In this episode of Behind the Prop, Bobby Doss gives a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it’s really like to run a flight school. From managing aircraft maintenance and staff to planning events and ensuring every student’s success, he reveals the countless moving parts that keep United Flight Systems flying smoothly. Co-host Wally Mulhearn helps unpack the daily challenges, unexpected lessons, and leadership mindset that define Bobby’s role. It’s a grounded, insightful look at the business, people, and passion behind aviation training.
In this episode, host Bobby Doss and co-host Wally Mulhearn dive deep into what it truly takes to run a modern flight school day to day. Bobby offers a transparent look at the enormous scope of responsibilities behind United Flight Systems—from facilities and fleet management to staff culture and student success—illustrating that being a flight-school owner is far more than “counting gold bars.”
The conversation begins with Bobby describing the constant balancing act of maintenance, compliance, and customer experience. He emphasizes the unseen details that shape safety and efficiency: reliable internet, plumbing, lighting, hangar upkeep, and even thoughtful touches like pull-through aircraft parking, which saves students time and money. The two outline the structure of the show in aviation terms—takeoff, cruise, and landing—mirroring the rhythm of a typical workday.
During the “takeoff” segment, Bobby explains his early-morning ritual: checking weather with the Windy app, reviewing schedules, and coordinating with his leadership team to prepare for any disruptions. In “cruise,” he details the constant hum of operations—maintenance calls, last-minute squawks, and people management for nearly 50 employees. He describes leadership as both rewarding and exhausting: motivating staff, resolving conflicts, and maintaining the culture of “UFS to the 5th Power”—Safety, Students, Staff, School, and Self.
As the day “lands,” Bobby focuses on reflection and preparation. End-of-day check-ins, milestone tracking, and student-record verification ensure accountability and celebration of progress. He underscores his commitment to safety, continuous improvement, and recognizing both instructor and student achievements. Despite the administrative load, Bobby remains deeply engaged—flying when possible, mentoring, and cherishing the impact his school makes on aviation careers.
The episode closes on gratitude and perspective: Bobby and Wally celebrate 500,000 downloads of Behind the Prop, expressing pride that their conversations help pilots become safer and more informed. It’s a heartfelt, behind-the-scenes portrait of dedication, discipline, and passion that defines life as a flight-school owner and aviation advocate.
00:01
Behing the Prop Intro
Clear prop 773 Cherokee number two following twin traffic three mile final.
Runway two five join four mile final.
00:10
Nick Alan
This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:25
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:28
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. This week is a little bit of a different show. It is a show about me that's interesting. We're going to have this show be a day in the life of a flight school owner. We've actually recorded this show probably almost two years ago. And I thought we did such a bad job that we ultimately just canned the whole thing. And I don't think that we did a bad job as much as the prep work for the show was not the quality that we expect. So we've done a little bit of prep work. We're ready to talk. I want to. I want. I get asked all the time, what's it like? Where do you put all your gold bars? What's it like to deal with maintenance?
01:11
Bobby Doss
And I just don't think people understand what it's like to be a flight school owner. I would bet you might relate to this. Let me just throw out one little tidbit stat that we didn't prepare for. How many hours a week do you think I spend talking to or dealing with DPEs?
01:34
Wally Mulhern
I would say six to eight hours a week.
01:40
Bobby Doss
Probably close. I was going to say somewhere between 10 and 20, which would have been 4 and 8. And it's not like it's troublesome work. It's, hey, do you have anything open? How are you doing? How's my team doing? I just want to make sure we're doing good work. And I think some schools that don't do good with their DPE relationships struggle because they don't really care about the dpe. Right. But it's one little thing that you hear people all the time say, well, schools are struggling to get DPEs. Those schools probably aren't working hard to build those DP relationships. But at the end of the day, it's one small spoke in a wheel with a thousand spokes. Right.
02:20
Bobby Doss
And so this episode is all about an opportunity for me to expose what goes on the day in the life of a fly school owner with my co host and partner Wally, who spends a lot of time at ufs. His daughters have both worked at ufs and we're going to talk a little bit about what I do and what the school does on a daily basis. One interesting thing that I prepared for was to talk about all the things that I do think about. I don't know. And if you want to send me an email, feel free. Bobby Behindtheprop.com like, what do you think a flight school owner does? It definitely is not counting gold bars, but it's a broad swath of a whole bunch of things. I am a generalist and an expert of nothing, but I probably spend.
03:10
Bobby Doss
I don't even know how to put percentages behind some of this stuff. But facilities alone are a backbreaker. Just maintaining the Internet, the connectivity to the building, the electric, the water, the plumbing, the sewer, the facilities, light bulbs. It's crazy how much it takes to keep up with all that stuff. And it's one of those things that when you walk into a business, you expect everything to work and you expect everything to work perfectly, but sometimes it doesn't, right? You've probably been there and there's been a trash can catching a drip from the air conditioner because there's a drain that's plugged or whatever. It's just nightmare. And it's never planned, right? You talk about unplanned maintenance. That's it then. Maintenance and safety and upkeep of the fleet and the building. I was there. I want to say I was there last weekend.
03:59
Bobby Doss
There's a small puddle of water in the hangar, and I was having a panic attack thinking, man, we don't want somebody to slip on this and fall. Like, why we got to get this cleaned up. Let's comb this off. The flight operations, the scheduling software, the scheduling in general, student records, compliance, pricing, financial management, vendors, supply management. Man. My mechanic, Ray Vial, if you're listening, you're my best partner. E Aviation does great work for us, but it's a lot of management for him to manage me, I'm sure, and me to manage them to be good partners. And you have to be great partners. It's a ton of work. What about people? Staff? Almost 50 employees, 25 instructors, the rampers, the dispatchers. Everybody has a different need. Want student success operations. Tons of people. Bookkeepers, student success management.
04:55
Bobby Doss
There's a lot of stuff that goes into maintaining those people and making sure they're happy. Then customer service, talking to parents, student success, dealing with the good, the bad, the middle, the many, many conversations, marketing, community outreach. The last event that I just planned. I don't think people will believe this, but we just scheduled an event with Pat Brown, a four time visitor of the show. That event is going to happen on May 2, 2026. Who would have thought were planning an event with AOPA May of 2026? Well, you have to if you want to be successful. So that community outreach is very time consuming.
05:37
Bobby Doss
And between now and May 2, 2026, Pat and I will spend a ton of time and the marketing team at AOPA will, they'll ship stuff, we'll deal with stuff, we'll set up and hopefully we'll have a great event. But that takes a ton of forward thinking. And then just the millions of odd jobs that go into a flight school, Printing, keeping track of all the little dos and the things that go on. It is a big job that I love. I never complain because it's what I want to be doing, but man, it's not a dream job for everybody. And if you're not detail oriented and you don't like to deal with problems, I don't know that being a flight school owner is the right place for you to be. Wally, you've worked at a lot of flight schools.
06:23
Bobby Doss
I don't need any special kudos here. But what do you observe at all the flight schools? And maybe what's one thing that you observe a little different at ufs, and then we'll switch it around and you get to interview me.
06:37
Wally Mulhern
Well, I'd say the thing that is nice about ufs, well, many things. Your instructors all have offices now. They share them. But you have the instructor student briefing and debriefing. There's always a private place for it. Most flight schools, they're debriefing out in the lobby or standing at the counter or maybe out even in the hangar, weather permitting. So, you know, I would say that's probably a big thing. And I will say this another thing that I dealt with today at another flight school. I mean, and you've made a big deal about this. And when you first said something to me about UFS having this, I didn't even know what you're talking about.
07:35
Bobby Doss
And then I, I'm looking forward to hearing this.
07:38
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, you told me that all our parking spaces are pulled through parking spaces. What were you talking about? And then it occurred to me, you know, then I thought, well, now I, I, when I thought about it, I understood what you meant. You know, you're probably the only flight school that I deal with where students aren't dealing with tow bars and pushing airplanes around and pulling them and moving this one over here. You get in from a flight and then there's an airplane behind you. So you have to hurry and get out of the airplane and get that tow bar and try to push the airplane in its little slot because there's someone behind you. So that's a nice thing about United Flight Systems.
08:29
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I joke all the time. I wish I could put that better in my marketing material. And it's everywhere in my marketing material. It's in my welcome email. And people don't understand what it means. But I do think, and this is no joke, I would bet mathematically that alone makes us 10% cheaper than every other flight school in the world. And other flight schools might have pull through parking, but they're gaining the same benefit that we're gaining because a two and a half hour lesson is actually a two and a half hour lesson. Those flight schools where you're having to hand move those planes and who wants a person that's never hand moved a plane to be hand moving a plane, but those students hand moving those planes, it's eating into that lesson time.
09:08
Bobby Doss
So a two and a half hour lesson, if you can pull the plane out under power, that's a plus. A lot of schools you don't. You have to pull the plane to an area where you can start it. And so the prop wash isn't a problem. But you can never reverse the plane of the parking spot. And that contention takes time. You're probably paying the instructor. They're going to be charging you for that time. You might not be paying for the aircraft because the aircraft is turned off, but you're losing 10% of your flight time. Like a two and a half hour lesson is going to be 2.2 at best because of all the hand moving. So it's something that I'm a huge believer sets us apart. But most people are like you. They're like, why is pull through parking such a big deal?
09:48
Bobby Doss
And it is because we're pretty unique in the fact that we own the land and that land is grossly large compared to most flight schools where they're renting as little space as they can because the airport won't give them more. And it's a big deal. So we're breaking this show up into three parts and it's an aviation show. So we're breaking it up into aviation terms. We're going to say that you want to know, I assume you want to know what a day in the life of a flight School owner is like, so we're going to. First off, the takeoff segment of our flight plan. Today is going to be my morning routine and what we do in the morning at ufs. The middle part is going to be the crew segment.
10:29
Bobby Doss
That's going to be midday operations and kind of the things that happen throughout the day at a flight school. And then we're going to approach to land and that's going to be wrapping things up as the day kind of comes to an end. So, Wally, it's kind of your show to interview me now. Ask away.
10:48
Wally Mulhern
Well, starting with taking off. So what's the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning?
10:55
Bobby Doss
Well, normally it's say hi and do the pleasantry stuff. But I would actually say my day starts a little bit before that. I, I wake up and normally the first thing I do is pick up the phone and look at the, the weather app on my home screen. I'm a huge fan of an app called Wendy, a free website, Wendy.com their premium content is not that expensive. I want to say less than $20 a year. And it provides a really cool vertical representation of the sky, the moisture in the air, what we can expect from precipitation. The temperature dew point spread is shown in kind of a bar that goes across the sky on how far the temperature dew point spread is. And in Houston, Texas, that's a big deal. Based on the humidity. I get the weather in Celsius.
11:41
Bobby Doss
I get a lot of information about the barometric pressure throughout the day. And it, I mean, at a glance, I can see whether or not it's going to be a good day for the school or a bad day. So normally it's the weather. I'm checking weather, and then it's kind of a kickoff. There's probably something lingering from yesterday that needs. The loop needs to be closed on. And then there's probably things that I had planned to attack that I want to make sure the team's attacking. I don't know if our school's comparable to most schools. You see more different flight schools than I do. But we probably have almost 50 employees. And we started when I owned, when I bought the flight school, we had like eight employees. So eight employees to 50 employees is a very different world.
12:25
Bobby Doss
And now we have managers, and I'm talking to those managers and trying to get set up for a successful day and normally just asking what I can do to help the team be successful. But it is mostly weather and then kind of what the schedule looks like through the Day, like, is there any gotchas? How many check rides do we have? Everything good for those check rides and just trying to do everything I can to make everybody successful. That's the start. That's the very start of when I walk in the doors.
12:54
Wally Mulhern
It's, it's interesting you say that because my alarm typically goes off at six in the morning and first thing I do is look at the weather, decide if I roll back over or actually get up and hit the shower.
13:07
Bobby Doss
There you go.
13:08
Wally Mulhern
Well, yeah, so. So speaking of the weather. So how does that morning weather check influence your day?
13:16
Bobby Doss
I think it's really twofold to me. Bad weather is not the end of the day necessarily. We have a full motion simulator. We can teach a lot of ground. It's, it's trying to understand how much of the day is going to be impacted and how many students are going to be impacted and how do we deal with that? Meaning how does our student success team react to the students and talk to the students and figure out where's the balance of continuing them towards success? You know, if it's a early morning fog layer, it's going to bust the first set of lessons and hopefully we get some sim and some ground done to help our students. But it just depends on how much of it is when it's a complete washout. Some days I wonder what, what's the greater good? How do we help everybody?
14:04
Bobby Doss
Do we just close for the day? Do we still come in and fight the good fight? But it's Houston, Texas. If you've been anywhere close to it or even read a book about it, we can see four seasons in a day and the prediction of the weather is never accurate. So normally I take it with a grain of salt and we're going to fight the good fight. Unless it's hurricane season and there's a hurricane right over Houston. Probably not. But it changes the way we think about it. And what's crazy that some people don't think about is if it's a really bad day, I immediately start thinking about how many squawks can we solve? Because mechanics, they can work in bad weather. They can put hangs in hangars.
14:44
Bobby Doss
They can put planes and hangars and man, every green nav light that might be out that we've not flown at night for the last three days. Maybe that's a great day to get all that little nitpicky stuff done. And I get excited. Sometimes I get excited about a bad weather. They're like, oh my God, we're going to clean this squawk list from 20 to 0. Doesn't always work, but I think about what do we do to keep moving the school forward no matter what the weather the prediction is.
15:09
Wally Mulhern
Do you ever like a long range, maybe a four or five day forecast if you look like, if it looks like you're going to have horrible weather for the next three to four days and then you know, maybe good weather after that for a few days. Do you, do you ever say, okay, maybe it makes sense to put this airplane in for its hundred hour, five hours early, you know, to recoup the or, you know, it's not going to be flying anyway?
15:40
Bobby Doss
Yeah, we made that prediction many times and many times we're successful. But also we've made mistakes. Right. The, the four day forecast is probably fairly accurate, but sometimes it changes. Or maybe that storm comes through three days, it comes in three days instead of four days. And then me and my mechanic are having problems. Right. He's put all his mechanics on other work and got ready for my load that was coming on day four. And I'm like, hey, it happened yesterday. Any chance I could keep the plane? You know, it's a juggling act, but that's the fluidness of a flight school. Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong. I try to partner and say, look, we're going to keep the schedule that we had, but sometimes we're wrong and it's more of a detriment than it is a benefit by trying to predict it.
16:27
Wally Mulhern
Right. Right. Okay. So when you're looking at yesterday's operations, what are you looking for when you're reviewing the previous day's operations?
16:38
Bobby Doss
For me, it is kind of utilization as a whole. And again, I think smaller schools might think of it a little bit differently, but with a fleet of 24 and a full motion simulator, I kind of look at predicted, you know, what were we supposed to fly and then what did we fly? And that's normally a lagging indicator of did we have more maintenance issues or more weather issues than were expecting. And our software and the CEO has been on the show. Flight Schedule Pro is a great tool that we use and it's got some predictive analytics on what is coming this day or week as it relates to flight hours. And then you can look back and say, how much of that did we actually do?
17:18
Bobby Doss
So it's a simple report that I get each morning that kind of tells me of the, what we'll call a hundred hours of flight time. We were supposed to have how many of that a hundred hours did we fly. And if it's anywhere in the 80% range, it's probably a good day. If it's down in the 20% range, something significantly happened that weren't expecting and some of it's out of our control. So, you know, we've recently had a pretty big accident at the airport, not related to us, that closed the airport for three days. I mean, you're not going to fly much when you can't take off. Right. So in those instances you just, you know what happened and you move on. There's nothing you can do about it.
17:59
Bobby Doss
But it's me always trying to gain control of things that I can't control and I'm pretty pathic about it and I'm never going to win that battle. But it's a look back at, hey, how many people called in sick? Was there some other anomaly that happened? And then just make sure that the money that were expecting I collected. I hate to talk about money, but it's a real deal. I'm a small business owner. If were expecting to generate X amount of income for the day, we need to be somewhat close to that because I got a lot of people to pay and I got a lot of oil filters to replace and lots of quartz oils to put in those planes. And I know we burned thousands of gallons of avgas, so we got to find a way to pay for all that stuff.
18:42
Bobby Doss
And that's what makes a fly school healthy. So I definitely look back at that as well.
18:48
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. So how do you handle leftover issues from the day before whilst setting new priorities?
18:57
Bobby Doss
Well, it's like everybody else in the world, firefighting is the easiest thing to get focused on, but probably the most least. It's probably the least valuable thing to focus on. And when something's on fire, you can't let it just keep burning. So we fight fires like everyone else. I think I've matured as a small business owner in the last couple years and try to spend less of my time fighting fires and me working on the big rocks that are going to make the business better long term.
19:23
Bobby Doss
Of course I get drawn into fires like everybody else, but those things that linger, the fires that linger, or the projects that didn't get finished that were supposed to get finished yesterday, I think the team believes and knows that I've got a pretty good way of keeping track of that stuff and quite often I'd scratch a project if we don't get done with it. And it just ends up not being as valuable as maybe we thought it was. Close the loop on some of those fires. Like when that incident happened, there was planes stranded in other places. Did we all get them back? Did everybody get home safe? How did that work out? That's normally a stand up huddle with my leadership team through the hallway, but then I try to level and get the team level set back on.
20:09
Bobby Doss
These are the big rocks. We really need to focus on the most valuable things for us right now, not the most urgent things. And it's a theme that I think everyone recognizes on my team. But important is much more valuable to the school than urgent. And so fires gotta be fought. But man, I try to spend as little time as possible fighting fires.
20:31
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I, for about, I don't know, 10 or 11 years, I was a president of our local swim team, which was a neighborhood swim team. And it was a big swim team. We had close to 400 swimmers. We had six coaches, two pools and. And you know, it was a volunteer position. But parents always had suggestions to me. You know, we need to do this or we need to do this.
20:56
Bobby Doss
Nice way of putting it. Nice way of putting it.
20:58
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And I finally said what I came up with four things. I said when somebody would have a suggestion to me, I would say, okay, first of all, tell me how we're going to fund it, how much is it going to cost, how are we going to implement it, how are we going to manage it? And when the season's over, how are we going to track it so we can see if this thing that we did really added value to our swimmers and our parents? And again, the 10 or 11 years that I was president of this, I had one parent who actually came through and kind of presented everything and it was a great idea and we implemented it and it was really good. But it's just funny how people want to, we need to do this.
21:43
Wally Mulhern
Well, how are we going to do that? Well, I don't know, but you need to do it.
21:47
Bobby Doss
So anyway, yeah, I had a customer one time tell me that the, that I was missing a huge opportunity in flight training. I needed to mounts on all the wings and all the trusts of the planes and rent GoPro cameras to everybody that came through. And I was like, how much money is that going to make? Like you're talking thousands and thousands of dollars of capital expense and if no one rents a GoPro camera, I'm out. All that money and it. And how much could you rent the GoPro camera for. And how many days will a GoPro camera last before it got broke? I mean, granted, that's a great idea, but that didn't happen. And I doubt that would move the needle.
22:32
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, it might create a little distraction, too, to your students.
22:37
Bobby Doss
Exactly. Yes. So worrisome, the pictures.
22:42
Wally Mulhern
So how do you keep in touch with your students and instructors right from the start?
22:49
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I'd like to take a little bit of time to say this is one thing I care a lot about. Right. And I, I don't talk about it much. I don't even think I've ever talked about it on the show. But internally we have a saying, UFS to the fifth power. And everyone's trained on it when they start working there. And it really is about, you know, it's the S to the fifth power. It's the five S's of United Fly Systems, and it is. Safety is the most important thing. We're never going to waver. We're never going to chance on anything. Safety is number one. The second thing is students. The third thing is staff. The fourth thing is school. And then the fifth thing is self. And if we keep that in mind, I think we're all going to be really successful.
23:34
Bobby Doss
And so if I'm going to live that myself, then I've got to be a safety junkie and I've got to care about students. So as soon as I get there, you've been to my office. I've got two big pocket doors that open into the entryway hallway to the flight school. Everyone that walks in the flight school has to see me when I'm there. Occasionally my doors are closed if I'm recording a show or we're having an employee one one of some sort. But if not, my doors are open and I'm there and I say hi to people and I talk to them. And normally I know where they're at in their training and I try and check in with them. I don't try to distract them. They get.
24:11
Bobby Doss
They're there for their business, but if they want to talk to me, they want to tell me an idea or share their thoughts. I'm all about feedback. And likewise, there's not a way that the instructor can get to those offices that you just ranted and raved about without passing by my doors, too. And so I have the opportunity to check in with them. And the last 48 hours, I've flown with two of my instructors. I try to spend time in the air with the team. It is time consuming and hard, but I love doing it. And it's not a bad thing. It's just sometimes other things take more importance and I have to do them. But, man, I love to spend time with students and the team, and I really want to hear what they have to say.
24:56
Bobby Doss
I've owned the school for eight years. I've missed one safety meeting. And I participated in that safety meeting via Zoom because I had co. I had been diagnosed with COVID I am just a very involved owner. I hope all the other flight school owners out there are as involved, but if you're not, that's a chink in your armor. People. People want to know that it's worth my time to be involved and be there. And if I'm not involved, why should they be involved? So I take great pride in how much time and effort I spend and put into the flight school. And I think it is a little bit of a difference that people see at United Flight Systems, for sure.
25:32
Wally Mulhern
And your instructors are actually employees. Correct. Which is a little bit different. I mean, I would. My guess is most flight schools that the instructors are not. They're contractors.
25:46
Bobby Doss
I would think most are. Most are clubs who hire subcontractors. One of the big brands recently got in a lot of trouble for having contractors that they were treating like employees. And that court case has been solved and they've solved that problem collectively. The right thing to do is to make a flight instructor an employee because it's best for the employee and it gives them some real connection. And it's best for the student. Anybody that knows anything about flight training, if you're an independent, it's a big job for you, no question. And I applaud all the independents out there. It's the student who's more important than the instructor in every situation. And an employee will have a different obligation to do the schedule and to do the work to help that person be successful. There's independents that probably do better than employees, no question.
26:43
Bobby Doss
I'm not saying that they don't, but they don't have the same infrastructure. They don't have the same planes, the same control, the same systems, the same tools, the same everything backing them. And I treat my employees like employees. I expect them to be employees and I expect them to live by the five S's. If you own a flight club and you have three contractors that come and go when they can or want to, that relationship's going to be very different for the student. And it's going to Be difficult. So I think it was a shock a few years ago when went to all employees. But it's the right thing for both employee and students for sure.
27:22
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
27:24
Bobby Doss
So that's my morning. Now we move to kind of our cruise segment. Hopefully we've used our checklist. We've done our checklist. We're now on cruise flight. What's the midday at a flight school look like, Wally? What do you. What do you want to know about the middle part of my day?
27:39
Wally Mulhern
What are. What are some common surprises? Give us a couple of examples.
27:44
Bobby Doss
Well, if I didn't start with maintenance, I'd be lying. So it's maintenance, right? Normally. Well, it's probably in the morning segment, but normally in the morning I get two notifications about squawks right off the bat. And they're normally flat tires. It happens. I think when I first bought the flight school, I freaked out and panicked every day. But you know, they have tires and they have tubes and these planes are flown a lot and there's going to be a problem. And so rampers get there in the morning, they find a couple tires that are low or maybe one that's completely flat. We go through our internal processes of verifying what might be the problem and then get maintenance involved. But throughout the day, you've been around, Wally. Planes won't start. I don't think it's a fault of any one individual.
28:30
Bobby Doss
But they get hot, they don't start. Things have to get shifted around. It's a controlled amount of chaos that I don't think anyone can possibly imagine. How many golf carts are running back and forth to maintenance facilities? How many people are looking to swap planes because of this? That and the other man. And I have an idea. But if I could solve the push to talk problem in the world, I would be a bazillionaire. You know, if a push to pot talk button becomes intermittent, it's a really big problem for a flight school and it's not a quick fix. So all those little maintenance things kind of just churn and churn and they don't go away. You gotta act with them. And that's why having a great maintenance facility is key. And that's why I think E is my biggest and most valuable partner.
29:21
Wally Mulhern
For sure. Yeah. So can. Do you have a story you can share about handling a challenging situation?
29:34
Bobby Doss
Man, I got millions of them. And I've got the really bad ones where planes have had incidents on the Runway and we've had to deal with those things. With some bent metal. Nobody's got hurt, thank goodness. But th. Those are. You just know you gotta work through those. The fun ones that are challenges are really good to me. And they're not cheap by any stretch. They're still maintenance issues. But there's nothing more exciting to me, I think, than having a problem that I know I can solve, but it not being easy. So a plane at Navasota with a flat front tire is a great challenge. Normally it's a great challenge because I get to fly the mechanic over there with a new tire and tube and we get to replace it. He gets to replace it while I sit on the tail.
30:21
Bobby Doss
Those type of challenges are what I like young pilots to see because they need to understand this is your life. Look, you fly professionally. How many times are you waiting an extra hour on maintenance?
30:34
Wally Mulhern
A lot.
30:35
Bobby Doss
A lot. How many times are you waiting for a storm to blow through?
30:40
Wally Mulhern
A lot. Yeah. Yeah.
30:43
Bobby Doss
I mean, if there's a thunderstorm right over our home airport that you depart from every day, you're not going to get to take off in a thunderstorm, but 20 minutes later you probably will. So waiting on weather and maintenance is always a thing. I also love to help a student kind of get over that knowledge hump. I'm not an instructor, but when I see someone struggling, I do. I am at heart an educator still. I like to teach people something from time to time and the way to think about their planning or what they're doing. They're struggling with some segment of their training and I give them, I feel like they receive a silver bullet from me that gets them over hump. That's fun and exciting.
31:27
Bobby Doss
And those challenges are the greatest challenges because they remember and they come back and they tell you know, months later. That was the thing that got me over the hump. And I remember all of our students. This is not smoke and mirrors. I literally probably remember the first day we met Wally, when I did my checkride with you. I remember the first day I met Michelle. I remember the first day I met Carly. For whatever reason, that's my superpower. I just remember, don't remember names as well, but I remember meeting in the interaction and what people's goals were. And I just love when there's a challenge that I help them with and then I see their success down the road. It's a lot of fun.
32:07
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. So what's one behind the scenes task you wish more people understood about running a flight school?
32:18
Bobby Doss
People management. There's no better way to Put it than people management. I've been a manager at big companies like Microsoft and Dell and it's a tough job no matter what the climate is. But in the world of aviation, there's a lot of different types of personalities in the sales org. Like at Microsoft, most people are type A and climb the mountain and I'm going to burn the bridges as I go at a flight school. The instructors there could be some introverts, extroverts, and they all have a different way of consuming information. There's age difference. No one teaches you this. And luckily, I think my 30 plus years of corporate America groomed me to do this. But people management is not easy. People have no idea. The text messages I get late at night complaining about different things. There's no idea.
33:18
Bobby Doss
I just got invited to one of my flight instructors birthday parties on Saturday night or Sunday night. Man, that makes me feel so proud that one of my instructors would like me to be at their birthday celebration. And I'm recording a podcast and they're thinking about me. That's great. I'll get another text message tonight about somebody who can't come to work tomorrow. And I got to reschedule four flights for them. And there's no dispatcher there. This is nothing I can delegate. And so all up people manage. It's nonstop. It's 24, 7. I get woke up because the dispatcher or ramper set off the alarm two days a week. You know, it's crazy the things that go on that people have no idea. And it's. It's just fun challenges.
34:05
Bobby Doss
I don't know how to describe it, but I wish people knew how many balls were in the air. If I was thinking of myself as a juggler, I would bet there's 50 balls that I got in the air right now. And they're all equally important to someone. They're not equally important to everyone. And so in the past week, I've got a text about some really bad things that someone was accusing an employee of. It took eight hours this week to resolve that. And at the end of the day, when I got to the bottom of it all, the employee said, I just don't feel the same way. That person feels like the person that.
34:43
Wally Mulhern
Was being.
34:46
Bobby Doss
The person that was being wronged said, no, I'm not being wronged at all. So it was a perception thing. But you got to have eight hours of conversations with nine different people to get to the bottom of that, to do your due diligence. And I think good people managers do that. And it's a challenge that no one knows happens. They have no clue how much that happens behind the scenes. And it makes for a happy workforce. It makes for a happy student base. And it's just part of it. I think my wife's the one who hates it the most because I think she wishes I could relax sometimes, but it's never ending and I love it. It's a big part of my job and I love it.
35:23
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Yeah. Well, how do you keep your team motivated when unexpected challenges arise?
35:33
Bobby Doss
Sometimes money, sometimes fun times, sometimes good times. I think I am a realistic, positive force for the team. I don't, I don't. I'm not the happy gas guy. Like, oh, the sun will come out tomorrow. Don't worry about it. It's going to better. You know, right now we're kind of in this hiring lull and I would think everyone's freaking out. Is it going to turn around? Is it going to come back? And it feels a little Covid esque for me as the flight school owner that, you know, the instructor that has 1700 hours thinks the world's crashing and they're never going to get a job. They don't real. 10 years ago you had to have 4000 hours to get a job and that probably still wasn't good enough unless you had a thousand multi. Right. They don't know how good the market really is.
36:19
Bobby Doss
It's kind of current world times. But no, I'm not worried about hiring. You know, it's actually a good thing for the students right now that we've got some senior meat on the bone that's really helping groom the younger CFIs. And there's tough times every day. I've said it once. I'm not going to talk any more about it after this one, but there was a really big accident this past week at our airport and a couple people lost their lives. And it impacted everyone in a different way. But one thing I can say is it impacted everyone. Like everyone that works at that airport has a feeling about it, that has a reflection on it. And you kind of just gotta give everybody a virtual hug and give them some space. I had a guy literally yesterday, Tell me, Wally.
37:07
Bobby Doss
I thought I could be more stoic about this and I'm kind of mad at myself. I'm not more stoic. And I said, man, that is the wrong attitude. You don't have to be stoic about this. This is your livelihood. This is your job. You fly planes. You just, you literally saw a couple people Die in a plane crash. That's not something to say I should be stoic about. Just take it. Whatever you take it, however you take it. Embrace whatever you're feeling and embrace it. And don't try to push through it. That's the worst thing you could do. An external pressure, like, that's what we talk about all the time. Don't do that. And when those bad things happen, I would like to think I'm a positive voice that gets people motivated.
37:47
Bobby Doss
But if nothing else, I can tell you I don't judge anyone's feelings. I don't push people to think a different way. And I think that has resonated with people that know me, and they do stay motivated. I encourage people to tell me what they're upset about, and I think that's part of it. I'm supposed to be that person that listens to those complaints. And I do try to take action when I can. I can't solve everything. I can't solve that. Those people are gone. But I can let people take some time off. I can give them some space. I can let them fly with the chief before they fly alone again. Like, there's a lot I can do, and I do what I can.
38:27
Bobby Doss
I'm sure I've not done it perfectly every time, but I, I, I can only get better with time, for sure.
38:32
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, go ahead.
38:39
Bobby Doss
Go for it. I mean, we're at the landing phase now. We're wrapping things up.
38:44
Wally Mulhern
Well, so how do you shift from the busy pace of the. The midday, you know, everything going on, or wrapping things up in the evening?
38:54
Bobby Doss
I would like to say alcohol, but that's not it. I wish there was a bottle sometimes in my desk, but that's not it. I think it's. I think there's this weird time of day when the maintenance facility starts to close and planes start coming back, that things just get a little bit easier. And the days are getting shorter in Houston, so it's kind of happening a little bit earlier right now, which is, I don't like because I like the long days, but I like to think that we do a good job of kind of reversing the morning routine. We kind of have those same conversations we had in the morning with the management and the team leads about, what did we get done, what do we need to work on, what's still outstanding standing.
39:38
Bobby Doss
That kind of became that morning list for the next day. We're kind of building that list, but then it's really buttoning things up. Making sure that everybody knows their responsibilities to get the planes inside the planes back to maintenance, that we stack the hangar the right way to make tomorrow easy. And had someone told me that when I bought the fly school that you'll spend a lot of time thinking about which plane goes in the hangar first, I've been like, you're crazy. It takes 10 minutes to pull them out.
40:06
Bobby Doss
But the difference that taking a plane that's going in for a 50 hour on tomorrow morning and making that plane go in the hangar last so that a ramper or ops person can pull it out and start it and taxi it to my maintenance facility so that the oil's warm when they get there, probably saves us one full flight a day. And that little bit of nitpicky detail orientation that I've got in my systems has saved us tons and given our students tons of extra hours of flight time. And so we start doing that at the probably 4:00 clock hour and have all kinds of routines in place and processes that we go through.
40:49
Bobby Doss
But we really are trying to make sure what we wanted to get done got done and what didn't get done becomes that next morning checklist so we can do it all again. And I think a lot of people don't understand this. There's schools that close, but United Flight Systems is open 363 days a year. We only close on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. And I want to say the last five years I've been at the fly school on Christmas morning to pull planes out so that our students and renters could take planes to go see their family. And last year my wife said this is the effing last year you're doing that. So sorry students, no planes this year on Christmas day. But it's a process and we've got the process figured out. And it's kind of the reverse of the morning shift.
41:39
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. So what are those end of day check ins with your team look like?
41:46
Bobby Doss
Normally pretty just much standup conversations like hey, what's going on? You asked me to do this, I got this done, I need help with this. I didn't get done. I'm going to help you tomorrow. It's normally just a conversation, lots of email recap kind of stuff, normally subtle, occasionally that's where you have an opportunity to have a more open conversation. Morning's kind of more busy, afternoons kind of more less busy. Not so time sensitive because the planes are kind of ending their day but normally have a chance to check in on those people and their mental Health, how they're doing, what do they need from us, the leadership team.
42:25
Bobby Doss
But it's normally just a stand up conversation, sometimes a text message, sometimes we don't get to talk in person, but it's normally a healthy conversation about what's got done, what needs to get done tomorrow.
42:37
Wally Mulhern
Cool. So how do you make sure your student records and milestones are wrapped up each day?
42:45
Bobby Doss
Interesting. This has evolved recently, actually quite a bit at United Flight Systems. So we have a dispatcher, customer service rep up in the front that meets our students and does all the keys and bag handing out when the student and the airplane are qualified to go fly. And recently we found that the most prevalent person that knows all of those things is the dispatcher. And so we've just started the dispatcher to send an end of shift message, morning shift and evening shift, of all the milestones which they must provide temporary certificates. If Wally did a check ride, we get the temporary certificate and we get the photo hopefully of Wally and that student standing by the plane and maybe the cfi and that all gets emailed to us. If there's a discontinuance or a disapproval, those forms are attached to that email as well.
43:36
Bobby Doss
And then we get a summary report at the end of each shift on any training records that weren't logged. And those CFIs that maybe didn't log the training at the time they were supposed to, they're on the naughty list and they will get a conversation with Bobby that they don't want to have. And I think that's few and far between. And normally it's something that happened timeline wise, but we've got reports. Our system, again, Flight Schedule Pro is a great tool, sends us that information and then the dispatcher sends us the milestones. All the, all the good stuff comes from the dispatcher and then that stuff hits the socials within minutes of those emails coming to us for sure.
44:16
Wally Mulhern
So from a personal standpoint, what do you do to keep your own flying skills sharp at the end of each of the day?
44:24
Bobby Doss
You ever heard the saying shoemaker don't have nice shoes? Unfortunately that's pretty true. A flight school owner doesn't get to fly near as much as he wants to. I know you have a new plane and I'm jealous that I haven't got a ride in that thing yet. But I might not fit. But I love to fly. I just don't get to do it near as much. But the last 48 hours I've got 3.8 in my logbook I've got six approaches, I've got a hold. My track logs look amazing because I'm in our new top Hawk airplane with NXI and Autopilot. So I'm a gym. It's got a go around button, a 172 with a go around button. Wally. It's amazing. And when it's on autopilot, if you go missed, it's amazing. But my skills are still there. I love to fly.
45:14
Bobby Doss
My wife and I are taking a trip tomorrow to go to a concert in another state. I love the opportunity to use the fleet. It just doesn't work happen near as much as it should in the piston planes. I get to fly the Vision jet occasionally as well. But if, look, it's. It's kind of. I think if people knew how little I flew, they'd be really disappointed because they think of them. If they're thinking of themselves being a fly school owner, they think they would fly every day. But it is kind of how I make money. So I need those planes to fly. What's really cool is the sims almost empty every evening at 4:00'. Clock. And sometimes I just go jump in the sim and I'll shoot two or three approaches. I'll shoot them all over the country.
45:59
Bobby Doss
I'll pick a city I've never been to and I'll pick an airport and I'll put myself like five miles out and I'll pick a direction of flight and I'll pull up the plate and shoot it as if I were diverted there and had never been there before. And I think that makes me a better pilot. I can brief a plate in a city I've never been to because I've done it hundreds of times where I think we kind of get landlocked in our own little 50 mile radius and don't see a lot of other things. So if I don't get to fly for 10 days, I can assure you I've been in the sim at least an hour shooting some approaches. And it's one of the benefits of owning a fly school with a full motion simulator.
46:40
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, 20ft from your desk too, right?
46:43
Bobby Doss
Yeah, 20ft from my desk, yeah. Oh, by the way, people say, well, you get to fly for free. No, I bought it. So I probably spent more on that sim than people that got 50 hours in it. So it's not necessarily free. But I don't invoice myself at the end of the day, that's for sure.
47:01
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. So how do you reflect on the day's success? And start planning for tomorrow.
47:09
Bobby Doss
Success is a big word for us. I might make it one of my five S's or make it a six S one day. Wally. Success is what we think about. So I really think about, you know, progress checks, stage checks, milestones, things that mean the student move the needle. Safety is by far the first S. So every day that we don't have something bad happen is a great day. And when I mean bad, I mean, as little as, you know, dispatching a plane that shouldn't have been dispatched for whatever reason.
47:41
Wally Mulhern
Right.
47:43
Bobby Doss
And none of it's illegal type stuff. It's just keeping our A game on nonstop. And that there's not anybody who feels like we're leaving them behind. Student success for us, our team, we call it student Success. It's a group of what feels like high school counselors helping our team manage the students through their training. And we want to keep progress happening at all times. And if I feel like that's happening, great. The S's are in the right order. And I never worry about the money. The money will come if we do good for our students. And we've been very lucky for a long time. So it's all about how many milestone pictures did we hang? How many pictures went on the social media, how many people are holding a piece of paper that they didn't have yesterday?
48:34
Bobby Doss
How many instructors got over the thousand hour mark? How many instructors got over the 1200 hour mark? How many instructors got over 1500 hour mark? It's all that success that breeds more success. That, that's all I think about. And so at the end of the day, I try to pause and reflect like, man, we're doing really good. We're really lucky. And I, I will say this to every customer, every person that listens to this show. I am only doing what I do because you're out there listening to me talk. Today you're at my flight school paying for your flight training, which affords me the ability to buy my wife a pair of black shoes that she may or may not need. And that's the success that breeds success. So thank you to everybody out there. I know Wally feels similarly.
49:16
Bobby Doss
He is most appreciative of everyone who picks him to do a check ride. And without all of y', all, we don't have anything to do. So that means today was a very successful day.
49:28
Wally Mulhern
And I just want to throw something out there about the show. We mentioned milestones. We had a milestone just a few days ago. Are we bragging to tell people what we hit?
49:42
Bobby Doss
I don't think so.
49:43
Wally Mulhern
Half a million. Half a million downloads. 500,000 downloads. And, you know, it's, it's crazy. You know, I, I, I, I walk through the cabin on my triple seven, and people will see my, you know, my United Airlines badge and they'll see the name Wally, and they'll go, wally, are you Wally? And I go, oh, yeah, I'm Wally behind the prop, Wally. I go, yeah. And so it's, you know, it's happened three or four times, but I did.
50:19
Bobby Doss
All people that Wally's more proud of being a podcaster than he is a captain for a major airline. But to put that in perspective, I like to. I'm a math guy. That is 10,416 days of people listening to us talking. That's a ridiculous number of days of people listening to us talk. And at any point in time, that means two under 300 of y' all are listening to us talk, which makes me super proud. I hope in some small way we've saved a life or prevented an accident from happening because of the show. And all I can do is say, please keep listening. If we deserve it, give us a five star review wherever you listen to our show. And no matter what you do, please stay behind the prop and be a safe pilot and fly safely. Thanks for listening to the show.
51:15
Nick Alan
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@brave.theprop.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co host is Wally Mulhern. The show is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to replace actual flight instructions. Thanks for listening and remember, fly safe.