A Flight School With No Airplanes, by Design

Solid Ground Aviation doesn't operate a single airplane, and that's the point. The Fort Meade, Maryland training center teaches simulator-first at Tipton Airport (KFME), with its own simulators and instructors available from 7 AM to 10 PM, 7 days a week. When the airplane isn't the thing being booked, the schedule becomes the product. This simulator flight training center uses Sky Schedule to book instructor time, run its programs lesson by lesson, and let pilots manage it all from a phone.

Simulator first at Tipton Airport

Solid Ground was founded in 2020 by a professional pilot who wanted to bring professional training standards to general aviation. Its training runs on the SG-2, a simulator the company builds in three configurations: an FAA-approved Advanced Aviation Training Device modeled on a G1000 Cessna 172S, an FAA-approved Basic Aviation Training Device with dozens of panel combinations, and a custom configuration with more aircraft types that's for practice only and not approved for logging time. In the approved configurations, time can count toward certificates and ratings within the limits of each device's FAA letter of authorization.

The real flying happens through partner flight schools, or in a student's own airplane with a Solid Ground instructor. The program list reads like a menu for every stage of a pilot's life: accelerators for the Private, the Instrument Rating, the instrument proficiency check, and the CFI and CFII, plus a Rusty Pilot Refresh, IMC emergencies, jet transition, and a fear-of-flying course. Its courses qualify for FAA WINGS credit, and the Civil Air Patrol gets free simulator time for its training.

When the schedule is the product

No airplanes means no fleet to juggle, but the calendar is harder in other ways. Sessions usually run 1 to 3 hours. Same-day appointments are common. Every student is matched with an instructor whose availability fits theirs, and the facility is open early and late to make that work.

Then there are the programs with a long shape. The Young Aviators Program, for students under 15, is 16 one-on-one sessions in 4 phases, from foundations through a cross-country capstone, with a real-airplane discovery flight from Tipton after lesson 8. Families choose 1 or 2 lessons a month, so a single student's slot can need to hold for most of a year or longer.

How Solid Ground runs it in Sky Schedule

Instructor time is the reservation

At most schools, the airplane is the scarce resource. At Solid Ground it's the instructor, and Sky Schedule's scheduling treats instructor reservations as first-class, and the booking form warns when an instructor is already booked for that time. Students can send Find a Time requests that staff approve, and recurring bookings hold a program student's regular lessons in place without rebooking them one at a time. Instructors can send their reservations to Google Calendar, where events update when a booking changes.

Programs with a defined shape

Each accelerator and youth course is set up as its own program, built around Solid Ground's curriculum. Instructors log each simulator session against its reservation and score the steps that session covered. Students countersign, and a progress bar tracks each pilot through a program that may run for months.

The schedule in a pocket

Pilots who book same-day sessions don't want to sit at a computer to do it. In the Sky Schedule OS app, they see their schedule, request times, and follow their training progress from wherever they are.

Built around its own programs

Solid Ground doesn't look like a typical flight school, so it needed software it could shape to fit. The schedule centers on instructors, the programs match its own curriculum, and the app keeps pilots close to both. For a business built on the idea that you can practice without weather or maintenance getting in the way, the scheduling shouldn't get in the way either.