Captain Levin
Will you give PIREP from your seat in the Flight Levels that indicates the present position of flight instruction with relative bearings to the plight paths of SAFEty and Career Flight Instruction and Programs like the MCFI?
Since we already have women flight instructors and women ATPs why do you list participation and access for them in your list of destinations for our new organization?

Over

GA safety has not improved in the past 10 years. From 1999-2007 (the last year the NTSB provides Data Tables - http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table10.htm ) “Accidents per 100,000 Flight Hours” has increased from 6.5 to 6.8 and fatal accidents are virtually unchanged at 1.19 (vs. 1.16). That’s about 50 times more dangerous when compared to Air Carriers, and 5 times worse when compared to the fatal accident rate of motor vehicles (per 100,000 miles). Who better than the aerospace educator is in a position to positively impact the knowledge and behavior of pilots? I propose that any aerospace education organization establish decreased incident and accident rates linked to efforts by that organization as one measure of its success.

Career flight instructors earn a living wage as an aerospace educator as a destination, not just a waypoint or a hobby. I don’t have any reliable data to indicate the status quo in terms of CFIs that are professional educators. I propose that any aerospace education organization perform this baseline research and measure the percentage increase in educators that earn annual wages/benefits between $60K– $80K, 80K-100K, and above 100K linked to efforts by that organization as one measure of its success.

Since I first became a MCFI in 2000, the program has garnered a participation rate of less than one half of one percent of current flight instructors. I propose any continuing education and career flight instructor recognition programs measure its success, at least in part, by the percentage participation of current flight instructors. I also propose the measurement of flight instruction delivery by career educators (vs. time builders/hobbyists).

Only 5% of aerospace program managers are women. Less than 4% of the senior leadership at the 34 top aerospace and defense companies is female and 85% of companies have no women in executive-leadership positions. These numbers have not improved by even one percent in 15 years. Just as women comprise less than 4% of engineers in the workforce that hold doctorates in aerospace, mechanical and electrical engineering, there is a parallel stagnation of less than 7% of the CFIs and less than 4% of Airline Transport Pilot Certificates awarded to women over the past decade – and the percentage of women airline transport pilots, has not changed by even 1% in 10 years. I propose that any aerospace education organization establish increased access and participation by women and under-represented minorities linked to efforts by that organization as one measure of its success.

V/R

Mordechai

Mordechai, you are singing my song! I'm still surprised that when I sign up to speak at OSH on the topic of aviation education and promoting aviation, there is NO subject area for this, except "Other".

While our safety record can always be improved upon, why is it no one ever compares aviation to the 42,000 annual deaths on American roads??? Even accounting for per capita drivers vs. pilots, we're doing pretty darn well.

Your measurement discussion is spot on. I've had the same discussion across many forums. As the president of the Iowa Aviation Promotion Group (www.FlyIowa.org), I instituted programs designed to grow the pilot population in the state, and added measurements to see how we're doing. By the way, the FAA releases monthly pilot figures on its website, county-by-county....except they have NO trend data! I've been keeping my own, based on their data, since July 2005, and plotting and publishing it monthly.

One of the programs we're doing at IAPG is hosting half-day aviation camps for kids. We've done them all over the state. This summer I'm holding two camps that span five half-days. I call them "Air School". I challenge all of you to do the same. Infect them with aviation!

I wrote the cover story for the May 2006 issue of Mentor magazine, the topic was on growing GA. When I do talks on the subject, I mention the "alien stare" used at most FBOs in the country to scare away prospective students, and the "Maytag Repairman" school of marketing, which is, sit and watch the phone ring.....it doesn't. In that article, I wrote about many ways to get things moving at your airport and flight school. I have done many speeches on how to grow GA, and will do them anywhere if my expenses are covered. I'm on a speaker's bureau (www.ailerona.com), so if anyone would like, I can arrange to speak at your event.

CFI pay is a great topic, and one that's frustrating because we can fix it!!! I found out that I'm paying my CFIs better than 90% of the schools in the country, including the big ones, and we've got a long way to go. As someone noted, being a CFI is not an inexpensive proposition, and if we're going to be professionals, we need to be paid like professionals. I'd like to think we should be getting paid more than massage therapists and ski instructors.

Why is it that only 20% of CFI holders actually teach even ONE student per year? If every CFI taught just one student per year, we'd double the pilot population in just a few short years. Instead, we've been going backwards for more than 10 years.

We've solve a ton of technical problems in aircraft. We have airframe parachutes, airbags, glass cockpits, GPS with moving maps, satellite weather systems, collision avoidance systems, terrain awareness systems, great autopilots, and beautifully modern airplanes that are cleaner, faster, safer, than ever before. They have sporty interiors that owners can truly be proud of. So what's the problem? Not enough PILOTS!

At the end of the day, I have a dream. (This is my "I have a dream" speech.) All of this flying stuff is about supply and demand. There are not enough pilots to get the cost of aircraft and insurance down to a reasonable level. If we make more pilots, then both will start to become affordable. We've never reached critical mass. Right now we're under 600,000 pilots. My dream is 6 MILLION pilots, and factories that actually mass produce aircraft. 2000 aircraft per year by Cirrus is a tiny number (and I KNOW the Klapmeiers would love to make it a big number). How about 200,000 per year? We need to work at it together.....challenge ourselves, market aviation. Grow many, many more pilots. Driver's Ed is an expectation by every American kid. Let's make Flyer's Ed an expectation!

- Tim

Mordechai, your recommendations are very pertinent to the future of this organization, and should be listened to. Essentially, you are challenging the group to identify discrete outcomes (goals) that would have tangible impacts on our industry. This is a very salient point. Member operated organizations typically focus on only serving the needs of their dues-paying constituency, and put less effort into addressing the needs of their clients (students and future aerospace professionals) and a broader usefulness to the industry. Other organizations have made this evolutionary leap very successfully.

Cheers,
Steve

Mordechai - These are good concepts. If we only meet the needs of our constituency, that would make a great 6-month, short term goal. There is much to be done. We've already come light years ahead by just having this blog.

But we could spotlight specific continuing education and tools for CFIs to use. I'd like to see us host a series of small events in our areas, attributing credit to our new organization "Bought to you by...". If we could get each MCFI to hold one local event, it would be a means of providing local leadership, eduction and introducing new CFIs to our organization. We bring it down from an international association to something very local and personal.

As a longer-term goal (5 years?), we can consider how best to branch out to make a larger, positive impact on the industry.

Overall, success requires that we conduct a survey of "current needs" and prioritize them. That will chart our course. I think I see a new committee emerging!

But in the meantime we need to get to work - to let people see us walking-the-talk. We can't get bogged down in administration issues. Consider as a starting point, something like:

(1) Provide 50 valuable CFI focused events around the country hosted by MCFIs. As most MCFIs are also FAAST reps, maybe the MCFIs could host the CFI Workshops now being conducted by the FAA. That would give us visibility.
(2) Provide online resources and teaching tools for CFIs. As a start, we could author 2 "How-To" PowerPoint presentations to load onto WWW.FAASAFETY.GOV. That would give us visibility and distribution.
(3) Install a MCFI on each of the FAA GA committees to represent CFIs and affect positive change in flight training.
(4) Participate with our sister organizations, offering to host presentations with organizations such as WIA, AOPA, EAA, etc.
(5) Participate on an international level with those emerging aviation industries such as India and China who are now in their infancy in flight training.
(6) Write a really good "customer centered" Best Practices manuals for CFIs and new flight schools to use.

By the way, do we still refer to ourselves as MCFIs?
:-|]

Steve,

Thanks for your cogent analysis of the most common weakness of member operated organizations. Not only are you an aircraft accident investigator, scientist, pilot, and mechanic par excellence; your leadership in aerospace and defense career is crowned by the international collaborations, university partnerships, and my personal favorite: your volunteerism – as demonstrated by your annual leadership of the powered-flight section of the Johnson Flight Encampment for nascent aviators. Welcome to this discussion and the birth-pangs of a new chapter in aerospace history. We are truly honored.

I believe the goals of any aerospace education organization should include increasing safety, quality of education, increasing access to and participation by diverse populations, enhancing the quality of the educator’s professional life, and inspiring more young people to consider aerospace and other STEM careers. A snapshot of some nonprofit member-operated aerospace organizations with annual incomes over five million dollars include:


CAP $45,899,098

NBAA $26,907,015

AOPA $35,773,962

EAA $29,634,650

AIAA $25,243,586

AIA $11,643,222

AOPA Air Safety Foundation $ 9,629,380

Over the last 10 years, almost 2 billion dollars has been invested by these illustrious organizations. Much of it is taxpayer subsidized. Yet, by almost any measure, e.g. aerospace safety, quality of education, quality of the educators, quality of life for the professionals, access to aerospace careers and diversity of the participants, and inspiration to join or stay in the aerospace workforce has not improved. Not an illustrious return-on-investment.

Steve – placing our (r)evolutionary efforts in a historical context is incredibly useful. Think about the transition of medical licensure and medical education from the guild model – just about 150 years ago. Since its founding in 1847 – the AMA became the largest medical association in America. It represents the best of American medicine and continues to serve as an advocate for the physician, the patient and the profession. We would do well to learn from their example.

Now is the time for the aerospace education community to asses the needs of all of our ‘customers’ including students, future aerospace professionals, passengers, the public, and those that benefit from increased national military and economic security.

V/R

Mordechai Levin
Executive Director
Masterflight Foundation

The message that is missing is the answer to "what is good flight training".

I had a potential client call the school yesterday wondering why our flight instructors' hourly rates are about twice that of the other local instructors. Our rate, as it turns out, is in line with his golf instructor and his kids' math tutors. He wondered why the others are so cheap.

Another pilot who will never be a client asks why should he pay for flight instruction when his mail is filled with instructors willing to instruct him for free simply because he owns a multiengine airplane.

The CFIs that will instruct for free will always be out there.

Food for thought.

Arlynn,

Thank you for engaging in this discussion of how to do things differently. As I mentioned to you offline, I’ve observed your leadership from afar through your publications with great interest.

Many years ago I became the contributing editor of AOPA’s Flight School Business Magazine. Though I tried to at least scan all of the flight training publications each month, the truth is that most of the material was repackaged goods. However you caught my attention with your CFI Boot Camp article: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/inst_reports2.cfm?article=5532 and: "Those Who Can't, Period" (March 2004 AOPA Flight Training) – and you have kept it ever since. Thank you for your service!

Arlynn, you ‘get’ it, and both the students and instructors at Aero-Tech are beneficiaries. The question we all need to wrestle with is: “How can we have the greatest impact on all of our customers, including the students and instructors, not just those lucky enough to go to work with the 300 or so “Master Instructors” – out of over 90,000 CFIs?

You are also correct in recognizing the huge step forward this blog represents vis-à-vis a frank, open, and respectful introspection of the status quo, where we’ve been, and possibilities for the future.

The move to create a new organization with a governance structure that is open, democratic, and responsive is also profound. But open, democratic, and responsive does not necessarily translate into effectiveness. Effectiveness is measured by getting the right things done. The “Proposed Job Description(s) and Policy(s)” available on the Proposed Governance Docs page: http://tbonafi.info/docs.aspx provides some guidelines to increase the possibility of efficient and effective execution:

2. Proposed Job Description -- Board of Directors
3. Proposed Job Description -- Chair of the Board
4. Proposed Job Description -- Executive Director
5. Proposed Policy Related to Board Operations
6. Proposed Policy -- Role of the Board of Directors

One of the greatest components of the capacity of a membership organization is the willingness of its members to contribute their knowledge, passion, time, and money toward achieving the organization’s mission and goals. Some will be called on to serve in a governance role as a member of the Board of Directors, and some will participate in the management and/or operations as either paid or volunteer staff. I encourage all to read carefully (or re-read) the source document for many of these policies (as well as the By-laws) “Governance is Governance. You can download this document as a PDF from: http://www.independentsector.org/PDFs/governance.pdf
Specifically I recommend processing this information until we have a clear understanding of the concepts of what constitutes governance, what constitutes management, and how effective governance is NOT management. (This will also increase the perspective of functionality/dysfunction in other aerospace education organizations.)

With respect and concern – I want to challenge us to discuss and reconsider the statements:

“As a longer-term goal (5 years?), we can consider how best to branch out to make a larger, positive impact on the industry.”…

Overall, success requires that we conduct a survey of "current needs" and prioritize them. That will chart our course. I think I see a new committee emerging! …

“We can't get bogged down in administration issues.”

Arlynn, the “Policy Related to Board Operations” includes:

“…The Board shall approach its functions by focusing on strategic direction and governance rather than management and operations. The Board shall clearly distinguish between governance, management and appropriately define the scopes of authority and limitations….”

“…The Board focuses its involvement on the intended long-term impact / results of the organization, not with the administrative or programmatic means of attaining said impact / results…. ”

“… The Board governs the organization through its dialogue, decision-making and policies. In particular, policies shall articulate values and define scopes of authority and limitations, typically addressing the following areas:
a) The organization’s mission, vision and desired results / outcomes
b) Guidelines, boundaries and limitations of prudence and ethics to be observed by staff, Board, Board members, and committees.
c) Board, officer, and committee roles and responsibilities.
d) Board – Staff relationship. …”

Whereas the “Policy Related to Executive Director” includes:

“Serve as director of the institution, reporting to the Board of Directors, accepting responsibility for the success or failure of the enterprise.

With the chair of the board, enable the Board of Directors to fulfill its governance function, and facilitate the optimum interaction between management and the Board of Directors.

Give direction to the formulation and leadership to the achievement of the institution’s philosophy, mission, strategy, and annual objectives and goals….”

“… Get the best thinking and involvement of each board member. Stimulate all members to give their best….”

“…Maintain a climate that attracts keeps and motivates top quality people—professional and volunteer… .”

“…Formulate and administer all major policies…. “

“…Assure that the institution has a long-range strategy that achieves its mission, and toward which it makes consistent and timely progress…”


Arlynn, all of the ideas you mention are good suggestions. Each of them is a tactic that an organization may use as part of strategic approach to accomplishing a goal or a mission. I like tactics. We all like tactics. Tactics is our comfort zone. It’s what we do everyday.

However, if we are going to be effective as change agents, then we need to become effective executives. In this case we need to establish the management structure and processes that will allow us change the world of aerospace education. This will be a much harder to accomplish than most can imagine.

The good news is we have examples of management structures and processes that we can borrow from. One of the exercises I’ve conducted with hundreds of leaders of first-response agencies, e.g. fire chiefs, law enforcement officials, emergency management agency directors, emergency medical managers, public health and public works directors, etc. , is the transition from single agency or single jurisdiction Incident Command, to multi-agency/multi-jurisdictional Unified Command in response to potential expanding incidents (think WMD event).

Imagine a room full of “Type-A” personalities who have illustrious careers of sending people into harm’s way – and controlling the action being told that the new plan will be management-by-consensus (vs. fiat) and that the Unified Command section will be in charge of establishing the objectives, while the Operations Section will be in charge of strategy and tactics, i.e. implementing those objectives.

The Command group is tasked with designing objectives that are specific, measurable, action-oriented, reasonable, and time limited (SMART). Then they have to ask themselves: “If I was the Operations Section Chief, could I live with this objective.” I can’t tell you how many times that Command sends a tactic disguised as an objective down to Operations.

You know, and I know that a good manager doesn’t micromanage, even if it is really hard to avoid the temptation. In the face of horrific consequences in terms of lives and/or property for not getting-it-right, even Type A personalities can learn to adopt “best practices” in higher level management.

Arlynn – we will have plenty of opportunity to contribute our knowledge, experience, case studies (like Aero-Tech), suggestions, finances, time, and effort. I believe that it now is the time to create the structure, choose the management, and offer all of our support to the organization through the adoption of these best-practices.

V/R

Mordechai Levin
Executive Director
Masterflight Foundation

20 years in the Marine Corps taught me that
Command identified Strategy (What to do) and then Staff (Admin, Intel, Ops, Logistics) developed tactical courses of action for Command to choose from (aka How to do it).
Command's responsibility was to take care of their people, and the people in turn took care of the mission.

The best tool you can have in your toolkit is access to a system expert, like a CFI, who can develop courses of action and run programs for Commanders.

Gung Ho
"Clark" Kent

Hello Mordecai –

I present my reaction to your posting in the hopes of stimulating discussion. If I am too bold, let me apologize in advance. It’s all intended to get us to a good result.

The discussion of metrics is premature. The first order of business needs to be the mission statement. “The purpose of SAFE (“the organization”) is to develop, promote, assist, and advance aviation education, flight instruction, career choices, and professional development.”

In my professional life before aviation, we approached metrics this way:

Define the goal – from which comes a question – from which you derive a metric.

A single goal is best. More than three and you’ll achieve none of them.

As I read the list of metrics suggestions, it seems that the dream is to return to 1946, with a rapidly expanding GA fleet, fueled by thousands of new pilots. Those pilots will pay a living wage to the instructors to teach them. We hit the peak in 1982, and it’s been downhill ever since. In an effort to make GA safe, the FAA and its sister organizations have added enough regulations to choke the student pilot. In 1915, we could teach a student to solo an inherently unstable aircraft in ten hours. Since then the aircraft are easier to fly, but solo doesn’t happen until twenty.

In the nineteen forties, the Bonanza was competing with the railroad as a means of travelling the US. Today, the Cirrus is no match for a commuter airline over the short haul, and no competition with a Boeing for the long haul. If you have to visit two small cities in a day, yes, the Cirrus works. Otherwise, you fly because you love it, not because it makes sense. If you have the coin to fly a G550, then you will beat the airlines, but that’s not an option for most of us.

More and more instructors are chasing a decreasing pilot population. That population is aging, too – an indication that it will shrink further. The airlines still need pilots, even if crews have shrunk to two. Aspiring airline pilots still need stick time. As long as they do, twenty-three year olds will give multi-engine instruction free.

Negative? Perhaps. But we need to play the hand were dealt.

It’s probably out of our capability as instructors to reinvigorate aviation generally. It is within our power to produce and maintain an educated pilot population that stays out of trouble. After all, report after report show that the pilot is part of the overwhelming majority of accident chains.

If we succeed in reducing the accident rate, then we can attract more pilots to GA. Insurance rates will drop and fewer spouses will say “no” to flying.

If we can demonstrate that SAFE contributed to a drop in the accident rate, then we will have a raison d'etre.

As we choose what activities to pursue, we need to make sure we always drive toward the primary goal. We may choose to publish a newsletter (paper or electronic). We may seek sponsors for our activities. What we need to avoid is the same disease that afflicts all large non-profits – when the sustenance of the organization overshadows the mission. A magazine with attractive graphics is nice – and will help us attract advertising support – but it’s not crucial to the mission. If a plain-text email will work, let’s do that. I just want to avoid the kind of large organization dynamics that start including branded credit cards, cooperative insurance sales schemes and the like.

Better we stay small, committed, active, and effective than strive for 10,000 members.

Robert Hadow