Kings develop Cessna Pilot Center app, branch into airline training
John and Martha King started out hosting in-person ground schools using chalkboards as teaching aids. The progressed to overhead projectors, then expanded by recording their lessons onto VHS, and later advanced to CD, DVD, and online courses. They offer training material for audiences ranging from student pilots to professional pilots and have long been legends in the aviation training industry.
The Kings are continuing that progression, they announced April 6, by developing an iPad/iPhone app for Cessna Pilot Center flight instructors that they can use online or offline, allowing them to go paperless, and by partnering with 1Step Prep to offer Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 courses to help pilots prepare for the type rating and recurrent training.
“It’s a real-time tool,” the company said of the app that instructors can use in the air to keep track of the lesson and take notes. The app features lesson checklists so that CFIs can check off each task as it is completed. Instructors who don’t want to use the checklist in the air can use it afterward for the student debrief.
The app could even eliminate the need for instructors to go back inside the school to finish up a student, Martha King noted. The flight time information can be logged in the app and debrief completed right there in the cockpit, so that the student can go inside and pay while another student comes out to the CFI waiting in the airplane.
“This is going to change flight instruction forever,” John King said, equating the app to what Uber’s use of technology has done for those seeking ground transportation.
The app also lets instructors look at a student’s progress at a glance and see any notes from other CFIs. Another function of the app lets CFIs audit students for course completion.
The app will be free for Cessna Pilot Center instructors as part of their existing partnership with the Kings.
Additionally, the Kings announced that they are expanding into airline training by partnering with 1Step Prep. 1Step Prep CEO Joseph Munoz and Vice President Juan Dominguez have more than 20 years of teaching experience, and started similarly to the way the Kings started their training sessions (minus the chalkboards). The two have been providing in-person training and have expanded to video training. They are adding their videos to the King Schools learning management system and have created six courses for oral and simulator prep for classic and Next-Gen Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s.
King Schools explained that pilots have invested a lot of time and money training and flying to get to the point of earning a type rating, and they want this new set of courses to help them feel comfortable for the challenge of the oral and simulator exam. Pilots also can use the course to prepare for their recurrent training, they said.
Alyssa J. Miller
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