Flight Schedule Pro partners with Sallie Mae

The "exclusive partnership" with Flight Schedule Pro, billed as the largest flight training scheduling platform of its kind, gives schools in all 50 states the opportunity to seek approval from Sallie Mae, which, once granted, allows students of the approved school to apply for individual loans to help finance airline career programs that typically cost well over $100,000.

For students attending colleges and universities accredited by the U.S. Department of Education, federal student loans are the least expensive financing available, though many professional pilots train at non-accredited schools. Wegner said availability of private financing for students is among the top challenges facing the flight training industry, and the departure of private lender Meritize from the aviation education market prompted the initial conversations with Sallie Mae.

Flight Schedule Pro tracks a lot of data, beyond the basics of which aircraft are scheduled when and by whom. With a platform now used by more than 1,400 flight schools, both FAR Part 141 and Part 61, handling the records of more than 60,000 students and 16,000 instructors in a given year, FSP also allows schools to track the progress of both groups down to the individual logbook level. This same data also gives lenders like Sallie Mae the confidence to issue loans, based in part on the school's track record of student outcomes, and in part on the student's actual progress.

This kind of visibility could draw additional lenders into a market that many have avoided, in part because of a lack of visibility into student progress and outcomes. Wegner estimated that there's "probably over a billion dollars worth of demand for student loans that go through our platform," and that number could grow as schools more efficiently manage their resources, lenders gain confidence from having a clearer picture of progress, and students eventually find more willing lenders like Sallie Mae to help them pay for the training.

"We know that there's a lot of students that can't start," Wegner said. "They're sitting on the sidelines."

The abrupt exit of Meritize, a Texas-based lender, from the aviation education market drew little media attention beyond an undated blog post by a Florida flight school, though Wegner said it was the impetus for his outreach to Sallie Mae, a onetime federal agency that is now a publicly traded company.

"Once Meritize exited the space, there was a hole, here, that needed to be filled," Wegner said.

The partnership will allow students to track their Sallie Mae loan disbursements through Flight Schedule Pro, creating what the company called "a fully integrated student experience—from loan to logbook," in a news release, noting that "the partnership also enhances analytics for flight schools and instructors, improving coaching, graduation rates, and operations."

Wegner said data already on the platform shows that some Part 61 schools outperform Part 141 counterparts in terms of student outcomes. By bringing a major lender into the fold, those Part 61 schools have the potential to make a new financing option available to students, and lenders can issue loans with some confidence that the training will eventually lead to gainful employment—and a loan repaid in full.

"All that's because of the data we have," Wegner said. "It's a whole different thing if you can actually see it."

Access to data may not be unlimited from outside of the platform, and Wegner said schools and students have control over whether their individual information is shared with other parties: "We can't share anything without consent, full stop."

Wegner said transparency is at the heart of the model. Both students and schools "need to see all this data," both to correct errors and to understand their progress relative to others' in the industry.

"We want there to be complete transparency with all the parties. We also think that's a good thing, too, for the students. They can advocate for themselves if they're starting to fall behind… it's a much bigger data initiative than just the lending aspect."