It's a bright Saturday in March. The phone rings at the front desk, and it's someone holding a gift certificate their family bought them at Christmas. They're excited, a bit nervous, and they have no idea what happens next. How the school handles the next few weeks decides whether this is one nice afternoon or hour one of a certificate.
That matters, because a discovery flight earns most of its money after it lands, from the customers who come back for more. In the worked example further down, a school keeps 8 of every 100 discovery flight customers flying, and in their first year those 8 bring in more than twice what all 100 discovery flights did. Whether people come back depends on four stages you control. There's the booking call, the debrief, the next booking and the week after.
Record the buyer and the flyer#
Lots of discovery flights are bought as presents, so a gift certificate usually has two people behind it. The buyer has already decided to spend money on flying. The flyer hasn't decided anything yet.
So record both: the buyer's name and contact details when they pay, and the flyer's when they book. Ask the buyer at the point of sale whether you may contact them, and note what they say. If they agree, send a short note when the certificate is flown and another before the same date next year. Buyers who liked how the certificate was handled often buy another (birthdays come round every year, after all).
Keep a register of every certificate you sell, in whatever system you use: a number, the date sold, the buyer, the value or the flight it covers, the expiry date and the date it was flown. Nobody joins a flying club to keep registers, but this one matters. An unflown certificate is money you're holding for a flight you still owe. The register tells the treasurer how much of that there is, and tells the front desk who hasn't booked yet. The US and Canada treat expiry dates differently, and the rules are at the end of this guide.
Get the booking call right#
Most certificate holders ring up knowing nothing about how a flying day works. So this call sets the tone for everything after it, and we'd make sure it covers four things.
Give them a real slot with a named instructor. Book the instructor and the aircraft together, at a time that leaves room for a proper briefing and debrief. A discovery flight squeezed into the gap between two students tends to feel rushed, and the customer can tell.
Explain the weather policy: the flight might be postponed on the day, who makes the call and how they'll hear. People who were warned treat a cancellation as a nuisance. People who weren't tend to complain.
Ask for what you need from them. That's their weight, for the weight and balance (if your aircraft is close to its limits with two aboard, run the numbers before the day with the weight and balance calculator), an emergency contact, and anything about their health the instructor should know.
Then confirm it in writing, with the date, the time, where to park, what to wear and how long to allow, and send a reminder the day before.
In Volanti the discovery flight is booked against an instructor and an aircraft together, the confirmation and reminder emails go out automatically, and the waiver is signed electronically before the flight, without the visitor having to join the club first.
Fly it as a first lesson#
People usually decide to learn to fly in the aircraft. Often it's the few minutes after the instructor hands them the controls. So on the day, the instructor is the salesperson, whether they like it or not. If that sounds uncomfortable, it needn't be. A few teaching habits do the selling for them.
- Brief it as a lesson. Same briefing room, same diagram on the board, same exercise a real first lesson would cover, cut down to fit. Treat customers as students and they start to see themselves as one.
- Hand over the controls early and often. If they spend the flight watching the instructor fly, they've had a sightseeing ride. A lovely one, maybe, but not a lesson.
- Debrief indoors, at a table. Ten minutes on what they did well, what the next lesson would cover and what the full course takes in time and money. Give them a written summary to take home.
- Name the next step. "The next lesson is straight and level flight and turns. I have Thursday afternoon free." An open offer like "let us know if you want to carry on" is far easier to put off than a date in the diary.
In the United States the flight can be logged, and we'd make the most of that. Under 14 CFR 61.51(h), a person may log training time when they receive training from a flight instructor (an "authorized instructor" in the rule) in an aircraft, and the instructor has to endorse the entry with a description of the training, the length of the lesson and their signature and certificate details. Logged dual instruction counts towards the 20 hours of flight training within the 40 hours a private pilot applicant must log for the "airplane single-engine" rating under 61.109(a).
So give every discovery flight customer a logbook entry, or a signed record they can transfer to one. Their flight is then hour one of the certificate. We'd take that over a discount any day. It's a far better reason to come back.
In Canada, ask your chief flight instructor how the flight is recorded and whether it counts towards a permit or licence on your training programme, and use that wording at the desk.
Take the next booking before they leave#
The twenty minutes after the discovery flight are the best time you'll get to sell the next lesson. With any luck they're still grinning. So have the front desk ready.
The certificate pays for the flight it covers. Anything it doesn't cover, such as an upgrade to a longer flight or a second lesson booked on the spot, goes on a card in the same checkout.
Make an offer with a deadline. A discount on the next lesson or a block, valid for 30 days after the discovery flight, gives them a date to decide by. Keep the offer the same for everyone and write it on the debrief summary, so it doesn't depend on who happens to be on the desk.
Have a package for the people who are ready now. Some want to buy a block of lessons there and then. Our guide to block-hour packages covers how to price a block so the discount still covers the cost of an hour.
In Volanti, the front desk checkout takes the gift certificate (Volanti calls it a gift voucher) as a payment method, and the balance goes on a card on the terminal at the desk in the same sale. Discount codes can be limited to particular items and to a date window, so a code can apply only to a first lesson or a package, and only for the weeks after the discovery flight.
Follow up in the week after#
Plenty of people who don't book on the day are still making up their minds. Maybe they want to talk it over at home, or check what the bank balance says. A short, personal sequence does more for them than a newsletter ever will.
- The same day or next morning: a thank you from the instructor who flew with them, with the debrief summary and the offer repeated.
- Within a week: a phone call from that same instructor. Ask what they thought, answer whatever is holding them back (often cost, time or the medical) and offer a date.
- Before the offer expires: one reminder. If they'd rather pay by email than call the desk, send a payment request for the lesson or package. In Volanti a payment request can go to someone who isn't a member yet.
- After that: put them on your normal mailing list if they agreed to it, and stop chasing.
Keep a note against each name of how far they got. If someone said "after the summer", call them after the summer. We'd put it in the diary there and then rather than trust anyone's memory.
The numbers worth tracking#
Count five numbers each quarter:
| Measure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Certificates sold | How many people entered the top, and, against the next row, how many certificates are still outstanding |
| Discovery flights flown | How many of those people you have actually met |
| Second lessons booked within 30 days | Whether the flight and the debrief are doing their job |
| Students or members still flying after 90 days | Whether the early lessons kept them |
| Revenue from those people in their first year | What a discovery flight is really worth to you |
Here's a worked example. The figures are invented, so swap in your own. Say a school flies 100 discovery flights in a year. 15 book a second lesson within a month, and 8 are still flying regularly after three months. If each of those 8 flies 30 hours in their first year at 200 an hour, that's 48,000 of flying that started with a discovery flight, before membership fees. At 180 each, the discovery flights themselves brought in 18,000.
The 18,000 is the number everyone tracks, because it's sitting right there in the takings. But the 48,000 is the one that justifies the time an instructor spends on the debrief.
It also shows where we'd put the effort. Turn those 15 second lessons into 25, with the same share staying on, and the year's flying from discovery flights goes up by two thirds. The debrief and the follow-up cost an instructor some time with each customer, and most of the result comes from that time.
You can pull all of these from records you already keep: bookings, payments and memberships.
Gift certificate expiry rules in the US and Canada#
In the United States the federal rule is Regulation E, 12 CFR 1005.20. It covers gift certificates and store gift cards sold to consumers in a specified amount. If one carries an expiration date, the underlying funds must last at least five years from the date it was issued (or, for a card, the date money was last loaded onto it), and the funds' expiration date and a toll-free number for a replacement must be printed on it. According to the CFPB's official interpretation, a certificate for a stated flight with no dollar value on it is generally outside the rule, and so is one issued on paper only (an emailed or printable certificate isn't paper-only). Promotional cards that carry the required disclosures are excluded too. Check your own state's law as well, because it may go further.
In Canada gift cards are regulated by the provinces, and each has its own rules. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada says most gift cards don't expire, and that, depending on the province or territory, cards for a specific service may be allowed an expiry date. It also says the territories don't have specific gift card regulations. Check your own province's consumer protection rules before you print a date.
None of this is legal advice. If your certificates carry printed expiry dates, or terms someone wrote years ago and nobody has looked at since, have them checked against the current rule before the next batch goes to the printer.
Discovery flights in Volanti#
The trial lessons page shows a discovery flight run from booking to checkout. The card terminal and over-the-phone payments are on billing and payments, and bookings, payments, charges and memberships export to CSV in one click for the table above. Selling gift vouchers online from your own website, with every voucher tracked from sale to flight, is on its way: see gift vouchers Coming soon. Until then, keep selling gift certificates the way you do today and take them as payment at the desk.