Turning trial flights into members

The flight is almost never the problem. What is missing is everything in the fortnight afterwards, and in most clubs nobody owns it.

The second flight is the conversion event

The first flight is a lovely experience. It is a thing that happened to somebody. There is a large gap between "I had a wonderful time" and "I am going to reorganise my Saturdays for the next three years", and almost nobody crosses it in one step.

What crosses it is the second visit. That is when a person stops being a passenger and starts imagining themselves as a member: they recognise a face, they know where the kettle is, somebody says hello by name. Every trial flight is worth judging by whether it produced a second visit, not by whether it produced a member.

Why the follow-up does not happen

Not because anybody thinks it is unimportant. Because on the day, the club is busy, the details go on a scrap of paper or into a booking inbox, and by Monday the person who flew them is at work and assumes somebody else has it.

Follow-up fails for structural reasons, and all three are fixable without anyone working harder:

• Nobody owns it. If it is everybody's job it is nobody's. One named person, even if they only send three emails a month.
• The details are not captured properly. A name and a phone number taken for the booking is not the same as permission to contact them afterwards. Ask on the day, explicitly, and write down the answer.
• There is nothing specific to invite them to. "Come down any time" is not an invitation, in the same way that "we need more volunteers" is not an ask. A date is an invitation.

A follow-up sequence that is three emails long

This is not a marketing funnel. It is three short messages from a human being, and it takes about ten minutes per person across the fortnight.

Same day, or the next morning

Short and warm. Thank them, name the instructor they flew with, and — this is the part clubs skip — say what they actually did. "You had the controls for most of the circuit and flew a genuinely tidy approach" lands very differently from a generic thank-you, because it tells them they were flying rather than being flown.

If somebody took a photo, attach it. It costs nothing and it is the thing they show people.

Around day three

The useful one. Answer the questions they did not know to ask on the day: what learning to fly actually involves, roughly how long it takes, roughly what it costs, and what the next step is. Be straight about all of it — an honest "most people take a couple of years and it costs about this much" loses you the people who were never going to do it and keeps the people who would have found out later and felt misled.

Our cost-to-solo calculator and the chapter on why students quit both exist to answer exactly these questions, and either is fine to send.

Around day fourteen

A specific invitation to a specific day. "We are flying on the 22nd, come down from ten, ask for Sarah, there is nothing to book and nothing to pay." The absence of a transaction matters — a second flight is a purchase decision, whereas turning up for a look is not.

Then stop. Three messages and a door left open is attentive. A fourth is pestering, and this is a small community in which being remembered as the club that pesters is worse than losing the member.

What to do on the day itself

Who flies them is a decision, not a rota accident

Some pilots are wonderful in the air and never mention that joining is possible. Others weave it in naturally. Both are good pilots; only one is doing conversion. If a club runs trial flights as a serious recruiting channel, it should be deliberate about who flies them.

Let them see the club, not just the aircraft

A visitor who is walked straight from the car park to the glider and back has met an aircraft. One who spends twenty minutes at the launch point beforehand has met a club, and the club is what they would actually be joining. Most people who stay stay for the people.

Ask the question out loud

"Is this something you would think about doing properly?" — asked on the ground, after the flight, by the person who flew them. It is a startlingly effective question and it is asked far less often than committees assume, usually out of a worry about seeming pushy.

Pricing, and what the trial flight is for

Decide which job the trial flight is doing, because the two answers point in opposite directions:

• Revenue. Price it to make money, accept that most flights are gift vouchers, and do not be disappointed by conversion.
• Recruiting. Price it near cost, and judge it entirely on second visits.

Both are legitimate. What does not work is pricing for revenue, expecting recruitment, and then concluding the sport is not appealing.

One practical note on vouchers: a gift voucher recipient did not choose gliding — somebody chose it for them. They are a much weaker prospect than a person who booked themselves, and worth tracking separately or your conversion rate will look mysterious.

Be realistic about the rate

Most trial flights will not become members, and that is not a failure. People have jobs, children, budgets, and a hundred miles between them and the airfield.

We are not going to quote you an industry conversion rate, because we do not have one worth quoting and neither does anyone else who does not run your club. Count yours for a season. The number matters far less than the direction it moves once somebody starts following up — and clubs that begin measuring almost always find the loss is at the second-visit step, not at the flight.