Langa Air, Inc. Celebrates 15th Anniversary

Date: July 27, 2005

October of this year will mark the 15th year Langa Air has been in business. Langa Air, based at St. Louis Regional Airport in Bethalto, is a full service general aviation company and flight training facility.

"Pardon the pun, but we have seen a lot of ups and downs in our business since we started it," stated Scott Langa, president. "Operating any business has a lot of challenges but an aviation business, especially in today's world, has its own unique set of issues constantly at play." 'We have learned a lot. They say that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." Said Langa.

Langa Air was started by Irv Langa and Scott Langa in 1990. The business originally was founded in order to provide the Langa's other business, Horizon Air, with the ability to get fuel and maintenance performed at wholesale. Horizon Air was an air ambulance and charter company based at Lambert Field in St. Louis.

Since then, Langa Air has seen their maintenance, fuel sales, and avionics business increase. In 1998, Langa took a close look at their business and decided that the flight training business had a tremendous amount of untapped potential. "After 6 months of analysis and planning, we implemented a whole new business model around our flight training services," said Langa. "We looked at our shortcomings as well as what we saw in other flight schools and us that information to develop an efficient training process." Since implementation of a new business model, their flight training business has grown by a factor of 10 and now does more revenue than the other 3 divisions combined.

Langa has developed a very systematic approach to career development for professional pilots. Through the use of a work-at-your-own-pace computer based system, several aviation degree options including an on-line degree program, finance programs with deferred payment options, and a phase as a paid intern as a certified flight instructor, Langa has established itself as a premier flight training academy in the US. A committed student can complete all of the initial training and become employable as a professional pilot in as little as 18 to 24 months. Langa recognized that once a student gets his/her commercial license, he or she can still have obstacles that they will need to overcome before they are considered employable as a professional pilot. Airlines, corporate flight department, and charter companies usually look at the number of flight hours logged by the pilot prior to hiring them. "The challenge has always been how to get experience as a pilot." said Langa. "We knew this so we developed our two phase system in which we offer a guaranteed internship as a paid flight instructor upon successful completion of our career program. What is interesting about it is that if you look at what are flight instructors will receive in pay during the second phase and compare to that to the career program costs, it is about the same so theoretically the training cost is netted to zero."

Langa markets its flight training business through aviation trade publications, local newspapers, billboards, direct mail and extensively through their web sites at www.langaair.com and www.langaairservices.com. Through theses sources, they have prospective pilots contact them from every part of the US. Once these students decide to train with Langa, Langa representatives will help them in every aspect of relocating including finding suitable local housing arrangements. They will even assist in roommate arrangements and to help individuals and spouses find employment in the local area.