Ideal Aviation

Jun 2, 2023
flight schools clients stories

Website launch: June 2, 2023
Blog updated: August 16, 2024

I had always considered becoming a pilot throughout my life. However at the time, it just wasn’t worth it. I remember reading regional pilot first officer salaries were around $40K or so and that training would cost around a little less than $100K (times sure have changed now!). I already had a good paying job so I never made it a goal to pursue pilot training. It was always a thought in my head as a cool thing to do, but I never had any desire to really push through and try.

Around April of 2019, my father bought an introductory flight for my birthday. It was pretty unexpected because I never gave any indication that I would be interested in this sort of thing. Well to the flight school’s dismay, the field had flooded so the flight school my dad booked the flight at had to push it back. They kept pushing the date further down until finally, they sent us a message saying they suspended all introductory flights until further notice.

Now, I’m the type of person where if you put up expectations, but nothing happens you get frustrated. I’m also kind of impatient. I want things done quickly and done now. Things like this don’t sit well with me.

I was actually kinda looking forward to doing the intro flight. So rather than sit and wait around for the flooding to go away, I took it upon myself to just do a flight somewhere else. I mean, I had money and it couldn’t be the only flight school in the area. I did a quick google search and looked up all the flight schools in my area.

Side note here… When I did the Google search and started looking at the schools, I was really surprised that all of the websites were outdated and it looked like none of the schools in my area were in business. This later gave some inspiration in regards to the creation of Right Rudder Marketing.

I messaged every single school in the area and inquired about doing an intro flight. Most of them responded, however, the communication was not very efficient. One fight school I was in contact with had me going back and forth with them via email taking days. Others never even responded until weeks later.

But Ideal Aviation was different. They called me the same day I filled out and we booked the flight for later that week.

This is me with my CFI, Jared, doing my first ever flight in a Cessna 172

Anyways, after the flight I fell in love with aviation. I caught the aviation bug. I remember after the flight asking him all sorts of questions like how to become a pilot, what the various flight control surfaces were, what did he mean by “trim”. It’s like a door had just been opened and I wanted to take in all of the aviation knowledge.

I started taking lessons at Ideal. Later on, the flooding at the other airport finally subsided and the original discovery flight with my dad was rescheduled. I didn’t tell my dad that I had already done the flight and even started to take lessons.

I went up with a different instructor, Joe, and pretended that I didn’t know anything. Joe started up the engine and then I asked if I could taxi the plane. The instructor said of course let’s go. We went up and for the majority of the flight I was at the controls. I explored their practice area which was different than the place I normally trained at with Ideal Aviation. He helped me with the landing as I had not soloed yet and wasn’t very good at it yet.

As we got out of the plane and greeted my father, the instructor laughed and said that he didn’t even need to be there and that I should of just done the flight for my dad (he was joking of course). I finally let the cat out the bag and told my dad that I started taking lessons because I was impatient.

Tim and Tonie Discovery Flight Me and my dad on my second “disovery flight”

Anyways, fast forward a few years later to the time when Right Rudder Marketing was starting up. I didn’t have any flight school clients that I was partnered with at the time. I decided that attending a trade show might be a good idea to find potential prospects for the business. I joined FSANA (Flight School Association of North America) as an exhibitor and sponsor. Being an exhibitor and sponsor, they gave me the tentative list of attendees.

To my surprise I see Ideal Aviation on the list. Prior to the event, I emailed them and said that I was going to be attending FSANA as well and I’d love to see them there and say hello. Well one thing led to another and here we are today.

Ideal Aviation became the first signed flight school client to partner with Right Rudder Marketing.

They’ve been with us for over a year now and me and my team absolutely love working with them. We updated their website, continually do SEO work for them, run their Google Ads, and we also have done multiple rounds of video shooting, editing, and creation. Their investment in marketing has paid dividends as they are now literally the top flight school in St. Louis. For a while they had a waiting list that went months into the future and they also purchased multiple aircraft in the past year to expand their fleet and operations.

I’m truly honored to have the opportunity to serve Ideal Aviation and help them train more pilots!

Check them out here:

Ideal Aviation website screenshot

We have been using Right Rudder for the past 6 months and could not be happier! They revamped our website to make it more user friendly, makes consistent updates, and are very responsive to our needs. We have seen a steady increase in web traffic as well as website driven phone calls since starting with Right Rudder. I can not say enough good things about them!

- Kim, Ideal Aviation Academy