At one time we had primary flight training centers at five different airports and operated more than 100 airplanes, including several DC-3s and an AT-6. We were busy, but we were barely making money. We finally fixed that by limiting our primary flight training to the FlightSafety Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, and restricting admission to people who intended to become professional pilots. Since then the Academy has become one of the premier primary schools in the world, and airlines from Europe, Asia and the United States have been sending ab initio students there steadily for thirty years.

We thought our expertise in hands-on, simulator-based training would work well in other fields. In 1973 we sidestepped from aerodynamics and immersed ourselves in hydrodynamics to create MarineSafety for the instruction of merchant marine and surface Navy officers. The risk paid off, and MarineSafety continues as a well-regarded subsidiary with training centers in the United States and Europe. Spurred by that success, in 1984 we created another subsidiary aimed at training operators at nuclear power plants. As everyone knows, the nuclear power business bombed, and so did our venture.