I have a dream!

[Stuart_M]

Ok, kind of dramatic title, but I thought it would be interesting to have flight sim centers at local malls to spark an interest in aviation. Let's take the (virtual) airport to the kids since we can't get kids to the airport like we could in the good old days. Remember when there were not any fences around the perimeter?

I can't think of a better place to promote General & Experimental Aviation.

Your wife drags you to the Mall, what do you do? I dread watching my wife rummage trough racks of clothes. If only there was a flight sim center near by.

I'm interested in your thoughts!

[David Pavlich]

Of course, virtually all of us would love it. However, what would have to be charged just to break even with the thought that the sponsor, I would assume a flight school, will generate enough interest for enough potential students to spend between 5 and 10K, depending on which certificate is sought, to make the investment worth while?

David

[martymayes]

I'm interested in your thoughts!

Back in the '80's, I knew someone in Louisiana who wrote a business plan for almost exactly the same thing. He wanted to open a flight training/simulator center at a mall. He pushed his idea around to a few investors to get it financed and they all laughed. I learned about it because I knew one of the potential investors - he was interested in the general concept but wanted no part of the shopping mall aspect - and he was an investor in shopping malls, lol. Since I was doing a lot of flight training at the time, he asked if I would be interested in setting up something like that minus the shopping mall. I don't know what it would be like today but then it's was hard to make the numbers work, which is why investors turned this guy down.

On the rare occasion I go to a mall these days, all I see are old people "mall walkers" and hoodlums. Not sure if that is the audience you want to target.

Another thing I have observed since computerized simulators have proliferated is "simulation" is as far as many potential customers want to go. Lots of kids play flight simulator games on computers but have no interest in flying a real plane. So basically a sim center at the mall wouldn't be much different from an arcade. A simulator with guns and rocket pods would see more activity than a C-172 sim.

Good luck tho......if I'm in your neighborhood, I'd drop in for .5 of steep turns or something.

[Joe Delene]

But you would have to compete with 'HALO' & 'GEARS of WAR', no easy feat.

[Stuart_M]

That's where the F-16 Falcon comes in. Battle it out on 4 networked PC's. :)

[Stuart_M]

Nothing that complicated. Just Flight Sim X using yoke & rudder pedals, and a navigational map flying VFR. Nothing that can be logged for training.

[Stuart_M]

This is true. My son loves to fly sims but you can't beat the adrenalin rush of Call of Duty.

[Matt Gonitzke]

Something more or less along those lines (http://www.avweb.com/blogs/insider/A-Visit-to-Zulu-220154-1.html) is already being done.

[Stuart_M]

Interesting article. Thanks!

[rwanttaja]

About ten years ago, I had to kill time in a mall while the wife shopped. There was a flight-simulator center in the mall, running what appeared to be a modified version of Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator. Pretty detailed cockpit, with a big screen in front where the shootin' happened.

Ron Wanttaja

[Stuart_M]

Ron,
Can you remember where the Mall was located?

[Bill Berson]

I think they had a full motion simulator at the Dimond Mall in Anchorage, Alaska about ten years ago.

[rwanttaja]

Ron,
Can you remember where the Mall was located?
Minneapolis, I think. Wasn't the Mall of America, though.

Ron Wanttaja

[Joe LaMantia]

Malls are pretty much dying all over the country, the whole arcade thing reaches the same audience we're trying to attract so who wants to fool around with a boring flight sim when you can get into a jet fighter cockpit and play shoot'em up at an arcade? Or, just stay home, grab a coke, and play all kinds of video games on-line!

Thats the challenge we have to face today!

Joe
:cool:

[Esser]

I have a better idea. Invite a young person to go flying with you. Everyone paints the generation with a pretty broad brush. Not every youth has only interest in video games. Find out where your local Civil Air Patrol or Air Cadet squadron is. 90% of the kids would leap at the chance to go flying with you.

[kmacht]

I think that if a flight school wanted to drum up some new business, setting up a display in the mall with a piper cub or similar sitting there, a computer with FSX and someone there to answer questions would be a great idea. Let the people sit in the plane or play with the simulator while being given some basic info on flight training. It would generate a whole lot of interest and probably at least a number of introductory flights.

Keith

[Louis]

With the trend of local airports becoming unfriendly, unwelcoming places you might have something there. The biggest problem could be cost. Flight schools tend to have a low profit margin and mall rentals usually aren't cheap. Maybe the landlord could be enticed to lower the rent with some discounted flight time or something. What's really needed is a "ditch the electronics and do something real" trend among the young. The country needs another hippy movement. Bill, I did use the flight simulator in the Dimond mall once. I remember in the 70's there was a pilot shop in the Penny's mall (before it became the Fifth Avenue Mall) that had a few ATC 610 desktop simulators you could rent. For better or worse, flight simulation has come a long way. Sorry about my lack of paragraphs, for some reason my return key doesn't work on this site...Louis

[Bill Berson]

Hi Lewis,
Alaska is sort of the center of the world for aviation. Almost everybody is a pilot. We even had a pilot ground school in high school.

[Louis]

I had ground school in high school also. It was a nice deal as it was an automatic "A" for the class if you passed the FAA Private written. I passed with a whopping 73%! I went to Dimond HS, and had Mr. Mohwinkle for a teacher, 75-76 school year. I wonder now if that class is still offered and how popular it is...Louis

[Bill Berson]

I doubt they have ground school in high school anymore. There is a school in Seattle called Aviation High School.

My teacher was Mr. James at Chugiak High School (around '72). Later I built a business at Birchwood Airport and maintained his Cessna.

[FlyingRon]

I have a dream that one day my four little children will grow up in a country where they are judged not by the color of their skin, but by their scores on standardized tests.

[Stuart_M]

For what it's worth, I'm going to try it out. I will open a small flight sim center in my area and see what happens. If all works well, I can move into a local Mall, and hopefully be able to hire a few vets that know how to fly the real airplanes!

[Frank Giger]

That's the spirit!

However, you may want to hire some flight sim geeks instead of actual pilots (unless you can find a guy like me, who is both!).

While being conversant with flight sims translated hugely in learning to fly real airplanes, I can't say that the reverse is true. What one does in an aircraft based on feel and simple control imputs one does in flight sims with button presses.

Also, which flight sim? I'd recommend Rise of Flight, a WWI combat shooter. Simple controls (fuel, mixture, rudder, aileron, elevator - no flaps, no prop pitch, no radios), gorgeous graphics, solid flight and damage modelling (I practiced wheel landings in the SPAD XIII, which is a nice analog for a real Champ), and one gets to shoot guns!

If one stays away from the Camel and the Nieuports (rotating engines without throttles is a bugger to learn!), it's a great way to "pretend" pilot.

For a step up, IL-2: 1946 is the premier WWII sim. P-51's, Hurricanes, Bf-109's....over 300 aircraft modelled now. It's addictive like crap and runs on what are now lower end systems.

MSFS is crap for a newbie to flight sims, as it was designed to teach radio and flight procedures more than anything else. More fun to do figure eights and barrel rolls in a Spitfire than a landing with option in a C172.

[Hal Bryan]

But you would have to compete with 'HALO' & 'GEARS of WAR', no easy feat.

I don't know how I missed this post earlier...Anyway, I got a chuckle out of it, because when I was at Microsoft we (the flight simulator team) used to dream of getting even a tiny fraction of the marketing budget spent on "HALO" and "Gears", so I know what that's like. Not to mention the fact that, for about 4 years, my wife was on the "Halo" and "Gears " team. ;)

Granted, when a product like "Halo" sets records (as have "Call of Duty" and others) for the biggest product launch of any kind in all of human history...it's not easy for something as "boring" as Flight Simulator to compete. Sigh - old wounds...

[Stuart_M]

Frank,

ROF and IL2 are will be on the sims. There will be a separate night for each of the following categories; General Aviation, WWI, WWII, Fighter Jets (F-16 Falcon) during the week and then I'll rotate each Saturday for each one previously mentioned. I figured that would work best since I'd have to reload a simulation and reconfigure the controls each time somebody wants to fly a different type of aircraft.

It's true what Hal says. It's hard to compete with Halo, but I figure almost everybody already has that game at home. It would be nice to have something different to do every once in a while.

[Stuart_M]

Well I opened my flight sim center a couple of months ago, and I'm still doing educational events in my area using the simulators as well. The kids line up when the simulators are made available at these events, but it's difficult to get the parents to bring the kids to the center. If you live in my area, please come by with a friend or two to help keep the center open, and please pass the word on to those that may be interested. Happy Flying and Merry Christmas!

[Jeff Boatright]

Well I opened my flight sim center a couple of months ago, and I'm still doing educational events in my area using the simulators as well. The kids line up when the simulators are made available at these events, but it's difficult to get the parents to bring the kids to the center. If you live in my area, please come by with a friend or two to help keep the center open, and please pass the word on to those that may be interested. Happy Flying and Merry Christmas!


Hi Vertigo,

Sorry if I missed it up-thread, but where are these centers?

Thanks,

Jeff

[Stuart_M]

Hi Jeff,

The center is in Kernersville, NC on 121 Pinevew Dr.

[1600vw]

May I ask....Why a Mall? Come on....how many kids do you know whom hang at a mall? I believe if you pushed this idea to someone but was thinking more outside the box I bet it would have flew... The word Mall almost sounds dirty.
Think outside the box....Think like a kid.... This would be best places where kids whom have the kind of attitude it takes to be a pilot hang, Skate Parks, Ski Resorts for those days when the mountain is not inviting....ect Places like this...

But the Mall.... its dead before you even start.....

Tony

[1600vw]

Put this in Schools....Just imagine you approach a school with this idea and you will supply all the equipment and everything needed. I bet schools would jump on this.

Out Side the box....

Tony

[Stuart_M]

Thanks for the idea 1600vw. I will look into it more. Unfortunately, "Common Core" seems to have many focusing on the Core.

[middlebrook04]

Stuart, How many sims do you have? Donald