Flight School Spotlight: Avier Flight School

Co-owners Paul Beaulieu and Esteban Monterroso wanted the flight school to be a warm and comfortable environment that focuses on safety while guiding and nurturing students.

They consider the school a disrupter in the industry, but the two acknowledge that their training tactics aren’t revolutionary, just unique. It all returns to making sure students’ needs are met—Beaulieu referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—and instructors are consistently and enthusiastically promoting good behavior in students through positive reinforcement.

Beaulieu operates as the chief flight instructor for the school. While he still flies a couple times a week, he focuses more on the administrative side. “I really strongly take my position to be an active mentor and guide and support structure for all of our instructors,” said Beaulieu, who had started his flight training journey as a hobby while he was still an educator. After working his way up and through his ratings he decided to become a flight instructor while still teaching, which is when he met Monterroso.

Monterroso was a student in Beaulieu’s piano class when he expressed his interest in becoming a pilot. The two did an introductory flight and Monterroso was hooked. Their shared love for flight brought the two back together several years later when Beaulieu, who had decided to open a one-man, one-airplane flight school, needed help running his operation.

In the eight years since then, Avier Flight School has grown to eight aircraft and employs 20 instructors. It is one of the largest flight schools in the region.

“At the beginning when we started with this business model we had a lot of naysayers,” said Monterroso, who now works as the operations manager. People were concerned they were trying to be more of a clubhouse and less of a flight school. However, their persistence to maintain their mission paid off. “We remained true to ourselves and what the intention behind the business was,” said Monterroso.

The mission statement, which was created by Beaulieu and influenced by his time in hospitality and as an educator, is “To ensure aviation safety and increase the footprint of general aviation safety in the warmest possible environment.”

“Every time I contemplate changing it, it just seems a little too perfect,” said Beaulieu. “Those three elements have really stuck with us and guided our growth.”

“Increase the footprint of general aviation” was critically important to Beaulieu because he learned to fly at a flight school that’s on the same field. “I was really passionate that creating this school was not going to dilute the training base at this field,” said Beaulieu. “I needed to create my own customers separate from the existing customer base.”

And the school’s training style is unique enough to draw its own crowd. It starts with crew resource management training, where students learn how to be a pilot flying or a pilot monitoring.

“We teach them from the beginning the way they’re going to fly in their professional lives,” said Beaulieu. “The lessons teach more effectively and they create safer pilots.”

This scenario-based training program is most notable in the school’s instrument, commercial, and CFI training. The time-building program is called Avier AIR, and everyone who undertakes advanced training with the school will go through it. “We are partnering people together so they can actually build all these hours while cutting the costs in half,” said Monterroso, who says one of the benefits is those going through the training can share the expenses but log the whole flight. Monterroso says the affordability is a big perk they are able to offer their guests. “We are actually able to get our students from zero all the way to commercial and CFI for about $35,000.”

The commitment to this training style has paid off. Owners are very happy with the conversion rate between introductory flight and flight training, and the completion rate of their students.

The training model is a big portion of that success, but they also point to the broader experience that they create for their guests. Monterroso describes what people love so much about the operation as similar to the intangible magic found at Disneyland.

“What we’re trying to give people here is an experience,” said Monterroso. “Why not compliment the entire experience by making sure they are actually nurtured physiologically and also mentally.” Guests are greeted with a coffee or cappuccino when they visit, and operations are halted every day between noon and 1:00 p.m. so lunch can be provided for all instructors and customers. In the owners’ eyes, these amenity investments are extremely important to fostering a community. Most of their customers drive at least 25 miles to train at Avier and they are spending upwards of $25,000. The owners want the service and amenities to reflect that financial and time commitment.

Avier also wants to be a part of its community right outside of the airport—in part by adopting a Good Neighbors policy. “We try to be intentional about our actions and respectful of our sound footprint,” said Beaulieu. “We do things within our power to minimize our impact on the surrounding community.” The scenario-based nature of their program means they don’t linger at the airport. Pilots visit other nearby airports during flights, they do all operations at full-length departure, and they don’t do touch and goes that depart from mid-field.

The other way they interact with the community is through donations. Avier donates introductory flights for raffle items or silent auction items, and the owners are passionate about buying local when purchasing food and supplies. “We try to be in the community as much as we can to draw in attention to the airport and flight school and flight training environment,” said Beaulieu.

While being in the community promotes the school, its main form of marketing is social media. “We live our whole life out loud online,” said Beaulieu. The group is on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok—with some accounts reaching more than 30,000 followers. Videos of first solos have gone viral, bringing in calls from across the United States from students who are also interested in being part of the positive environment that Avier owners have created.