Transair - Pilot shop for pilots?

[PPL Confused]

After visiting the Transair shop in London I was left feeling that it has gone from being a pilots shop for pilots with good service and knowledgable staff to just another store, with some guy in a pilot shirt behind the counter with just about enough knowledge to operate the till nevermind anything aviation related. With prices from the internet and other retailers continually being lowered are they just trading on the name and hoping that's good enough still to provide a good service or are they losing out as more people try and take a piece of the pie?

[Miserlou]

To be fair, the London shop has a slightly different clientele than other 'airport' shops. There are many foreign airline crews who go there whenever they're on a UK stopover.
It's been nearly 10 years since I was last there though and I agree that it would be a shame if there were a non-pilot working there.

[BroomstickPilot]

My criticism of Transair would be the same as my criticism of all 'pilot shops' on both sides of the Atlantic and in Oz as well. They all sell the same boring old stuff they've sold for years, most of it from the same sources and a proportion of it virtual trash. Actually, I consider Transair to be one of the better ones among a truly dismal bunch.

I reckon that if someone was to be taken blindfolded into any pilot shop in any of the regions mentioned above, it would be virtually impossible for them to tell which continent they were on, much less which shop they were in.

Once you get away from the essential bread and butter stuff, such as charts, kneeboards, textbooks, headsets and GPS receivers, what's left?

1. Cheap poly-cotton flying suits that are really 'boiler suits' in disguise,

2. WW2 style flying jackets for the dreamer,

3. pilot watches with impossibly cluttered faces (utterly useless in a cockpit vibrating at perhaps 250Hz when the engine(s) is/are running), fit only for the club's non-flying poseur,

4. and a whole load of other pricy aviation tat, such as tee shirts, baseball caps, coasters and cheap jewelry.

Compare this with what you can get in the average mountaineering/climbing shop, or a shop for SCUBA divers. There is no comparison.

Broomstick

[High Wing Drifter]

I'm not attracted by tat but I do like to pop in once in a blue moon and browse the books and stuff. I usually walk out clutching a couple of chinagraphs and book of some description. I usually pause, stare and wonder who would buy some of the items though.

[IO540]

I bet you Transair make as much out of selling the trash (£300 leather jackets and such) as a surf shop makes out of selling £30 Speedo bikinis which start life in China at about £1.

But that's life. The market is very thin and most pilots are skint. The fact that the "gizmos" have hardly changed in the last 5 years doesn't help; every time one goes into a pilot shop one sees the same ancient 10 year old Garmins...

[pilotwolf]

I think part of the problem is they're AVIATION shops as opposed to pilot shops.

The stock range has to cover everyone from flight simmers and kids through to ATPLs flying 747 etc.

PW

[lobby]

On the Transair website they require someone for Customer Services. Paying £11 - £13K. I don't think this is going to encourage anyone who fly's to work there.

[muffin]

My company used to operate a couple of pilot shops, but the economics got so silly that I closed them. There are too many competitors chasing too small a market by reducing prices until there is no margin left to cover the overheads. It is actually getting worse these days, principally driven by a well known outfit in Scotland. I went into the main tent at the PFA rally last year to be greeted by a large sign saying 25% off everything. When the gross profit margin on most items is less than that, I am afraid that the business model goes for a chop.

I am just glad we are out of that market these days.

[Colonial Aviator]

In response to Miserlou's post, yeah it does seem like a shame to have a non-pilot working there seemed to make a big difference in the level of service that was provided when asking about relatively simple enquires

[DBChopper]

I've visited Transair at Victoria, Fairoaks, Shoreham and their stand at Aerofair, as well as ordering items online. I have never found their staff less than professional, friendly and courteous as well as being knowledgeable about the products I was buying. Of course they stock their share of old tat, but then what shop doesn't these days? And, no, I'm not after the job... :E

[Evil J]

I have always found Transair to be a very good outfit, have visited all the shops in my time and frequently order on-line..never had a problem, but crikey you do pay for it!!

Was in the TF shop recently with time on my hands so bought a book to keep me amused (Vipers in the Storm..brilliant read...I digress) paid £18.99 for it - went back to work, chatting to a colleague at work and he looked it up on amazon...£6...D'oh!!

[egld0624]

Hi All,

Not teaching anybody to suck eggs here:

I use them (Transair) most of the time and generally can't fault them too. Service is prompt. Was recently, somewhat disappointed with the chaps behind the till in London though when I was very seriously considering picking up some elite hardware. They just didn't seem all that interested. Ultimately, went direct to elite themselves and saved money too. FX FX!

What I would add and hence the comment about sucking eggs, is with the GBP/USD rate so much in our (UK) favour there are some very obvious arbitrage plays to be had at present. The high end goods such as top spec headphones, transceivers (models not yet available this side of the pond from the likes of Icom) and Garmin GPS’s + import duty & FEDEX charges etc still generally make an obvious saving!

Sure, we are seeing the US making moves to counter this with other electrical goods but we’re a long way off that regarding aviation products in my view.

Kind regards,

EG:ok:

[Colonial Aviator]

Looks like they don't sell any Jeppesen products anymore, not a Bottlang manual or logbook, which I was after in sight in their shop in London, don't know if that holds true for the other branches?

[Monocock]

For flying equipment you can't go wrong by making an international ebay search on the item you need.

The prices are quite astounding.

I recently bought some a/c parts that were 22 times cheaper than a reputable company quoted!

Sometimes you have to wait for a week or two for things to appear but it can save huge amounts

[n5296s]

My initial recation when I saw this thread a few weeks back was, "come on guys, back off, what do you EXPECT a pilot shop to sell?". After all, charts and the like are really their business and all the rest - books, flying jackets - are just a way to supplement their income.

But then I went to the Victoria shop last week to try and get a VFR chart for southern England - doesn't seem an unreasonable thing to want. Nope, haven't got any. I looked at their IFR charts. They have a nice big rack for all the Jepps for Europe. Unfortunately the only ones they actually had were for somewhere the other side of the Urals.

So, I think Transair have seriously lost the plot somewhere along the way. Shame.

n5296s