Cirrus are doing it 
No, as we don‘t have a special pilot event, a spoose event makes no sense.
A diner in a nice restaurant altogether is an event for both.
I agree with eddsPeter: integrate them, don’t distance them (and give them the opportunity to bitch about what airplane nutheads we are 
)
What about a “find a spouse” event?
Hmmm; that’s what flight sharing sites should be for
Or you could become an instructor; it worked really well for the ones I had in Shoreham, nearly 20 years ago.
Years ago, I put my details on one “seat sharing” (they had to be called that in those days) site and got some “interesting” responses… More recently I joined one GA group on FB and of the 80 members, the majority were women who were, shall we say, not interested in flying
Seriously, I agree that separating people is not the way to go. We try hard to have fly-ins so they are as inclusive as possible. However, clearly, this is marketing which is effective in certain sectors. It is often called “partner programme” and basically it is a bus which takes people to the shops.
Peter wrote:
Seriously, I agree that separating people is not the way to go. We try hard to have fly-ins so they are as inclusive as possible. However, clearly, this is marketing which is effective in certain sectors. It is often called “partner programme” and basically it is a bus which takes people to the shops.
Not at all. A partner programme is very relevant where there is some form of seminar and it isn’t fair to make partners sit around and wait. If they have to just sit around they won’t want to come which often means the pilots won’t be able to come. Your events aren’t seminars they are group tourist trips. Not the same thing at all.
“group tourist trips” … very funny
We have been asked by certain firms whether we would be willing to host a presentation at some of our fly-ins.
It was discussed at the time but no details were forthcoming and sounding out people showed negligible interest, so it didn’t go anywhere.
It’s a catch 22.
The only way to get people to come to a seminar is to get lots of people to turn up, and the only way to do that is in the context of a paid-membership outfit. All the resulting meetups are not cheap – the Cirrus one mentioned was €220 last time I heard, and all type-specific events I know about charge similarly – so once you get their cash they will mostly turn up. It’s the same old story. If something is free, it is not valued (by many). If you take €220 off people, per person, many will even buy airline tickets as a backup. Then you can run a seminar, and you have money left over for the bus to the shops
OTOH if you take €220 off everybody, you have to deliver some tangible value, so you chuck in a seminar, a hotel discount (again, this is possible if people prepay that), maybe some market stalls set out in a hangar, etc. Then you need a treasurer to watch the money. A bank account. Etc… And deal with people who paid but can’t come and would like a refund.
It’s a bit like making planes. If you put in a PT6 you have to put in a $10k DVD player.
Peter wrote:
If you put in a PT6 you have to put in a $10k DVD player
Thats a good one!
My Spouse flys with me on nearly all flights.
She tollerates “meet ups” as long as it’s not all talk about techy stuff and is a nice mix of flying stories and other subjects.
I think she’d be more interested in a ‘Spouse’ group if she had previously met, and knew some of the others (yes I know chicken & egg).
We hope to attend a few of the fly-ins at some point, but mostly they are too far for us for numerous reasons, mainly relating to cost.
