The Savvy Flight Instructor

You’ve mastered the CFI study materials, passed your toughest-ever oral exam, can write lesson plans and explain the details of a lazy eight, and can talk and fly simultaneously from the right seat. That’s all you need to know to flight instruct…or is it? This book is designed to help with all those other questions, like how to recruit new flight students and keep them flying, conduct successful intro lessons, and optimize your students’ checkride pass rates.


This new edition adds 20 years of know-how to the networking, pilot training, and customer support concepts that made the original edition required CFI reading, plus important new material you won’t want to miss. Aspiring flight instructors will learn why and how to become a CFI, and how to get hired. Readers will learn how to sell today’s pilot prospects via online marketing and social media, and how to outsell competitive activities. Seasoned flight instructors and flight school managers will learn how to systematize customer success and satisfaction, price and structure their services to fit today’s markets, and implement flight instructor professionalism. Here you’ll learn how to use your instructing activities to surpass student expectations, achieve business success, promote general aviation, and advance your personal flying career all at once.


Greg Brown’s love of flying is obvious to anyone who knows his “Flying Carpet” column in AOPA’s Flight Training magazine, or his books, such as The Turbine Pilot’s Flight Manual. A pilot since 1971 and a CFI since 1979, Greg was the 2000 National Flight Instructor of the Year, and the first-ever Master CFI.


Contributing writers are Heather Baldwin, commercial pilot and marketing writer, and CFIs Jason Blair, a designated pilot examiner, Ben Eichelberger, a flight training standardization expert, Dorothy Schick, flight school owner and marketing innovator, and Ian Twombly, noted flight-training writer and editor.