What are you doing for the eclipse?
If Flight School Business had a “Marketing Award of the Month” (or Year) category this month’s winner would most certainly be Fundamentals Flight Training of Erie, Pennsylvania.
Why? This enterprising flight school is taking advantage of an extremely rare but very viable marketing opportunity: a total solar eclipse.
On April 8 the path of the eclipse will cross from Mexico into the United States via Texas, then Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, according to NASA. Small parts of Tennessee and Michigan will also experience the total solar eclipse. See this handy map from NASA which shows the path of totality and when the corresponding states will experience the eclipse.
Erie, Pennsylvania, is smack in the path of totality and Fundamentals Flight Training isn’t letting that opportunity slip by. The flight school is offering Solar Eclipse Discovery Flights, which owner David Benson said are similar to regular introductory flights except that they will be centered around an area where passengers “can get an epic view of the eclipse” and will last at least one hour.
The local news website YourErie.com picked up the story and provided the flight school with some nice coverage. Benson was careful to explain in the article that the flights will be “weather permitting,” which is a good thing to point out to nonpilots, who sometimes confuse general aviation with the airlines and don’t understand visual flight rules.
Fundamentals Flight Training is a Part 141/Part 61 flight school with locations at Erie International Airport/Tom Ridge Field (ERI) and Corry-Lawrence Airport (8G2) in Corry. The school has a fleet of three Cessna 150s, a Piper PA-38 Tomahawk (that’s IFR capable!), and a Piper PA-28R Arrow.
AOPA Pilot’s April issue, set to arrive in your mailboxes soon, has a special section devoted to the April eclipse, including locations and events. If you’re anywhere in that path of totality, it’s not too late to plan something—a special introductory flight or maybe an eclipse-themed open house—to bring customers to your door.
The next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous United States will be August 25, 2044. So don’t sleep on this one.
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