Lack of Ultralight Instructors

We need more ultralight instructors to bring ultralight pilots to the sky. It is that simple, but it didn’t dawn on us until last Thursday during the CRUFC directors meeting. Directors met and discussed many issues, but the pressing one was the dramatic decline in our beloved CRUFC membership. After two months into 2015, our membership declined from 64 members last year to only 42 members, representing 33% reduction in the membership. We believe that the membership decline is due to two reasons, first is the lack of new members joining the club and second is our current members departing the club or not paying their dues. Directors discussed different options, usual ones like encouraging the current members to pay their dues aiming to maintain last years of memberships. Also, we need to consider other major initiatives to improve the number of new members joining and remaining in the club.

Last year I thought that we had lots of options to reach out and attract new members, but eventually I faced a very basic problem in the lack of ultralight instructors. Even if we were able to convince and attract new members to join the club, they eventually need to practice flying. They need two basic things, an airplane and a license. They can fly a friend airplane, buy a share in one or possibly rent one, but without obtaining their ultralight license to fly, they are only passengers.

It all boiled down to the fact that new members mean new pilots. This, in turn, means training is needed and instructors to provide the training. In Calgary, we have few instructors but need more. After the director meeting, I called Wayne Winter’s and asked him about his opinion. He is on the same page, fully agreeing about the lack of instructors and he is ready to help in increasing the number of instructors.

Directors unanimously agreed on lack of ultralight instructors representing the main hurdle that is negatively impacting our membership. We decided to dedicate our March monthly meeting to discuss this subject, we need to hear from our members and understand how we can resolve this problem. We need to reverse the declining membership trend by getting at least five ultralight instructors within the club who are ready and able to instruct newcomers to increase the number of ultralight pilots. We are not advertising that the club manage the instructors, but we are looking for club members, who own ultralight airplanes, to consider getting their instructor license and providing ultralight piloting training for the newcomers. However, if the collective wisdom of the club membership elected a different course of actions, we will be all for it.

The need is to train the flying enthusiast to fly affordable ultralight airplanes. Affordability is very important factors in reversing the above mentioned negative trend. Once a pilot has obtained their ultralight license, he or she will look to buy or build an airplane, and many cannot afford paying tens of thousands of dollars to own an airplane, but they many shares buying one.

The lack of ultralight instructors is severely impacting the flying enthusiast to achieve their dreams, and we have to work together to find solutions and bring more flying enthusiast to the sky.