Vista Air Soars as Other Area Flight Schools Struggle

Vista Air Inc. is bucking a pattern of flight schools closing their doors as the number of students wanting flight instruction dwindles. Dusty Rhodes, the owner of the school based at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, cannot quite put his finger on why Vista Air has succeeded where others have not, but he has some ideas. For one, he has lower overhead at Whiteman than he would at Van Nuys Airport. Plus, at Vista students get more flying time because they do not have to compete with a lot of other aircraft to take off or land, Rhodes said. Between 2008 and 2010, Vista Air’s revenues grew by 26.5 percent. Through mid-November of this year, the school brought in about $570,600 in revenues. And as a Cessna certified service center, Vista Air has maintenance operations on site, an expense many flight schools cannot afford. “We can control the planes better and keep them in better shape,” Rhodes said. Rhodes opened the school in 1990 and operates it alongside Vista Aviation Inc., an aircraft sales and service and pilot supply business. Vista is the largest business at Whiteman and it operates out of a $6 million building that opened in 2009. Students are a mixture of recreational flyers and business people who want to operate their own plane, Rhodes said. The Federal Aviation Administration has a gloomy forecast on the numbers of student pilots that flight school operators will see in the coming years. Growth is projected at 0.8 percent between 2009 and 2030. The agency estimates 71,400 student pilots in 2012, less than the 72,280 in 2009. Vista Air is the only full-time flight school at Whiteman. One other school, Sunquest, was closed a couple of years ago but for reasons unrelated to the economy. At Van Nuys Airport, flight schools have closed shop, among them the Van Nuys Flight Center. Money coming in from sales of aircraft parts and pilot supplies has helped Vista get through poor economy and not be reliant on just the flight school, Rhodes said. “If we did one or the other we would not have made it,” Rhodes said. California flight schools dodged a bullet of sorts in September when Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that exempts flight schools from regulation by the state Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education. The law reversed an earlier one that required flight schools to pay the bureau a one-time $5,000 application fee, an annual fee of $1,000, and remittance of 0.75 percent of annual revenues. That law was never enforced. The National Air Transportation Association considered the fees excessive and successfully lobbied for the exemption. “It was gong to be a hardship on flight schools and it made a lot of difference,” Rhodes said. State legislators created the original law, passed in 2010, to protect students from losing money if a flight school went out of business. But many schools, Vista Air included, charge per lesson and don’t take thousands of dollars up front. To get flight schools on a path to improvement requires more than non-regulation by the state. A better economy would be nice, but many flight school operators have learned tried and true business techniques such as marketing and customer service, said Mike France, director of regulatory affairs for the NATA. “Those are skills that flight schools are looking to keep the pilots we have and to get more folks in to learn how to fly,” France said. New Member on Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Cindy Goodfellow has joined the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory, the advisory body for the San Fernando Valley airport. Goodfellow is administrative manager at Aerolease Associates LLC, owner and manager of properties at the airport. She brings a background of commercial office, warehouse and aviation property management experience to the council. Advisory council members are selected by Los Angeles City Council members whose districts include the airport, the mayor and the Airport Commission. The advisory council meets the first Tuesday of the month in the conference room of the Van Nuys FlyAway on Woodley Avenue. Supervisors Back Helicopter Bill The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has come out in support of a pending bill before Congress to limit helicopter operations. Helicopter noise has become a hot button issue in the Valley and other parts of Los Angeles that attract the low-flying aircraft, such as the Beachwood Canyon area in the Hollywood Hills near the Hollywood sign. The supervisors voted Nov. 8 on a motion from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to give backing to the legislation sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman requiring the Federal Aviation Administration up with flight path and minimum altitude regulations for helicopter operations in Los Angeles County. The bill exempts law enforcement, emergency responders, and the U.S. military. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected]