In 2014 I decided to make a ‘Recreational Pilot Certificate Learn to Fly’ DVD series. The reason I created the DVDs was because I discovered students were not remembering everything they learned during their flight lessons and they wanted a way to both remember what they had learnt on that particular lesson as well as a way of preparing for the next lesson. These were the first RAAus syllabus video briefings available in Australia.
I advertised the DVDs in print magazines and posted them out when people ordered them. The DVDs sold very well and I received excellent feedback from both students and instructors across Australia. I then created some navigation DVDs. In 2016 I considered upgrading the DVDs to an online version and also thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could also offer the inflight lessons in 360-degree video so it can be viewed on a VR headset?’
The main issue at the time was internet speed and there were not many VR headsets available and they were very expensive. Added to this, the 360-degree cameras were also very expensive and editing the footage was labor intensive if I did it myself, or very expensive if I got a production company to do it. As the flight school was very busy, I decided to put the upgrade project on hold.
I am a firm believer that if you are on the right track then the right people and circumstances will show up in your life to help make your dreams a reality.
In 2016, Stephen, the owner of a production company (Light Studios) rang me, wanting to make an online reality tv show about his own journey from nervous flyer to potential pilot. We started making the show, called Taking Flight. We filmed Stephen’s flights and, coincidentally, his production company also created some 360-degree videos.
Over the next 6 months, Jeremy (GoFly’s then General Manager), Stephen and I put our creative hats on and filmed the world’s first 360-degree learn to fly videos to be available on the Vimeo On Demand platform. Creating the 360-video was not an easy process. Firstly we had to purchase an expensive VR camera that used two 4k cameras and two spherical lenses. We mounted the camera on a special tripod on the student’s seat so the camera was situated exactly where the student’s head would normally be.
Over the next six months I then filmed every Pilot Certificate lesson in detail pretending the camera was a real student. We had many retakes and the biggest bugbear was that the camera kept overheating in the hot Qld sun and so we had to shoot in 20 minute sessions, wait for the camera to cool down then shoot again! The other issue at the time was that the sound had to be recorded on a separate camera then synched to the 360 footage during the editing process.
When shooting footage there is generally six times as much footage as ends up in an episode, so the raw footage used an incredible amount of data storage to get it through the editing stage. After three months of editing, Stephen finished all the lessons in March 2017.
We filmed all the RAAus pre-flight training lessons in standard-view and offered the inflight lessons in standard view as well as the innovative 360-degree footage.
We used the 360-videos as training aids at our GoFly Aviation school and the feedback was fantastic. The 360-video can be viewed through any mobile device in 360 format with a $25 VR headset (prices have come down in the last few years). The benefit of watching the learn-to-fly lessons in the 360 format is that you are completely immersed in the cockpit and you can see exactly what the student pilot sees in 360-degree HD video. Jeremy did warn me though, that the technology was ‘bleeding edge not leading edge’.
Fast-forward to 2018 and by then we had shot all RPC ab initio lessons and now had over 22 episodes of Taking Flight on the Vimeo platform. Our students were using it at the flight school and were also able to use it at home online or offline. But it was hard for other customers to find the content on Vimeo or via our own website and it just wasn’t selling as a standalone product. I truly believed that these videos would reduce training time for students, enable them to save money and make them a better and safer pilot. We needed to create a standalone website just for our videos.
I approached one of our existing students, Thomas Gregg, who ran the Bravo Zulu web design/SEO company in Brisbane. He agreed to come on board and design the GoFly Online site, complete with categories for RPC, Cross Country, Resources, Interviews with Pilots, the free GoFly Fix videos, blogs and much more. We put a plan in place for further videos and sought out a Commercial pilot to produce some GA videos for the RPL licence.
My reading led me to believe that having an online side to the actual flight school business would help us survive any downturns in the economy. I also discovered a new suffix for websites, so we changed from ‘dot com, dot au’ to ‘dot online’. We divided the content up into Free as well as, Basic and Premium content by subscription ($99 or $199). By now we had over 100 videos and 25 blogs.
At GoFly all new students receive a free Premium subscription for two years. The new website looks great and we can project it onto the wall or screen it on the work computers for those who haven’t watched the relevant lesson at home or need to watch it again. Some students listen to just the audio as a refresher, as they drive to the school. Despite my partner’s best efforts at promoting it, it still wasn’t selling to anyone outside our own school. We knew it had the ability to save other flight instructors and schools lots of time if the instructors didn’t have to provide whiteboard briefings.
To eliminate price as a barrier to purchasing, we the introduced a monthly option ($9.90 or $19.90) and we included a 7-day FREE trial and a money back guarantee. We attended aviation expos and demonstrated the product and gave out business cards containing the URL. We made more content. We released free content linked back to the URL. We placed ads in a couple of aviation magazines. Finally, some sales started trickling in from around Australia and gave us the motivation to keep at it and the confidence to buy some new equipment for filming..
In late 2019 our flight school leased a Cirrus and we partnered with a GA pilot to produce some Cirrus and GA content. We have also filmed interviews with a number of commercial pilots. We then added quizzes at the end of each video so students could test their understanding of the lesson and their instructor will also be able to access these results to see if the student understands the briefing.
During the time when COVID was wreaking havoc with aviation, flying and flight schools, RAAus was seeking ways for its members to stay enthusiastic about their training. We then partnered with them to offer financial RAAus members access to a range of educational and entertainment resources for pilots that usually require a subscription. Having a presence on their website brought more eyes to the site and sales began to trickle in from around Australia. Our free content was also uploaded to our YouTube site and attracted viewers from over 100 countries around the world. Student pilots can speed up their learning and save money by watching a video briefing and inflight lesson before they fly, while current pilots can refresh their memory about procedures, learn about new regulations or enjoy a documentary. There are plenty of fun videos and documentaries and the video lesson categories now include:
- Recreational Pilot Certificate (pre-flight and inflight lessons and quizzes)
- Recreational Cross Country Endorsement (pre-flight and inflight lessons and quizzes)
- PL/PPL/CPL Navigation Training
- Electronic Flight Bag (including Oz Runways and AvPlan)
- Controlled Airspace endorsement
- RAAus Instructor Rating
- Performance, Weight and Balance
- RPL/PPL Training
- Cirrus SR20
- Aerobatics
- Maintenance
Australian Aviation magazine created a suite of awards to help the aviation community recover from COVID. We entered GoFly Online into the ‘Best Startup’ category in 2022 and 2024 and were shortlisted.
While hibernating during COVID, I wrote five theory books to assist students studying the five RPC exam subjects (Pre-solo, Radio, Air Legislation, BAK and Human Factors). We created online theory books available to be read online, with matching quiz questions and these were automatically included in the Premium sub. In 2023 I worked hard behind the scenes flying around in a Sling TSi, filming and editing new ab initio videos to match the new RPC syllabus. These had no talking head but instead showed what the student would see, both inside on the instruments and outside the plane. We replaced the old RPC videos with these in early 2024 (available with the basic sub). In early 2025 we then combined all the individual theory books into one large RPC theory book. We had a 3-page article about the site in Sport Pilot magazine. Sales started to pick up. In early 2025 we wrote and released a comprehensive Navigation and Meteorology theory book for the RAAUs Cross Country endorsement (suitable for RPL level training as well). We listened to feedback and made the books available in hard copy for an extra fee. We also have plans to make them available for download and possibly in audio version.
We changed our mission statement from ‘Become the best pilot you can be’ to’ Videos, online theory books and practice quizzes to help you pass your Recreational flight tests and exams’. We now aimed to become a one-stop shop for pilots and flight schools. In August 2025 we were delighted to win the ‘Best Startup’ category of the Australian Aviation Awards. This was confirmation we were on the right track. Book sales started to take off and there was a slight increase in subscriptions, especially from QLD and Perth schools (due to us having trained those instructors). Once an instructor has had a taste of not having to do 20 mins of board briefs before each lesson, they generally start recommending the GoFly Online videos to their students. This way a CFI can guarantee the briefing will be consistent from instructor to instructor in the school, and nothing will be missed. A student can also rewind and watch it again until they understand a concept.
So we have brand new RPC briefing videos and an updated RPC theory book for the new RAAus syllabus. Due to running our own flight school, we knew our instructors always had to have a chat and our admin staff always had to send an email to alert our students at a particular point in their practical flying, that they should now start reading their theory book for their Pre-solo then Radio, then Air Legislation and finally their BAK exams. It also wasn’t intuitive on GoFly Online that students should stop watching videos after about lesson 8 and go to another page of the site to start reading the pre-solo book. As a result, we have now developed an RPC ‘course page’, which blends the video briefings and the required theory content, plus has quiz questions, and shows the student where they are up to in relation to the full RPC syllabus. It takes them by the hand and guides them, and is the perfect solution for all recreational flight schools that will soon have to introduce the new RPC syllabus. We shall eventually do the same for the RPL course.
We have a range of other groundbreaking new products that we will be releasing in coming months and can’t wait to hear how helpful the student pilots and flight instructors find them.
Damien Wills, Sept 2025
CEO, GoFly Group
Click on this link to read further aviation blogs by Damien.
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