Flight Training - January 2013 - 27

SKYPORT BY THE NUMBERS
$2.6 million—Cost of building construction, including the flight school, FBO, and hangar facility $5 million—Total cost of the facility startup, including construction, staff training, and fuel delivery 14.7 percent—Traditional gross margin of a flight school operating G1000equipped Cessna 172s (based on 100 students a year) 28.9 percent—Gross margin offering simulator-centric instruction (based on 100 students a year) $9,500—Fixed cost of training at Redbird Skyport 42—Average number of airplane hours to complete training course

LEGACY. Knowing there is a flight school that exists today where you can go to earn a private pilot certificate in more or less a guaranteed time for a guaranteed amount of money is not groundbreaking. In this way, Gregoire isn’t making new rules. What he is doing is adapting his technology background to aviation. Steve Jobs and Apple didn’t create the MP3 player, but they refined it and made everyone in America want one. IBM and others brought computers down to a price where almost every home now has one. And now, Gregoire hopes to make training affordable, but also reliable and efficient. Skyport is Gregoire's legacy. At least he hopes it is. “A company like Redbird doesn’t live forever,” Gregoire says. But the Skyport does because it’s an idea. Ideas—be they financial information, business plans, flight training curricula, or even facility blueprint—are free and available to anyone. And that’s what gives the Skyport the opportunity to change flight training. Flight school owners often are a closed group, thinking competition lurks around every corner. Skyport is different. The open sharing of information has the potential to prop up existing flight schools, and bring in new entities to the industry (Continental Motor’s Zulu flight school in Mobile,

Alabama, is loosely based on Skyport). “Everything is for everybody,” Gregoire says. “While it sounds crazy, we don’t want to be in the flight training business. We’re not looking to compete with anybody.” That’s also significant because ultimately the equipment doesn’t matter. A flight school owner could use any simulator and get the same or similar results. “We believe if the migration method gets widespread adoption, there will be competing methods that pop up,” he says. Gregoire said he hopes the Skyport in San Marcos will be a certification center that trains others how to implement the model. It’s logical to assume that, if successful, there could be a chain of Skyports around the country. That’s not likely to happen, however. Because everything is open, school owners will have the opportunity to pick and choose what they like best. The Skyport’s successful laboratory studies could permeate the industry, which may lead to everything from an exact copy to simply a locally owned flight school that makes better use of simulation. As Sharp says, “Hopefully an instructor will never say, ‘There’s that box over there. Go use it.’”
Ian J. Twombly is editor of Flight Training magazine.

"WHILE IT SOUNDS CRAZY, WE DON'T WANT TO BE IN THE FLIGHT TRAINING BUSINESS. WE'RE NOT LOOKING TO COMPETE WITH ANYBODY."

JANUARY 2013 FLIGHT TRAINING

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Flight Training - January 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - January 2013