Trial lessons: turning first flights into students

It's a bright Saturday in March. The phone rings at the front desk, and it's someone holding a gift voucher their family bought them at Christmas. They're excited, a bit nervous, and they have no idea what happens next. How the club handles the next few weeks decides whether this is one nice afternoon or the start of a licence.

That matters, because most of the money from trial lessons (trial instructional flights, or TIFs, in Australia) comes later, from the customers who go on to fly again. In the worked example further down, a school keeps 8 of every 100 trial lesson customers flying, and in their first year those 8 bring in more than twice what all 100 trial lessons did. Whether people come back depends on four stages the school controls. There's the booking call, the debrief, the next booking and the week after.

Record the voucher buyer and the flyer#

A lot of trial lessons are bought as presents, so a gift voucher usually has two people behind it. The buyer has already decided to spend money on flying. The flyer hasn't decided anything yet.

So take the buyer's name and contact details when they pay, and the flyer's when they book. While you have the buyer, ask whether you may contact them and note what they say. If they're happy to hear from you, send a short note when the voucher is flown and another before the same date next year. Someone who liked how their present was handled will often buy another (birthdays come round every year, after all).

Keep a register of every voucher you sell, in whatever system you already 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. Unflown vouchers are money you hold for flights you still owe. The register tells the treasurer how much of that there is, and it tells the front desk who hasn't booked yet. Expiry and VAT rules differ by country, and we've set them out at the end of this guide.

The booking call#

Most voucher holders ring to book with no idea how a flying day works. So this call sets the tone for everything after it, and we'd make sure it covers four things.

• 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 trial lesson squeezed between two students tends to feel rushed, and the customer can tell.
• The weather policy. Explain that the flight might be postponed on the day, who makes the call and how they'll hear about it. People who were warned treat a cancellation as an inconvenience. People who weren't tend to complain.
• What you need from them. 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.
• A confirmation in writing, with the date, time, where to park, what to wear and how long to allow. Then a reminder the day before.

In Volanti the trial lesson 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.

Run the trial lesson as a first lesson#

People usually decide to learn to fly in the aircraft. Often it's the few minutes after the instructor says "you have control". 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 a customer as a student and they start to think of themselves as one.
• Hand over the controls early and often. If they spend the flight watching the instructor fly, they've had a pleasure flight. 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 effects of controls. I have Thursday afternoon free." Saying "let us know if you want to carry on" is much easier to put off than a date in the diary.

One thing to sort out before the day is whether the flight can count towards a licence. That depends on whether your school runs trial lessons as training flights and on the rules where you fly. Ask the person responsible for training at your school (the head of training in the UK and Ireland), and make sure every customer gets the same answer at the debrief. If the time counts, tell them, and give them a signed record of it. We'd take an hour already in the logbook over a discount any day. It's a far better reason to come back.

Take the next booking before they leave#

The twenty minutes after the first lesson are the best time to sell the second. With any luck they're still grinning. So have the front desk ready.

• The voucher pays for the flight it covers. Anything else, such as an upgrade to a longer flight or a second lesson booked on the spot, goes on a card in the same checkout.
• An offer with a deadline. A discount on the next lesson or a block, valid for 30 days after the trial flight, gives them a date to decide by. Make it the same offer for everyone and write it on the debrief summary, so it doesn't depend on who happens to be on the desk.
• A package for people ready to commit. Some want to buy a block of lessons there and then. Our guide to block-hour packages covers pricing a block so the discount still covers the cost of an hour.

In Volanti, the front desk checkout takes the 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 trial 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.

1. The same day or next morning: a thank you from the instructor who flew with them, with the debrief summary and the offer repeated.
2. Within a week: a phone call from that same instructor. Ask what they thought, deal with whatever is holding them back (often cost, time or the medical) and offer a date.
3. Before the offer expires: one reminder. If they'd rather pay by email than ring 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.
4. After that: add them to 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.

Trial lesson numbers to track#

Count five numbers each quarter.

Here's a worked example. The figures are invented, so swap in your own. Say a school flies 100 trial lessons 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 trial lesson, before membership fees. At 180 each, the trial lessons 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.

The same sum shows where we'd put the effort. If those 15 second lessons became 25, and the same share stayed on, the year's flying from trial lessons would go 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 five numbers from records you already keep: bookings, payments and memberships.

Gift voucher expiry and VAT rules by country#

In Ireland, Australia and New Zealand the law sets rules on voucher expiry dates. Each rule below applies in its own country only.

In the United Kingdom, check when VAT is due as well as the expiry date. Under HMRC's rules since 1 January 2019, a voucher is a single-purpose voucher when, at the time it's sold, both the VAT liability and the place of supply of what it buys are known. A voucher for a trial lesson at your own airfield is likely to be one. For a single-purpose voucher, any VAT due is paid when the voucher is sold, not when it's flown. If your organisation is VAT registered, tell your accountant how many vouchers you sell and when, so the returns match.

None of this is legal advice. If your vouchers 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.

Trial lessons in Volanti#

To see a trial lesson run from booking to checkout, have a look at the trial lessons page. 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, which gives you the numbers 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, sell them as you do today and take them as payment at the desk.