 AVIATION CONVERSATIONS ✈ THE FLIGHT PLAN STRATEGIES. INSIGHTS. CONFIDENCE. For the people who train pilots. | FLIGHT SCHOOL EDITION | FALL 2026 |
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| ONE USEFUL THING FOR YOUR PROGRAM. EVERY QUARTER. |
Hey there! Welcome to the first Flight School Edition of The Flight Plan, a quarterly note for owners, chief instructors, and training leaders. This quarter's theme is the students you lose silently: the ones who were ready, then stalled, then stopped scheduling. Everything below is about catching that earlier. |
✈️ THE PROGRAM BRIEF The Wait Between Sign-Off and Checkride Is Now a Phase of TrainingWhat's happening, what it costs your program, and what to do this quarter. 2-minute read. What's happening: DPE wait times are running weeks to months, and three to four months in parts of the country. Only 74 of 509 certificated schools can run their own practical tests, so relief is arriving on a regulatory timeline, not this fall's. What it costs: A six-week wait can add $1,000 to $2,000 in proficiency flying. The bigger cost is confidence. Every imperfect landing starts reading as proof the sign-off was premature, students stop reporting what they're struggling with, and some stop scheduling. That attrition gets logged as money or a life change, and your first-attempt pass rate softens. What to do this quarter: Give the wait its own goals. Have someone check in on how the student is doing, not only what they flew. Give each proficiency flight a stated purpose beyond staying current. Talk through the checkride out loud and in specifics so it stops growing in the student's head. Also on the radar: Your students and CFIs are asking about the two pilot mental health bills that passed the Senate. Neither is law yet, and MedXPress reporting hasn't changed. Anyone taking the instrument written on or after October 27 will see chart images inside the questions; here's what to tell them. |
🧠 SHANNON'S TAKE When a student who was ready starts stalling, the first instinct is to add flying. More often, the knowledge is still there and the pressure has changed. A student who can fly it clean on a solo practice day but falls apart with someone in the right seat doesn't need another lesson on the maneuver. They need someone to name what's happening, and your instructors are closer to that conversation than anyone. |
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🧰 THE INSTRUCTOR'S POCKET TOOL Skill or Pressure? A Three-Question CheckUse it when: a student who had something cold starts missing it. 1. Have they flown it cleanly when nobody was grading? If yes, look at pressure before technique. 2. What changed: the task, or who was watching? 3. In the debrief, ask "What was going through your head right before it went wrong?" instead of "What went wrong?" Why the wording matters: across 607 measured feedback effects, about 1 in 3 made performance worse, mostly when feedback pulled attention toward the person instead of the task (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Print this one for the dispatch desk. |
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📈 BY THE NUMBERS Why Your CFIs Leave at 14 MonthsA 2024 survey of 167 flight instructors at two university programs found an average tenure of 14 months. About 75% planned to leave once they reached R-ATP minimums, and only about 5% saw instructing as a long-term career. That was collected during a hot hiring market, so treat it as a high-water mark. What it teaches: turnover is built into the job, so the question is how much each instructor can carry while they're with you. The DPE wait lands on them too: repetitive proficiency flights with students they already recommended, and anxiety they weren't trained to handle. |
🧭 A SELF-CHECK TO HAND OUT Checkride 101 for Students Waiting on a DateA free six-question readiness check that takes about a minute, then a toolkit matched to the result: calming the nervous system in under two minutes, stopping catastrophizing, and a pre-checkride routine. Nothing a student enters leaves the page. For your instructors, the CFI Burnout Barometer takes about two minutes. |
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💭 ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO Where in your program do students go quiet? Email me at Shannon@aviationconversations.com and tell me. I read every response, and the patterns shape what goes into the next edition. |
➡️ WHERE TO GO NEXT Want to look at where your program loses students? Book a free Partnership Discovery Call. We'll talk through what your students and instructors are facing and whether a workshop or the Monthly Checkride Readiness Session fits. FSAI member schools get partner pricing from day one. |
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Until next time, | Shannon Torres, M.Ed. Founder, Aviation Conversations Practical · Confidential · Built for Pilots |
P.S. Know a chief instructor or program director who should get this? Pass it along. They can join the Flight School Edition at aviationconversations.com/newsletter. |
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