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The Cold Shoulder
by Bob WanderThe following article appeared in SOARING in 1994. It must have hit a nerve because it generated one of the largest responses of any article published during the last ten years. It describes how outsiders often see us when they come to visit our gliderports. If we are going to get the sport of soaring to grow, we must all work together at grassroots level to eliminate the Cold Shoulder and replace it with a Warm Welcome for every gliderport visitor.
We soaring pilots are proud of our sport. We want it to grow and prosper. And we know that steady growth is one of the main ingredients in any successful recipe for the future of soaring. But growing the sport demands that we confront some serious challenges. For example, in the 1990s soaring must contend with a growing variety of competing leisure activities. Mountain biking, rollerblading, and video/computer gaming are examples of popular leisure industries which did not even exist fifteen years ago. Another challenge is the fact that millions of Americans find themselves working harder than ever to satisfy the increasing demands of the workplace. For these people and for their families leisure time has become a very precious commodity. They spend leisure time carefully and want to derive maximum enjoyment from it. If they perceive soaring will make heavy demands on limited leisure time, they may decide not to pursue the sport.
Even for those folks who overcome these obstacles and join the soaring movement, the road is not completely smooth. Newcomers must accustom themselves to long drives from a home in the city to a gliderport out in the country. Entry level involvement in soaring demands substantial cash outlays for flight training or for soaring club membership and other soaring related expenses. And newcomers discover they must devote lots of their precious leisure time to mastering the fundamentals of soaring flight.
All these challenges are barriers to growth. But let's not lose sight of the good news on the growth scene. After all, soaring is still one of the most beautiful and interesting sporting activities in the world. All around America automobile drivers still pull over onto the highway shoulder and stop the car so that they can watch gliders landing and taking off at the gliderport. Visitors still make the trek out of town to find the local gliderport and spend hours watching the soaring activities there. Many of these visitors (perhaps even the majority of them) harbor the dream that one day they too will become soaring pilots and take to the sky.
It is ironic, then, that the treatment many visitors receive when they visit our gliderports may be one of the biggest barriers to soaring's future growth. When visitors arrive at your gliderport, how are they treated? Please take a few minutes and really think about it. Do you welcome visitors? Do you and your soaring friends answer their questions about soaring? Do you invite them to participate in the sport in some way, such as attending a glider club meeting or gliderport workday or ground school class? Do you provide each visitor a copy of your soaring organization's promotional literature? Do you tell them about SOARING magazine and how it can help them explore the sport at minimum cost? Do you give them an SSA membership application and then invite them to join the SSA? Do you ask your visitors to write down their name and address so that you can mail them announcements about local soaring events from time to time?
If you answered yes to most of these questions, I'll bet your local soaring community is healthy, growing, and is prepared for the future. And may your tribe increase!
On the other hand, if you answered no to most of the questions, I'm willing to wager that soaring is facing a troubled future in your area. Your local soaring clubs and glider schools may be confronted with an ugly combination: declining soaring activity coupled with increasing expenses and other overhead. Confidence about the future may be giving way to nagging doubts as to whether soaring has any future in the local area. And worries like that are no fun at all.
Newcomers visit soaring sites to take in the excitement and beauty of motorless flight. Many of them also come to discover whether they could become soaring pilots. But if they discover that soaring pilots do not welcome visitors, the excitement drains away. The visitor's private dream of learning to soar begins to fade. And every time a visitor's dream begins to fade, prospects for the future of soaring fade a little bit too.
The SSA staff has recently seen a sharp increase in the number of letters received from folks who have abandoned hope of becoming sailplane pilots. The authors of these thoughtful and articulate letters have given up trying to join the soaring movement because of the Cold Shoulder that they usually get from local glider pilots. Each letter tells the same story - only the setting changes from letter to letter. When the visitors arrived at their local gliderport and walked up to clutches of glider pilots, no one said hello to them. No one greeted them, or welcomed them, or even acknowledged their presence. No one asked them if they were interested in soaring. They were simply ignored. After several such episodes the visitors concluded that there was something rather rude about soaring and about soaring pilots, and they drove away from the gliderport convinced that this was no place to spend their time or money. They decided that soaring was a closed society, and that pilots give newcomers neither welcome nor assistance. Pilots give newcomers the Cold Shoulder instead.
I believe our number one problem in soaring is that we so frequently give newcomers the Cold Shoulder. We in aviation sometimes exhibit a sort of tribal mentality that newcomers interpret, rightly or wrongly, as meaning "Don't bother applying for membership in our band - we have all the members we need." We make newcomers feel that they are not quite complete - that is, they are not part of the glorious company of aviators. And if you have had the opportunity to visit a number of general aviation airports and gliderports, think back on the impression you had when you arrived for your first visit, before anyone knew you or thought of you as a pilot. The local pilots doubtless chatted among each other with easy familiarity, but probably never acknowledged your presence. You were not a local member of the Tribe of Aviators - you were viewed as a newcomer, or gawker, just passing through. As you think back, you'll probably remember getting the Cold Shoulder more often than not. The Cold Shoulder usually disappears only after the locals discover that you are a member of the pilot tribe, and that you know the language of flying and that you love the same things that all pilots love about flying. Then you receive a warm welcome because you're the genuine article - an active member of the aviation community.
For non-pilots, the Cold Shoulder gets tiresome quickly. They don't understand why they are getting the Cold Shoulder. They have done nothing to deserve it. So before too long, they decide to head on down the road and look for some other place to spend their time and money. Eventually they probably tell their friends and acquaintances what a disappointment it was to get the Cold Shoulder at the gliderport. And as the word gets around the damage done is multiplied.
There is little doubt that this scenario plays out regularly in every region of the country. And there is no doubt at all that everybody involved is a loser when it does. The local soaring organization misses the chance to recruit a solid new soaring devotee. The would-be newcomer who left to pursue other interests misses out on the thrill and beauty of soaring flight. And the SSA misses the chance to grow and to increase its ability to promote and protect our favorite sport.
Soaring needs resources to prosper. We need those resources to preserve our gliding sites, to refurbish or replace an aging glider fleet, to protect our right of access to airspace, to provide opportunity for youngsters to soar, and for a dozen other causes. Newcomers provide new energy and new blood and, yes, new money too - resources which are always in demand. So it stands to reason that when our gliderport behavior discourages newcomers we squander our future resources. It is as simple as that.
We need to rectify this state of affairs. Let's resolve to do a better job with newcomers by trying the following things:
- Tell our visitors that we welcome their visit to the gliderport.
- Tell them about our local soaring organizations.
- Tell them about SOARING magazine. Explain to them the benefits of SSA membership and give them a membership application to facilitate joining.
- Invite them to come to the next glider club meeting, or the next hangar party, or the annual awards banquet.
- Have visitors sign their names and addresses in our airport guest book. Then, in a week or so let's follow up by sending a note thanking them for their visit and inviting them to come again.
Excerpts from letters the SSA has received decrying the attitude newcomers found at various soaring sites:
"Rather than fostering my interest they actively tried to damp it""They offered little encouragement and made me feel very unwelcome"
"If this sport continues to close doors on others like it did on me, then it WILL die. I'm young, I'm well off, I'm reasonably smart and I had a great desire to learn how to fly sailplanes and fly them well. Any other sport would have accepted me with open arms. This one just shook its sunburned face and pointed toward the airport boundary gate."
"We are not renewing our SSA membership at this time. I regret this, but am so put off by our recent (gliding club) experience that I do not expect to be back soaring for a while."
Many gliding clubs and FBOs do an excellent job of welcoming new enthusiasts. Caesar Creek Soaring Club, Bermuda High Soaring, the Central Indiana Soaring Society, and Sky Sailing are just four examples of organizations that excel at recruiting new members, both for themselves and for the SSA. They attract newcomers to soaring because they convey a warm welcome to visitors.
Does your organization do a good job of welcoming newcomers to soaring? Then let us know about it! Please send your comments to:
- Nancy Graham
- SSA
- PO Box E
- Hobbs NM 88241
