FunFly Aerosports Flying Club based at Clonbullogue and Benfield marked 5,000 flight hours since being established just over three years ago. The club is based at Clonbullogue with the Irish Parachute Club and operates a fleet of four ICP Savannah S aircraft. The milestone was passed during a brief spell of good weather last Sunday!
Commenting on the event, Mark Dwyer, Head of Training at FunFly said: “The success of the club has surpassed all of our expectations since we began training in August 2020. The number of local members we now have indicates that there is a huge amount of untapped demand for flight training in the country and we look forward to continuing our goal of making flight training and general aviation more accessible”
He went on to say that: “the ICP Savannah S has proven to be an ideal training aircraft that has stood up to the rigours of flight training. With its excellent handling characteristics, it has proven to be incredibly safe, but also an ideal platform to teach all of the manoeuvres on the LAPL and PPL syllabus. Its low acquisition and running costs have allowed us to operate a fleet of very new aircraft at an affordable cost to our members.”
Over the last 2 and half years the club have been developing a new airfield at Benfield just outside Portarlington in Co. Offaly. The clubhouse has been built and is used by the club for ground school and there are plans to construct a new purpose-built Aviation Training Centre and hangar in the near future. The flexibility of having another runway about 4 minutes flying time from Clonbullogue gives students the option to practice into wind and crosswind take-offs and landings in the same lesson.
One other unique aspect of the club is having a dedicated non-training Savannah for members to self-fly. All aircraft are available for self-fly but having one non-training aircraft frees up an aircraft for members to plan trips further afield. Last year the club rolled out some additional enhancements including SafeSky on all aircraft. SafeSky effectively gives TCAS traffic information on each aircraft’s iPad which is displayed through the SkyDemon app. They also rolled out a digital training records management system powered by FlyLogs. This allows instructors and students remote access to all training history meaning both can be fully prepared when they arrive for their flight.
The club are planning more developments over the next 12 months so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you’re looking to learn to fly to achieve your LAPL or PPL, you would like to hour build or if you would like a friendly club to fly with, please get in touch. www.funfly.ie
