Starting a College Flying Club

ebykowsky

ebykowsky

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Hey guys, I'm not sure if you all have any experience with this, but I'd like to get some pointers on starting a college flying club. I saw a flyer (no pun intended) today for a club starting up at Pitt and open to CMU students as well. Went to the first meeting today, and there were around 15 people, most of them college students interested in aviation, a couple of pilots in grad school, and (of course) me. It looks like the plan is to meet once a month or so to go over aviation topics, ranging from weather to the FAR's to accident investigations. Ultimately, though, we are really going to want to do some flying. If any of you have done something similar at college or beyond, I'd love to get your input on everything from what to cover at meetings to how to get some flying time for the members. My thought was to organize hamburger runs every couple of months where everyone chips in $30 and we all take planes to a local restaurant.
 
Great idea. I was in ski club, but that was a completely different animal.
 
You might want to start with seeing if the club can work a deal with an FBO at Allegheny County or another airport, until the club can get things together legally and financially to buy a plane.
 
I was in the attempt to start a flying club at JHU in the late 70's. We had a physics professor who had the state altitude record in gliders (many asked high or low?) who had a plane and a CFI certificate. He tought a ground school and was fixing up a Taylorcraft that he intended to teach in. We flew up to FDK with him a few times to work on the plane. I graduated before it got flying (though I did use the ground school to get my written out of the way). I hear some student balled the thing up subsequently.

If Pitt is anything like JHU (or Rutgers where I was a university administrator and sponsor of the amateur radio club while the regular sponsor was on sabbatical) you'll need a faculty or staff sponsor to make it official. I assume that's you.

Ground schools and talking and seminars and even heading out to the airport to hang around are easy. Flying is onerous. I spent time organizing other clubs and hunting down leasebacks on a club that's not going to fly heavily is going to be challenging.
 
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flyingron said:
I was in the attempt to start a flying club at JHU in the late 70's. We had a physics professor who had the state altitude record in gliders (many asked high or low?) who had a plane and a CFI certificate. He tought a ground school and was fixing up a Taylorcraft that he intended to teach in. We flew up to FDK with him a few times to work on the plane. I graduated before it got flying (though I did use the ground school to get my written out of the way). I hear some student balled the thing up subsequently.

If Pitt is anything like JHU (or Rutgers where I was a university administrator and sponsor of the amateur radio club while the regular sponsor was on sabbatical) you'll need a faculty or staff sponsor to make it official. I assume that's you.

Ground schools and talking and seminars and even heading out to the airport to hang around are easy. Flying is onerous. I spent time organizing other clubs and hunting down leasebacks on a club that's not going to fly heavily is going to be challenging.
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No, not the faculty advisor. I'm a sophomore and don't even go to Pitt (the club is open to other nearby colleges as well). The guy who started the club is going to get all the little details like faculty advisors and constitutions ironed out. I'm looking big picture stuff. I'm happy doing class stuff, but I just hope the non-pilots will be alright with that as well.
 
The most successful "college" club I have seen was the University of Washington's club at Alpha Zulu FBO at Boeing Field.

AZ had the airplanes, UW had the students. It was a very comfortable place to walk into. The fire was always burning and there were big couches to sit around and BS on.

There were probably 50 members.

It helps to have a rich owner however. AZ owner was an heir to the Pepsi fortune, and she LOVED airplanes. I doubt she made much money, but the kids loved her.
 
ebykowsky said:
Hey guys, I'm not sure if you all have any experience with this, but I'd like to get some pointers on starting a college flying club. I saw a flyer (no pun intended) today for a club starting up at Pitt and open to CMU students as well. Went to the first meeting today, and there were around 15 people, most of them college students interested in aviation, a couple of pilots in grad school, and (of course) me. It looks like the plan is to meet once a month or so to go over aviation topics, ranging from weather to the FAR's to accident investigations. Ultimately, though, we are really going to want to do some flying. If any of you have done something similar at college or beyond, I'd love to get your input on everything from what to cover at meetings to how to get some flying time for the members. My thought was to organize hamburger runs every couple of months where everyone chips in $30 and we all take planes to a local restaurant.
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I know some schools can give funding to some clubs if you have enough members. Maybe you can try to get the college and some flight school to make an agreement to get some flight time for the club.
 
I learned to fly at a college flying club. There were about five airplanes, all on leaseback from members. It was affiliated with the University of California but not supported by them financially. We had a meeting with a program every month which was not that highly attended, as I recall. After I had been a member for a while I started to do data entry for them (on punch cards!) in exchange for not paying dues. For me, it was a good situation but I hear the club is no longer in existence.
 
Don't forget there's also Alpha Eta Rho (sp? How the hell do you type Greek characters on an iPhone?) the Aviation Fraternity if you're into the Greek thing, and many colleges do fiscally support competition flight teams.

I never had time for either one, I had three jobs besides classes. :) Looked fun though if you could afford it.

I still recommend the three jobs over the social stuff. I suspect many who had time for the social stuff are still paying off their student loans, and I was there in the early 90s. :)
 
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