The article posted by Haley Davoren of GlobalAir.com appeared on the GlobalAir website on April 11, 2023 To view the original article Click Here.
Flight Instructors are getting the royal treatment with the latest releases from King Schools. CEO Barry Knuttila and aviation icons John and Martha King spoke at the 2023 Sun ‘n Fun Innovation Preview, announcing the latest releases from the aviation school.
King Schools’ new Flight Instructor Program is designed to let the instructor track the students’ progress as they make their way through the Kings School courses. The CFI Program will allow instructors to track progress through a dashboard, linking them with their students. Instructors can invite a student to link up or vice versa, allowing the CFI better access to track what the student has covered and how well they are grasping the material.
The program gives instructors an opportunity to shape their curriculum for the needs of the individual student and identify the areas where the lessons are working and where they are not. Instructors participating in the program will receive a free suite of King Schools courses. The courses, ranging from private pilot through flight instructor, are the same courses the students are taking and can be used to review subjects or to watch videos and work through questions as a team. This includes the KING Flashcard APP, used to quiz and assess a student’s knowledge.
The new Your First Flying Lesson course can be used to recruit more aspiring pilots to learn to fly. The free course is provided for flight training candidates and follows a flight in a Cessna 172, flying from San Diego to Catalina Island. The course starts at the preflight inspection and ends with lunch at the Airport in the sky. This lesson is designed to help with common fears and anxieties prospective aviators have and show them the world of flight in a different way.
King Schools is now offering a Cleared for Instrument Instructing course and this adds to an Instrument Rating to a CFI’s Flight Instructor certificate, the latest addition to the schools Cessna Flight Training System (CFTS). The home study material includes flight school tracking of FAA Part 141 approvable syllabi for Instrument Rating, Private Pilot, Commercial Pilot, Flight Instructor and Instrument Flight Instructor Rating. The new set of courses will allow a flight school to develop a professional pilot program, taking a candidate from zero hours to airline hire.
“The CFTS was created to make it easy for a flight school to start up and run a complete FAA Part 141 program that qualifies for VA approval and student financing,” Knuttila said. “It’s a turn-key system that includes digital record keeping and electronic signature as well a free ‘concierge service’ to assist flight schools in acquiring their Part 141 approvals. This system is designed to fully support our flight school and university customers as they face an increasingly competitive marketplace in the airline training industry.”
The CFTS is used by over 200 flight schools, including all Cessna Pilot Centers and 25 colleges and universities. All the courses are able to integrate using the Course Tracking Application (CTA) which provides digital support to flight instructors through apps to be used on the ground or in the air. The course has a retail price of $374 and is discounted for a profitable resale at participating flight schools.
John and Martha King have also announced the publication of a new book, Sky Kings. The anthology of stories from the prolific careers of the founders of King Schools, John and Martha. As pioneers of online and video instruction for pilots, the Kings have a lot to share with the aviation community and CFIs. The Kings began their career teaching weekend ground school courses for private, commercial and Instrument, 50 weeks a year. They traveled across the country for a decade before they established their permanent base in San Diego, California.
The pair had bought their first plane, a Cherokee 140, in 1969 and over the years had their share of mistakes and close calls. The two used their experiences, good and bad, to help others learn. They had a column for flying magazine with the same title as the book, and many chapters come from that original series. The pair have come a long way in the industry and establishing themselves and their flight school. The Kings now own a Falcon 10 jet and have kept up with the changes in and around the industry and aviation technology.
One chapter in the new book recalls a time when Martha encountered a total electrical failure while flying and subsequently forcing a landing in a cornfield, sending her to the ER. The Kings describe this event as well as the painful experience of finding out a new pilot they had instructed was killed in a crash. The pair describe how it feels to be a teacher and to teach people a skill that can end up killing the student.
The Kings instructional material is known for its anecdotal qualities, putting their personal experience into each lesson to help an aspiring pilot not only learn the technical skill and information but from lessons from an experienced pilot. The book retails for $21.97 for paperback and #13.97 for kindle on Amazon.
