Our Daily Show Interview! Piston Aviation: PistonLIVE Active!
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Affordable Online Flight School with Live Instructors – Join Piston Live!
BETHALTO - There’s a groundbreaking new way for pilots to learn how to fly.
With locations in Creve Coeur and Bethalto, Piston Aviation has a new online alternative to traditional flight school. Piston Live offers online courses with live instructors, bridging the gap between traditional and online training and preparing aspiring pilots for the next step in their flight school journey.
“Do you wish your online flight school was affordable and gave you access to everything you needed to know?” asked owner Joe Ord. “We’ve scoured the internet and we have found all of the resources, put them all in one place, for you, right here on Piston Live.”
Ord explained that he wanted to create a ground school that’s flexible for people while giving them all the benefits of in-person instruction. The online program allows people to move at their own pace and utilize all of the resources, but it also gives them access to live instructors who can answer questions.
Piston Live offers private pilot ground school, IFR ground school, commercial ground school, multi-ground school and CFI ground school. With live demonstrations, livestreams and a live support community, aspiring pilots don’t have to take on the journey of ground school alone.
Ord noted that other online ground schools are great but “static” with no interactive component. He hopes the Piston Live model can become a nationwide approach to ground school going forward.
The journey to the cockpit can be thrilling but also financially daunting. Piston Aviation prioritized making Piston Live affordable. The program uses a subscription model where aspiring pilots can pay $19.95 a month for access to all the courses and live instructors. Ord suggested a subscription could also make a great gift for hopeful flyers.
“For $20 — and you can cancel anytime — hop on for a month. Take a few classes. Figure it out,” Ord said. “I promise you, you get online, you go through all of our videos and our courses and you talk to our [certified flight instructors], you’re going to know if you're in love with it or not. And we’re going to make you in love with it, because that’s what we do at Piston Aviation. However, I’m challenging you to spend the $20 a month to go online and just learn some more. Maybe you get the bug, maybe you don’t, but it’s an easy way to find out.”
If a student completes ground school through Piston Live, they will have the certification they need to take the Federal Aviation Administration written exam. This is one major step in getting your pilot’s license, and Ord said it’s a “major selling point” of the Piston Live program.
He explained that the completion rate for traditional flight school is a little low. He firmly believes that Piston Live is an answer to that because it gives students the support they need to thrive in an online learning environment.
“I think the more relatable, the more accessible, the more avenues you give people to do that ground work, the bigger the success rate we’ll see,” he explained. “We have a pilot shortage, so we have to hit this. We’ve got to get this right.”
But even though Piston Live is an online ground school program, Ord promises the fun atmosphere of Piston Aviation still shines through. You can check out Piston Aviation on their official Facebook page and other social media sites to get a feel for the school and learn more about Piston Live. Ord looks forward to welcoming the first class of pilots to their new ground school.
“It’s going to be so groundbreaking and so cool,” he added. “We’re really pumped about this product. It’s going to be a game-changer.”
Visit PistonLive.com for more information, including how to enroll.
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