Towards Affordability, Fun NAFI Says

By Jennifer Staretorp

"It's a new day at NAFI" said Jason Blair, Executive Director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI), at a press gathering this morning. Over the next few months NAFI will be working with flight training organizations to improve the training process and make flight training more affordable. "Flight instructors are the key to growing aviation," Jason continued. NAFI believes that without flight instructors there won't be pilots in the future. NAFI will no longer be just a professional organization. The new direction that the organization is taking wants to focus on supporting the growth of aviation as a whole. This new direction includes an effort to eliminate the stigma that there needs to be a reason for flying.

Jason said that flying can have the same cost and sometimes even be cheaper than other hobbies. We "get to teach them what people for thousands of years have wanted to do," he says. Upon receiving a pilots certificate "I've entered a community. I'm a pilot for life," he said.

NAFI is hosting the "Learn to Fly" tent at EAA AirVenture along some of their partners. The goal of the Learn to Fly tent is to give people who are interested in flying but don't know how to get started in touch with flight instructors and organizations that can help them on their way to becoming a pilot.

In preparing for the new direction that NAFI is taking they have revamped their Master CFI Program with the help of their members as well as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The new program became active in June and is accredited under the FAA. They also launched a new associates program for those who don?t want to complete to whole Master CFI program. They plan to begin working on a master ground instructors program.

FMI: www.nafinet.org