, rising inflation driving increased fuel, rent, and people costs, complex new and existing regulations ‘add zero to revenue’ administration and time-sapping never ending paperwork.
Economies of scale, or the ability to spread costs over a wide range of activities, is the friend of larger operations, but can be a killer for small players. The low, medium or high demand for flight training in the school’s particular geographical location can make a huge difference to the chance of success.
In Australia during Covid, many factors such as political fallout with a major trading partner, the cash flow generating, economy of scale building, overseas student
