Design of a primary flight school decision support system

There is a growing shortage of commercial pilots in the aviation industry. Flight schools provide a necessary, but insufficient, link in producing pilots. Rising prices associated with aircraft lead to higher training costs. It is possible that this burden associated with training significantly influences the declining number of students completing flight training. This paper details the development of a system to assist flight schools in choosing the lowest-cost combination of aircraft type and quantity at a static level of demand for training. A stochastic queuing model covering the costs for a ten-year life-cycle is developed for the decision support system. Stochastic characteristics are derived from historical data from a flight school. The model accounts for recurring and non-recurring costs for aircraft operation.