In February I attended the SSA Convention in Reno and I learned about the Let’s Go Gliding! campaign. This is an extraordinary initiative that can benefit the sport of soaring, especially if all it’s members (or at least the active ones) would get involved and really promote soaring and the campaign.
During the convention everybody had questions about how to do this: How do you get people interested in soaring? Where do you get people that would find soaring interesting?
I took this challenge personal, as I am running a soaring business and growing the sport means in the long run growing my business, and I started working on it. By now we attended 3 events in our area and we are keeping our eyes open for more.
The first one we did was Taste of South Lake – a restaurant tasting event with a few businesses from the area present. We probably got to talk to about 500 people about soaring, tell them what a sailplane is and invite them for a ride. We received a pretty good attendance, as they were all local.
Our second event was SunN Fun (together with the SSA – Thank you for the support!) – a big aviation event, targeted mainly on power aircraft. We were impressed with the presence our booth had. A lot of power pilots will probably turn to soaring due to this event (we already finished 2 add-ons due to this). We focused on highlighting the No medical/ No written/ No fuel part of soaring as well as the short time and low cost they can get this rating, as well as improving their pilot skills.
The third event was just a few days ago – Festivals of Speed, hosted by Mission Inn Resort – a luxury cars, motorcycles, boats and … a SAILPLANE – we took a DG 1000 for this event. We had a lot of wealthy people visiting out booth and learning about an extraordinary, elegant and sophisticated sport. People that can actually invest in the sport and become pilots.
I started writing these lines and shared the above examples because these are 3 events that actually answer the questions of HOW? and WHERE? do you get people involved. You can get local people interested in rides, sell gift certificates, etc., reach for other type of pilots at aviation events and also reach for the target group as revenue, age, etc. at special events. Just keep an eye out there and sell soaring, tell people about soaring!
You will probably need to talk to 1,000 people, get maybe 50-100 interested in a flight and maybe have 1 soaring pilot at the end, but this will be a new member added to our community that will also promote soaring. It’s not such a hard path, is just being open and excited about sharing the magic of flying!
Andreea @ SLG Florida
