President's Position: Back at the controls

As I write, it’s been almost exactly one year since we launched the Rusty Pilots program. Like a lot of what we’ve been doing over the past year or so, Rusty Pilots started off as an experiment—one element of a multifaceted approach to get more people flying, and keep them flying.

The program grew out of some research we did a couple of years back. That research proved there’s more to the well-worn saying, “once a pilot, always a pilot,” than just words. People who have earned their pilot certificates continue to consider themselves pilots—even when they haven’t flown for decades. And that’s because, almost universally, they love aviation and want to fly again. They’re just waiting for the right set of circumstances to climb back into the left seat.

Once we understood this basic fact, we asked ourselves how we could help create the “right” circumstances. We discovered that, for quite a lot of lapsed pilots, inertia was one of the biggest problems—they just didn’t know where to start. Often with no connection to a local flight school or instructor, they didn’t even know where to go for help. With no sense of the way forward, they did nothing.

That’s why we implemented the Rusty Pilots program, a half-day seminar that gives pilots credit for the ground portion of the flight review. The seminars are completely free to pilots and to host organizations. To extend our reach nationwide, we asked flight schools and flying clubs around the country whether they’d like to host an event.

The response from pilots, schools, and clubs has been amazing. In the program’s first year, more than 100 Rusty Pilots seminars were delivered nationwide. In fact, they’ve been held in nearly every state, and more than 3,600 individuals have completed the program.

But here’s the truly amazing part: On average, 18 percent of Rusty Pilots participants report that they’ve returned to active flying status. That means they’ve completed a flight review, obtained a medical if necessary, and are back in the left seat. That’s about 650 pilots who are back at the controls over the course of a year. That number could easily double if more schools and clubs volunteer to host high-quality Rusty Pilots events.

At a recent Rusty Pilots seminar in California, fully one-third of participants signed up for a flight lesson on the spot, putting them well on the way to returning to active flying status.

OK, for the skeptics among you, I know this isn’t a magic bullet for growing the pilot population. But imagine, just for a moment, what would happen if we could get a thousand or more lapsed pilots back in the air every year for the next 10 years. We’d see a noticeable bump in the active pilot population.

The truth is that there’s no single way to turn around the long, steady decline in the number of active pilots. And that’s why we’re trying so many different approaches as part of AOPA’s You Can Fly program, from Rusty Pilots to the Flying Club Network and the Flight Training Initiative. We want to get people flying and keep them flying. Individually, each of these programs can make a difference for a relatively small group of people. But taken together, they can really move the needle on growing the pilot population. And the more people who fly, the better off the entire GA community will be.

If you are a rusty pilot who wants to get back in the air, consider attending a Rusty Pilots seminar. They’ll be offered at every AOPA Fly-In, and a complete list of events is available at RustyPilots.org—with more being added every week.

If you operate a flight school, flying club, or other aviation organization, consider hosting an event. We’ll promote the event for you and give you all the materials you need to host the seminar at no charge. You can sign up to host an event on RustyPilots.org, as well.

As pilots and enthusiasts with a passion for aviation, it’s up to us to ensure the future of GA. No one person, or one organization, can do it alone. But together we can get more people flying, and that will help ensure the freedom to fly for us all.

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AOPA PresidentMark Baker has flown general aviation aircraft since he was a teenager.