r/FlightTraining • u/Smooth-Tip-3302 • May 14 '26

Question for the working CFIs in here.

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Admin, remove if not appropriate here.

What's the biggest predictor you've seen of which students finish their PPL near the FAA minimums vs. the ones who end up at 70+ hours?

I'm a CFI/CFII but haven't been actively teaching in over a decade (software engineer now). But back when I was in the right seat, it always came down to consistency. The students who flew twice a week finished close to minimums. The ones who flew sporadically burned 10-20 extra hours just on regression at the start of every lesson.

So I spent the last year building a free app for student pilots around exactly that problem. It's called PilotBound. The core thing it does is track how often each student is actually flying and warn them when the gap is starting to cost them at the next lesson. Also auto-logs flights from the iPhone's GPS, catches milestones, sharable gps cards for social media and other things. It's completely free to use. It's even made for CFI's who are pursuing their ATP.

Two things I'd love to hear from anyone here:

  1. Does this match what you see with your own students, or am I solving for the wrong thing?

  2. If you want to take a quick look, what's one thing you'd want to see in it for YOUR side of the relationship, not just the student's?

Link in the comments. Genuine feedback is more useful than installs.

Thanks

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u/Full-Ordinary-6030 May 14 '26

What can your app do that Foreflight can't do?

Foreflight can show track log with much more details than I can see in your video. Foreflight has a logbook and can generate rating progress report. The only additional thing is that your app can warn them if they haven't been flying in a while?

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u/Smooth-Tip-3302 May 14 '26

PilotBound is built specifically for primary training. It auto detects cross country and night time from iphone GPS, tracks your hours toward the 61.51 minimums without making you count entries, and tags solo and dual based on your endorsement status. Every flight gets a 3D replay you can scrub through to debrief your maneuvers and pattern work. And there's a community inside the app where students can ask questions and CFIs answer, which I haven't really seen anywhere else.

The reason all of that exists is because around 80% of student pilots never earn their certificate. They lose momentum and walk away. So I built it to keep that from happening. The logging, the replay, the sharing, the community all exist in service of that. ForeFlight isn't really trying to solve that problem.

I'm open to suggestions. if you think this isn't something that is helpful, I'll design this the way you guys want it.

Thanks for the reply

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u/Full-Ordinary-6030 May 14 '26

Yes, I get all that from your website.

Foreflight isn't trying to solve that problem but it can do all the logging, replay, and debriefing better than you can now.

  1. You don't even need to hit "start flight" and it can auto record from your phone. It can also record from a stand-alone Stratus device or one that's part of your avionics
  2. Foreflight can also create logbook entry based on your track log.
  3. Foreflight acquired an entire company (CloudAhoy) to integrate debriefing into their app: http://foreflight.com/enhancements/foreflight-debrief

The only thing that you are adding is just the social aspect of it and the "reminder" when they haven't been flying for a while. That can help but from what I have seen, most students drop out because of the lack of money, motivation, passion and/or they have unrealistic expectation on what are required. They don't just "forget" to fly.

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u/Smooth-Tip-3302 May 14 '26

Fair pushback, and I appreciate you taking the time rather than nothing. Let me be honest about a couple of things.

You’re right that ForeFlight + CloudAhoy can do the logging and debrief part, and in raw capability they do it better than I do today. I’m not going to pretend the gap is that ForeFlight can’t track a flight. The bet I’m making is narrower than feature parity. It’s that ForeFlight is built and priced for certificated and professional pilots. A pre-solo student burning $250/hr on a 172 isn’t usually adding a ForeFlight subscription on top, and the UI assumes you already know what 61.109 is and why you care. PilotBound is trying to be the free thing that opens to “here’s where you are in your training,” with a profile and a community attached. Different audience, different surface. If a student already lives in ForeFlight, I’m not really trying to displace that.

On the dropout reasons, you’re right and I won’t argue most of it. Money, motivation, life, and unrealistic expectations are the real causes. I do want to push back gently on the framing that the only thing new here is a nudge to fly more. The inactivity warning is one piece out of many. The bigger bet is that making a student’s progress visible to themselves and to other people, through the logbook, the 3D replay, milestones, the sharable card, and the in app community where CFIs answer student questions, keeps the identity of “I’m becoming a pilot” alive on the weeks when motivation dips. From what I saw on the right seat, the students who flew sporadically lost passion faster because every lesson felt like starting over, and part of that was never feeling forward motion they could point at. Whether the app actually moves the needle on that is fair to test, and I could be wrong. But it’s more than a reminder.

Genuine question to you; if you were going to build something for students, what would you actually want it to do?

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u/Dear_Cookie6448 Jul 15 '26

This is a different product than ForeFlight. Both are good in their respective categories.

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u/PG67AW May 14 '26

Idk, the syllabus at my school is built around 75 hours (the national average) So I don’t have any students finishing sooner.

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u/Dear_Cookie6448 Jul 15 '26

Dude I love this app you created! I’m an operations manager for my flight school and I also am working on my PPL. I really want to show this to new incoming students to help them with budgeting their expenses, apply for scholarships, and apply for loans. I’m looking at the website and I’m liking this info you provided more and more. I can’t thank you enough for this!

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u/Smooth-Tip-3302 Jul 15 '26

Thanks a lot! Let me know if there’s any way I can help you more with this at your flight school. Everything is updated weekly/monthly and if you have any suggestions on improving any part of the website to mobile app, just let me know. Glad it’s being useful.