Maverick takes on flight school paperwork

A student at Celestial Kinetics Flight Academy in Waupaca, Wisconsin was preparing for a checkride when instructors discovered a missing solo endorsement. The instructor responsible for issuing it no longer worked at the school. "We had to get back in contact with that instructor, get the endorsement, and republish it for the student's checkride," said Noah Lencki, chief flight instructor and part owner of the Part 61 school.

It was the kind of recordkeeping problem Lencki wanted to prevent with Maverick, a flight school management platform he developed with his brother, Owen. Designed primarily for smaller Part 61 schools and independent flight instructors, Maverick unites student records, training progress, endorsements, lesson planning, weather history, and other administrative tools into one system.

Growing up near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Lencki's interest in aviation was piqued by a visit to the EAA Aviation Museum with his grandfather. He started flight training in 2019, became a flight instructor in 2022, and later helped launch Celestial Kinetics Flight Academy.

Building the school exposed a recurring problem: Student records, endorsements, lesson plans, and training notes were often spread across multiple systems. As the school grew from a single Cessna 172 to six aircraft and multiple instructors, keeping track of everything became more complicated. Lencki looked for a better way to merge those records.

His brother had the software development skills, while Lencki understood the needs of the aviation field. The brothers developed Maverick for use at Celestial Kinetics before offering it to other flight schools.

Maverick compares logged training against Part 61 aeronautical experience requirements and FAA airman certification standards, helping instructors to identify missing flight time, endorsements, medical certificates, knowledge tests, and other practical test requirements. Lencki said the goal is not to replace instructor judgment but to make student records easier to review.

Instructors can also see endorsements issued by previous instructors and track when time-limited endorsements are approaching expiration. "So Maverick would have been able to catch this," he said of the missing solo endorsement at his school.

One of the platform's more unusual features goes beyond hours flown to track the weather conditions in which those hours were accumulated.

When an instructor logs a training flight, Maverick automatically retrieves weather observations associated with the flight, including the weather at airports along a cross-country route. Over time, the program builds a record of average wind speeds, gusts, crosswinds, ceilings, and more demanding conditions a student may have encountered. Lencki sees that data as another tool for developing personal minimums. Rather than relying only on an instructor's memory, the instructor and student can review the weather observations associated with previous training flights when discussing personal minimums. "They really like the weather feature," Lencki said. "That was actually a recommendation from one of our instructors."

Maverick also gives students their own accounts. Instructors can assign an upcoming lesson, list maneuvers or subjects to be covered, and attach reading or video material. Students can mark the material as reviewed, allowing instructors to see whether students have indicated they completed the assignment before a lesson.

Other features include school administrative reports, a prospective-student customer relationship management system, digital flight and student records, expiration tracking for certificates and endorsements, and a safety reporting tool.

Although larger flight school management platforms already exist, Lencki said he wanted Maverick to serve smaller Part 61 operations that might otherwise rely on a combination of spreadsheets, paper records, and separate programs.

"What I found, too, in talking with smaller flight school owners, independent instructors, and organizations similar to the size of mine, is that some of the larger tools on the market are cost prohibitive," he said.

Maverick works across devices and costs $49 per month for one aircraft, with each additional aircraft costing $15 per month.

For Lencki, the goal with Maverick is to replace scattered records and lesson notes with a clearer picture of each student's progress, so instructors can catch missing requirements before checkride day.