Flight School Technology Leap: How Flycore is Modernizing Aviation Training

Flycore was explicitly founded to address this technology gap in aviation training, according to Jack and Doug Abramowitz (CFII, ATP), two brothers who combined their expertise in technology startups and aviation for this venture.

“We’re the only company dedicated to using technology to enhance the customer experience at flight schools,” said Jack Abramowitz, who brings over a decade of experience in marketing technology and early-stage companies to Flycore. “We’re helping flight schools grow by combining inspiring conversion-focused websites with built-in lead tracking tools and automated re-engagement strategies.”

For decades, flight schools have run the business side of their operations with minimal technological assistance. While aircraft have become increasingly sophisticated, the business processes supporting flight training have often relied on paper forms, disconnected systems, and manual processes that create inefficiencies and frustration for both staff and students. 

According to industry experts, less than 5 percent of flight schools use any form of a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Those who attempt to modernize often find themselves struggling with enterprise software overbuilt and designed for entirely different industries. No matter the industry, software is an essential tool for any business to standardize its processes and increase leverage on human efforts.

Doug Abramowitz, a lifelong aviator who began flying in high school and has worked as an instructor and in flight school management, provided the aviation expertise needed to ensure Flycore’s technology actually solved real problems faced by flight schools.

“Having worked as a CFI and in the office of multiple flight schools, I understood the daily challenges flight schools face,” Doug said. “We saw the relative lack of technology in this space and believed we could help flight schools operate in a more modern, seamless, customer-friendly manner.”

While some flight schools have attempted to implement off-the-shelf CRM solutions like Salesforce or HubSpot, these efforts often create more problems than they solve.

“Salesforce is meant to be used by enterprise-sized companies with tens of thousands of records,” Jack said. “They’ll put schools through a sales process, sell them the cheapest option, then try to upsell a setup package with someone who knows nothing about aviation.”

The result? Schools invest thousands of dollars in software that doesn’t match their workflow. So when employees inevitably leave—a common challenge in flight training—the institutional knowledge of how to use these complex systems disappears as well.

Flycore takes a fundamentally different approach.

“We like to say we ripped Salesforce down to its primitives and rebuilt it specifically for aviation, using terms that make sense to flight schools and focusing only on the highest-value functionality,” Jack said.

What makes Flycore unique is its combination of services and proprietary software designed specifically for the aviation training environment. The company provides:

The brothers point to Sierra Charlie Aviation in Scottsdale, Arizona, as a perfect case study of Flycore’s impact. A career-focused flight school operating under Part 61 with approximately 20 aircraft and over 100 active students, Sierra Charlie had already recognized the need for modern technology to support its operations.

“With Salesforce and HubSpot, we were constantly adapting to the software instead of it adapting to us,” said Luke Ormsby, vice president of operations at Sierra Charlie Aviation.

The school had first attempted to implement Salesforce, but its enterprise-level complexity made it challenging to tailor it to their specialized needs. Hoping for a better fit, it switched to HubSpot, which was easier to use but still lacked the aviation-specific features required for managing prospective students effectively. 

When Sierra Charlie implemented Flycore, it saw immediate improvements.

“Flycore improved our customer experience because it provided aviation-specific workflows that matched our exact enrollment journey,” Ormsby said.

He said one of the most valuable aspects of working with Flycore wasn’t just the software itself but the team behind it.

“The Flycore team’s deep aviation expertise and hands-on approach meant they understood our unique challenges from day one,” Ormsby said. “[The result was] we finally had a system that truly fit our needs, letting us focus on delivering top-tier flight training instead of fighting with software.”

Flycore’s impact extends beyond just improved user experience. At Vermont Flight Academy, another Flycore client operating both Part 141 and Part 61 programs with a fleet of about 15 Cessna 172s, the technology significantly reduced the time between a student’s initial inquiry and their first flight.

“We were able to decrease that time from somebody initially contacting to getting into an aircraft by 30 percent, which was pretty meaningful to the business,” Doug said.

This efficiency gain directly impacts flight schools’ bottom lines. With centralized communications and streamlined enrollment tracking, they can process more students with the same staff, ensure higher aircraft utilization, and prevent potential students from falling through the cracks.

For Sierra Charlie Aviation, Flycore’s implementation has meant improved response times to inquiries and decreased time in the enrollment process—critical factors for a school that runs multiple class “semesters” per year and needs to maintain high aircraft utilization rates.

While Flycore’s initial focus has been on flight schools, the company sees opportunities to expand its aviation-specific technology to other segments of general aviation, including maintenance operations and charter companies.

“We believe there is real opportunity for aviation businesses to use [this] technology, so it’s not creating a huge additional workload, but [getting] into demand generation and not just be sitting back waiting for customers to show up at their door,” Jack said.

This could include automated reminders for annual inspections for maintenance facilities or targeted promotional offerings based on customer history for charter operations.

As flight training continues to evolve to meet growing industry demands for pilots, technology solutions like Flycore represent a critical component in modernizing the pipeline that produces aviation professionals.

By taking tasks that traditionally consumed a flight school staff’s time—like manual enrollment processing, document collection, and lead follow-up—and automating them with aviation-specific tools, Flycore helps schools focus on their core mission—creating safe, well-trained pilots.

“Most importantly, we finally had a system that truly fit our needs—letting us focus on delivering top-tier flight training instead of fighting with software,” said Ormsby.

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