I was in Utah a few months ago and did some flying there. While at Nephi, I listened in as a couple of people were talking about a warning that their clubs got about a situation at a club in Colorado. One guy was from a Utah club. The other was fromanother western state which I don't remember. The conversation was interesting enough that I almost missed the best launch window that day.
The warning concerned a Colorado soaring club that got itself hijacked by a for-profit operation called Falcon Aerolab. Not Black Forest or Boulder. I had to look up the club in question, which I thought about not naming. But that seems silly. The onlyone in or near Falcon, CO is High Flights Soaring Club, and that was the one the guys were talking about. From my perspective, what I heard was hearsay. But anybody with better info could chime in.
The story is that this club is basically a glider training school for a company that makes money flying homeshool students. The guy who started Falcon Aerolab used to be a club tow pilot and used his membership to create a profitable business. That guyhad experience running charter schools and used his connections with the local school district to get lots of money to run a homeshool program to train kids in gliders through their initial solo flight.
Great idea, I guess. But the controversy was about how the guy misled his club on his plan to use the club's tow plane, gliders, free tow labor, and free glider IP labor to profit himself. He glossed over the for-profit homeschool business and sold theidea as free STEM education for middle and highshool students. That got enough enthusiasm and support from the club to create a new category of membership just for his students, and the business was off and flying. Before it realized it, the club became
Some other details stuck from the Utah conversation, like how the Aerolab guy got his new neighbor to not only join the club but also run for (and win) the club board presidency. When that person bacame president, most club members hadn't even met theguy. Shortly after that, the club's old tow plane was in such bad shape from non-stop Aerolab towing that a good number of their tow pilots quit. The Aerolab owner "donated" money to help the club buy a Pawnee. Then the Pawnee broke and was down for
It sounds like a churn and burn operation made possible by lots of money provided by the local shcool district. From what I understand, the homeshool industry is largely unregulated, which might just promote greedy profiteering. The guys in Utahmentioned that Falcon Aerolab was/is expanding to other states and was trying to sell their clubs on the same scheme (STEM education, youth soaring, new members, etc.), leaving out the profitmaking part, of course.
Anyway, the soaring season is finally tapering off, and I thought this belated story might be useful if/when your club gets the same pitch. If your club is a 501c non-profit org., would that status be jeopardized by acting as an arm of a for-profitoperation? Would club members be OK with their club assets and labor being used for that operation, assuming they knew the scheme? That company knows what it's doing by partnering up with well-intentioned clubs.
Not sure who out in Utah this conversation was with, but we did have pretty extensive back and forth conversations with Falcon AeroLab. On the surface the mission of their organization sounds great. And it may be a good pathway for some homeschoolingkids. They were looking for a partner to provide intro rides at a low price. We proposed using the SSA FAST program multiple times, but they wanted non-instructional low-cost flight offering. Given their educational mission, I couldn't understand the
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