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