Originally posted by Crashem
nascarjoe,
That's not what I was asking you. Have you contacted the club officers with any type of business perposal? Not seeing many people at the field is not a good or accurate indicator of the local club's willingness to enter into a business arangement with your hobby shop.
Try finding out when there next meeting is and attend. Come prepared with a well thought out propsal that crealy states what you would expect from them and what you are prepared to do for them? It never hurts to try. I would be very suprised if you didn't generate some interest.
The only way I could see it not working would be if you offered a form of compensation that was trival in comparision to the effort that the club provided.
I belong to a club and have gone to meetings where it is quite obvious that the instructors there have little to no desire to train beginners, whether they are compensated or not. The point I was making of not seeing anyone flying means that there are so few active members who know how to fly let alone teach, I cannot imagine there would be any kind of business arrangement we could discuss, considering I would need the most are the services of flight instructors who don't exist.
From what I gather from reading posts, it seems that some think that what goes on in their clubs is the norm for all or most clubs.
I've visited many clubs over the years, and the giving of flight instruction more times than not, to be kind, is not even close to top of their priority list. What AMA could do is make a serious attempt at getting the industry involved in providing a commercial insurance policy, other than that, there isn't much anyone can do except bang the subject back and forth until the cows come home.
nascarjoe