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Soaring club hijacked by a for-profit company?
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Mike
Oct 21, 2023, 11:56:15 PM10/21/23
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I was in Utah a few months ago and did some flying there. While at Nephi, I listened in as a couple of people were talking about a warning that their clubs got about a situation at a club in Colorado. One guy was from a Utah club. The other was from another western state which I don't remember. The conversation was interesting enough that I almost missed the best launch window that day.
The warning concerned a Colorado soaring club that got itself hijacked by a for-profit operation called Falcon Aerolab. Not Black Forest or Boulder. I had to look up the club in question, which I thought about not naming. But that seems silly. The only one in or near Falcon, CO is High Flights Soaring Club, and that was the one the guys were talking about. From my perspective, what I heard was hearsay. But anybody with better info could chime in.
The story is that this club is basically a glider training school for a company that makes money flying homeshool students. The guy who started Falcon Aerolab used to be a club tow pilot and used his membership to create a profitable business. That guy had experience running charter schools and used his connections with the local school district to get lots of money to run a homeshool program to train kids in gliders through their initial solo flight.
Great idea, I guess. But the controversy was about how the guy misled his club on his plan to use the club's tow plane, gliders, free tow labor, and free glider IP labor to profit himself. He glossed over the for-profit homeschool business and sold the idea as free STEM education for middle and highshool students. That got enough enthusiasm and support from the club to create a new category of membership just for his students, and the business was off and flying. Before it realized it, the club became so busy with and dependent on the Falcon Aerolab business that what most of us would regard as soaring disappeared from the club. Apparently, most all gliding is done on weekday mornings within a couple of miles of the airfield. It's not unusual at that club to log dozens of short flights on the weekdays, but nary a wheel turns on the weekend because they have trouble scheduling people to tow and instruct. Or, aircraft have to be fixed before the next school day, and priority goes to the for-profit student flying.
Some other details stuck from the Utah conversation, like how the Aerolab guy got his new neighbor to not only join the club but also run for (and win) the club board presidency. When that person bacame president, most club members hadn't even met the guy. Shortly after that, the club's old tow plane was in such bad shape from non-stop Aerolab towing that a good number of their tow pilots quit. The Aerolab owner "donated" money to help the club buy a Pawnee. Then the Pawnee broke and was down for months. But somehow Aerolab bought another Pawnee that was shared with the club. Oh, a bunch of glider IPs quit. But they usually manage to get enough new people in to crank out the sorties, until those people quit.
It sounds like a churn and burn operation made possible by lots of money provided by the local shcool district. From what I understand, the homeshool industry is largely unregulated, which might just promote greedy profiteering. The guys in Utah mentioned that Falcon Aerolab was/is expanding to other states and was trying to sell their clubs on the same scheme (STEM education, youth soaring, new members, etc.), leaving out the profitmaking part, of course.
Anyway, the soaring season is finally tapering off, and I thought this belated story might be useful if/when your club gets the same pitch. If your club is a 501c non-profit org., would that status be jeopardized by acting as an arm of a for-profit operation? Would club members be OK with their club assets and labor being used for that operation, assuming they knew the scheme? That company knows what it's doing by partnering up with well-intentioned clubs.
The warning concerned a Colorado soaring club that got itself hijacked by a for-profit operation called Falcon Aerolab. Not Black Forest or Boulder. I had to look up the club in question, which I thought about not naming. But that seems silly. The only one in or near Falcon, CO is High Flights Soaring Club, and that was the one the guys were talking about. From my perspective, what I heard was hearsay. But anybody with better info could chime in.
The story is that this club is basically a glider training school for a company that makes money flying homeshool students. The guy who started Falcon Aerolab used to be a club tow pilot and used his membership to create a profitable business. That guy had experience running charter schools and used his connections with the local school district to get lots of money to run a homeshool program to train kids in gliders through their initial solo flight.
Great idea, I guess. But the controversy was about how the guy misled his club on his plan to use the club's tow plane, gliders, free tow labor, and free glider IP labor to profit himself. He glossed over the for-profit homeschool business and sold the idea as free STEM education for middle and highshool students. That got enough enthusiasm and support from the club to create a new category of membership just for his students, and the business was off and flying. Before it realized it, the club became so busy with and dependent on the Falcon Aerolab business that what most of us would regard as soaring disappeared from the club. Apparently, most all gliding is done on weekday mornings within a couple of miles of the airfield. It's not unusual at that club to log dozens of short flights on the weekdays, but nary a wheel turns on the weekend because they have trouble scheduling people to tow and instruct. Or, aircraft have to be fixed before the next school day, and priority goes to the for-profit student flying.
Some other details stuck from the Utah conversation, like how the Aerolab guy got his new neighbor to not only join the club but also run for (and win) the club board presidency. When that person bacame president, most club members hadn't even met the guy. Shortly after that, the club's old tow plane was in such bad shape from non-stop Aerolab towing that a good number of their tow pilots quit. The Aerolab owner "donated" money to help the club buy a Pawnee. Then the Pawnee broke and was down for months. But somehow Aerolab bought another Pawnee that was shared with the club. Oh, a bunch of glider IPs quit. But they usually manage to get enough new people in to crank out the sorties, until those people quit.
It sounds like a churn and burn operation made possible by lots of money provided by the local shcool district. From what I understand, the homeshool industry is largely unregulated, which might just promote greedy profiteering. The guys in Utah mentioned that Falcon Aerolab was/is expanding to other states and was trying to sell their clubs on the same scheme (STEM education, youth soaring, new members, etc.), leaving out the profitmaking part, of course.
Anyway, the soaring season is finally tapering off, and I thought this belated story might be useful if/when your club gets the same pitch. If your club is a 501c non-profit org., would that status be jeopardized by acting as an arm of a for-profit operation? Would club members be OK with their club assets and labor being used for that operation, assuming they knew the scheme? That company knows what it's doing by partnering up with well-intentioned clubs.
Doug Bailey
Oct 22, 2023, 11:45:50 AM10/22/23
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Mike Hendron
Oct 23, 2023, 1:48:56 AM10/23/23
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Not sure who out in Utah this conversation was with, but we did have pretty extensive back and forth conversations with Falcon AeroLab. On the surface the mission of their organization sounds great. And it may be a good pathway for some homeschooling kids. They were looking for a partner to provide intro rides at a low price. We proposed using the SSA FAST program multiple times, but they wanted non-instructional low-cost flight offering. Given their educational mission, I couldn't understand the pushback on the FAST program, since it is a great value, and counts as instruction. In the end, it didn't fit our member-owned club operating model, so we passed on the idea of offering a high-volume, subsidized-cost, ride business.
Wallace Berry
Oct 24, 2023, 9:53:09 PM10/24/23
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On Monday, October 23, 2023 at 12:48:56 AM UTC-5, Mike Hendron wrote:
> Not sure who out in Utah this conversation was with, but we did have pretty extensive back and forth conversations with Falcon AeroLab. On the surface the mission of their organization sounds great. And it may be a good pathway for some homeschooling kids. They were looking for a partner to provide intro rides at a low price. We proposed using the SSA FAST program multiple times, but they wanted non-instructional low-cost flight offering. Given their educational mission, I couldn't understand the pushback on the FAST program, since it is a great value, and counts as instruction. In the end, it didn't fit our member-owned club operating model, so we passed on the idea of offering a high-volume, subsidized-cost, ride business.
Over the years I have heard of a number of schemes, and seen evidence of a couple of schemes, to get control of club assets. There are various schemes to kill or takeover a club include cooking books to make the club appear insolvent, fostering a hostile club environment to drive off membership, or a few individuals attempting to buy up a majority of voting shares. Take a close look at your club's by-laws with special attention to rules governing how club assets are to be distributed if the club were to disband. You really don't want your club's by-laws to incentivize someone killing your club for profit.
> Not sure who out in Utah this conversation was with, but we did have pretty extensive back and forth conversations with Falcon AeroLab. On the surface the mission of their organization sounds great. And it may be a good pathway for some homeschooling kids. They were looking for a partner to provide intro rides at a low price. We proposed using the SSA FAST program multiple times, but they wanted non-instructional low-cost flight offering. Given their educational mission, I couldn't understand the pushback on the FAST program, since it is a great value, and counts as instruction. In the end, it didn't fit our member-owned club operating model, so we passed on the idea of offering a high-volume, subsidized-cost, ride business.
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