Glossary

Flight School

Definition

An organization that provides flight training, operating under Part 61 (flexible curriculum) or Part 141 (FAA-approved structured curriculum). May also be called a flight training organization (FTO) or approved training organization (ATO).

Why It Matters

Flight schools range from one-instructor operations with 2 aircraft to multi-location academies with 50+ aircraft and hundreds of students. The scheduling and operations complexity scales non-linearly with fleet size.

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