Civil Air Patrol Aviation Business Academy

CAP and Evergreen teamed up recently and launched the first annual Capt. Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Business Academy held at the amazing Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

Well that’s superb, and rare that youth have an opportunity to learn about aviation entrepreneurship in this way. Innovation is closely related to entrepreneurship and a way to eventually improve the aviation industry.

Parts of the aviation industry tend to treat their machines better than their customers. Customer service at the airlines is awful, but not because the pilots or management (or the TSA) lack a certain technical knowledge. Likewise, in General Aviation it’s hard to find and retain a good Flight Instructor. Again, not because the CFI’s lack a technical knowledge, but many lack a focus on the customer.

On the other hand, many Air Charter operators seem to be experts in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. These companies are also much smaller than the one-size-fits-all airlines and also tend to be rather entrepreneurial. In fact, you can find several air charter pilots that own the charter business and the airplane they’re flying.

This new Aviation Business Academy is very interesting but there’s currently very little information about it on the web. Here’s a press release written prior to the academy at this link
and some cool pictures of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum here, but that’s about it.

The article in CAP Volunteer shows cadets presenting their aviation-related business plans. I bet that each cadet remembered to include a website in their business plan. It’s strange that the Aviation Business Academy apparently does not have one.

You can get the short article, and actually the entire Sep-Oct 2008 issue of the CAP Volunteer here.

What is Aviation Entertainment?

Wally Meyer used the term “Aviation Entertainment” in 2007 to describe Roger Dodger Aviation's niche, but what is the aviation entertainment industry and how is it defined?

Depending on where your Google machine takes you, aviation entertainment can mean air show acts or in-flight movie systems or even Zero-G flights.

Air Shows and Fly-Ins
For starters, let’s say that aviation entertainment means large air shows featuring headliners like the US Navy Blue Angels, USAF Thunderbirds or Canadian Snowbirds and dozens of smaller acts. This is spectating at its finest and millions of people attend air shows annually.

EAA AirVenture and Sun’n’Fun draw large crowds of spectators, and also pilots that arrive in their own airplanes to attend. These events are also “fly-ins.”

Smaller community fly-ins should be included as aviation entertainment. These are technically not air shows because airspace is not set aside for an aerobatics box. Because of this, spectators may be offered the opportunity to fly in a real airplane. There are hundreds of fly-in events every year.

Scenic flights offered to the public are a statistically smaller segment of the industry. Some examples are flights over the Grand Canyon, beaches and the Plaza Lights in Kansas City.

RC, Flight Sims, etc.
After this point, the definitions of aviation entertainment become a little less clear. For example, should radio-controlled airplanes be included in aviation entertainment? At an RC air show, the crowd watches small airplanes flying aerobatics up close instead of large airplanes far away and the people seem to be equally entertained.

What about aviation museums like the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum, or the Strategic Air and Space Museum or the dozens of smaller museums? People can see the airplanes on static display here, similar to the static displays an air show or fly-in.

Are flight simulators a part of aviation entertainment? Expensive aircraft training simulators are a part of the flight training industry, so are inexpensive hobby flight sims a part of aviation entertainment? One could simply lump the flight simmers in with the computer gaming crowd, but that would ignore the fact that flight sims are appearing at fly-ins and air shows as attractions in their own right. This is starting to bridge the gap between real and sim flying, and between spectator and participant.

These two examples here and here show the artful blending of both real and aviation attractions. These locations are in Europe where the cost of real flying is much higher than the USA. Could America be headed this direction?

Flying for Fun
Most pilots fly for fun. FAA statistics show that the aircraft hours logged for personal flying are significant and outnumber the hours logged for business, corporate, instructional, crop dusting, etc. The number of airplanes flown for personal use outnumbers all other types as well. It’s ironic that we never seem to hear much about that. Many people think of boating, skiing, bicycling, camping and sports as obvious recreational activities, but flying doesn’t often come to mind.

Are these valid examples? Is there a definition for the aviation entertainment industry that would sum up these examples?

3 Ways to Improve Attendance at Your Aviation Events

Many non-profit aviation organizations like museums, the Commemorative Air Force (CAF), Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) chapters, etc. host public events. These events are often the best opportunities to attract new members or generate revenue for the group. Also, these events feed the “soul” of the organizations by promoting the joy of flight, the beauty of aircraft, honoring veterans, etc. So one of the most vital parts of having an event is ensuring people actually show up to it.

Here are three ideas that can help.

1. Website
Every volunteer organization must have a useful website or eventually disappear. A website should showcase the upcoming events, and also do a great job of showing how fun the past events were. The website should also have multiple ways for a visitor to call or email questions, or sign up to be notified of future events.

Websites do not need to be fancy. The fancy stuff tends to annoy and distract the reader from real information. Websites must be relevant and updated and updated and updated. There I said it three times. Even a blog will do. If there is nobody currently in the organization that can pull this off, hire someone.

2. Fly-In calendars
This is like posting flyers on airport bulletin boards, but 100 times better. Post your event information on ALL of these calendars and include the link back to your excellent website.
Barnstormers.com
Fly-ins.com
EAA Aviation Calendar of Events
APOA online fly-in calendar
Airshow Calendar
Fly-In Calendar

3. Google Adwords advertising
Yes, Google Adwords. Online advertising has surpassed newspaper, magazine and radio advertising because it is so scalable and versatile. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot, actually it can cost almost nothing, it all depends on how cheap your organization is…or rather how effective you want to be.

Scalable means you can set an advertising budget as cheap and ineffective as $5 bucks a month or more effective like $100 bucks a month or more. You only get charged when someone clicks on your ads, so you’re only spending money on people that are at least mildly interested. Will they be interested enough to actually show up to your event? That’s up to you. Your Google ad links back to your website which should be excellent, helpful, relevant, and updated.

These are just three ideas to increase the attendance at aviation events in addition to the more traditional methods like newspaper classifieds, signs, and flyers on the bulletin boards. What others can you think of?