Combo Deals -- Do they work?

How about putting ads in the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities, etc.,
newspapers with reduced room rates if an intro flight is taken? Guests
can take an intro flight either at IOW or bring a coupon saying they took
one recently someplace for the discount. Say if a room is $75/night
without a intro flight or $65 w/intro flight included, I would take the
intro flight just for the discount.

I personally think that's a great idea, but our local FBO is not keen on
teaching people to fly. For them it's, at best, a break-even business
venture -- or, at least, that's what they like to tell us.

We *do* offer 30 minute flights for up to 3 people for just $75 bucks
through them, which is a GREAT deal nowadays. (It was $60, until the latest
gas price run-up...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:uJDZe.402545$xm3.398599@attbi_s21...
How about putting ads in the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities, etc.,
newspapers with reduced room rates if an intro flight is taken? Guests
can take an intro flight either at IOW or bring a coupon saying they took
one recently someplace for the discount. Say if a room is $75/night
without a intro flight or $65 w/intro flight included, I would take the
intro flight just for the discount.

I personally think that's a great idea, but our local FBO is not keen on
teaching people to fly. For them it's, at best, a break-even business
venture -- or, at least, that's what they like to tell us.

Your local FBO, and mine, and all the others are going to be sucking serious
wind in 10 years, maybe less because they are not turning over every rock in
sight trying to find and train new pilots. Once all the old guys (no slight
here, but the aviation crowd is a very old demographic) stop flying, the GA
market is going to contract in a huge way, and the sales of fuel,
accessories, airplane rental, and everything else is going to drop like a
rock.

The odd thing is that the FBO's don't seem to realize that they are cutting
their own throats when they don't recruit new pilots and/or when they try to
do anything more than break even on student pilots. In many businesses,
there is a loss leader which is used to get the consumer in the door, with
the next step being to upgrade that customer to something more profitable.
Our FBO's need to adopt the same principle, and forget profiting on PPSEL
students. Once folks are pilots, that's when the FBO's stand a chance to
make money in rentals, rating upgrades, fuel, etc.

My home FBO, for instance sold its fleet of C-152's ($42/hr) a few years ago
and replaced them with C-172's ($75 - $120/hr, depending on the airplane).
Simulataneously, they upped their primary training instructor rate from
$21/hr to $35/hr. That took the cost of dual instruction from ~$65/hr wet
to ~$110/hr wet, even in the FBO's doggiest C-172. For the student who only
needed 20 dual hours and 20 solo hours to "graduate", those changes added
~$1,600 to the cost of getting a PPSEL.

We *do* offer 30 minute flights for up to 3 people for just $75 bucks
through them, which is a GREAT deal nowadays. (It was $60, until the
latest gas price run-up...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

The odd thing is that the FBO's don't seem to realize that they are
cutting their own throats when they don't recruit new pilots

I've been telling them that very same thing for the last 8 years.

Of course, in that time, we've had three FBOs, so they don't seem to be
"getting it"...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"