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Providing online training for business aviation professionals globally.
It may be of interest to some of our newer-to-the-industry readers to know what non-equipment specific training looked like before TrainingPort.net pioneered comprehensive online training for business aviation.
Online training is ubiquitous now, but in 2003 and 2004, when I was a corporate flight department manager and Chief Pilot, there was nothing comprehensive about it and no one showing interest in providing it. One could take aircraft and avionics (i.e., “equipment specific”) training but coverage in all the other topics that we are now all so familiar with, such as Constant Descent Angle Approach, EFB, Critical Surface Contamination, and many more, was spotty. Very often, the dirty not-so-secret in aviation was that people falsified training records and “substantiated” those records with home-made exams that never changed annually and were handed out with the answer key ‘mistakenly’ included in the pile of papers. There were those of us who gamely tried to create real training within our flight departments and we would spend a day watching grainy 1950’s RAF High Altitude Physiology videos or reviewing the Flight Safety Foundation’s CFIT prevention toolkit, but we were not the norm.
Out of my dissatisfaction with the lack of good, up-to-date, and comprehensive risk-based training customized for my operation, began a classic entrepreneurial journey. In January of 2006, with my wife’s gracious support and at significant financial risk, I paid for a developer to build our training scheduling, delivery, currency maintenance, and recording system and (under)paid some very faithful people (thank you, Matt and Nik!) to build our first comprehensive topic list. We pioneered a delivery method against much skepticism, and it took six months of travelling sales before our first client signed on, paying for 3 years ahead of time so that his boss wouldn’t try to take the training away after the first year (thank you, Squashimoto!). It took another six months before a group of clients signed on and we were away to the races. A few years later, competitors started to develop—one large one copying at least two paragraphs of our earlier marketing material, word for word. We took that as flattery and enjoyed the help in getting the word out on this new way of training, which is now so normal.
Thank you for joining us in this effort. We have made many advances and stumbled a time or two along the way, but we are excited about the new things we are now unveiling to you—slowly. We have much to show you that is phased over the next year and much in development for the next few years. It is our goal to help you excel. If you want to see why we believe TrainingPort.net matters, I hope you will take a few minutes to watch this video that our team did a few years ago.
Scott Macpherson, Founder TrainingPort.net