The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association\u2019s You Can Fly\nprogram recently celebrated its 200th flying club formed since its inception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AOPA recognized members of the Lake Shelbyville Flying Club\nfrom Shelby County, Illinois during an annual Pilot Town Hall presentation at\nEAA AirVenture in Oshkosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shelby County Airport manager Scott Jefson said the pace of\nthe club’s growth, which now has 10 members, is in part thanks to the\nassistance of the AOPA You Can Fly Flying Clubs initiative. “We called\nSteve after our first meeting in January, by the second meeting we were rocking\nand rolling, and things just [fell] into place.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The club is leasing a Cessna 172, which Jefson found at an\nestate sale, cleaned up, and flew back to the airport. After cleaning the heavy\nmold from the aircraft, Jefson got the aircraft airworthy, and it took its\nfirst flight with a club member May 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically (or not) Jefson is not a member of the club he\ninitiated. As the airport manager, he says he has too much going on to join but\nwas\u2014and is\u2014the cog that brought it all together. Area pilots would come to his\noffices asking about rentals and always suggesting the possibility of forming a\nclub to help with expenses and have an aircraft readily available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I realized all these people had one thing in\ncommon\u2014me. So, I gave them all the names of people who were asking about a\nclub, and they all reached out to one another,” he said. “I have\nhelped them come together, but they run it on their own.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Having the support of the airport manager is\nessential,” said Bateman. “Most operators are delighted that a new\naviation organization will be based at their airport, as it will likely\ngenerate fuel sales and support airport business\u2014but the operator has to\nbalance use and operations on the airport and has the obligation of ensuring\nthat all tenants play well together and that none are afforded special or\nexclusive rights.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AOPA advises all newly forming clubs to have a discussion\nwith their airport managers early in the formation process about their plans.\nEstablishing a good working relationship and having airport managers’ support\nis important and, more often than not, they open up doors and provide\nunexpected resources. Examples of these resources are free use of airport\nboardrooms for club meetings, fuel\/hangar\/tiedown discounts, aircraft on the\nfield available for sale or lease, and finally, potential members, who often\ninclude the airport manager themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jefson was happy that the Lake Shelbyville Flying Club came\ntogether. “We now have 10 people who were not flying who are now\nflying.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association\u2019s You Can Fly program recently celebrated its 200th flying club formed since its inception. AOPA recognized members of the Lake Shelbyville Flying Club from Shelby County, Illinois during an annual Pilot Town Hall presentation at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh. Shelby County Airport manager Scott Jefson said the pace of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-illinois"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOPA-Flying-Club-Lake-Shelbyville-edit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23100,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23098\/revisions\/23100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}