Case Study
22 of 26 tracked keywords in top 3 across Southwest Washington
Cascade Air is a family-owned flight school and FBO at Southwest Washington Regional Airport (KKLS) in Kelso, WA. The previous site treated discovery flights, private pilot, instrument, commercial, CFI, multi-engine, and FBO services as one undifferentiated page, with no published pricing and no local-intent SEO. We rebuilt the site as a server-rendered Astro static build with a dedicated page per training pathway and per operations service, then layered local SEO across the Kelso, Longview, Vancouver WA and Portland catchment. In the most recent ranking window, 22 of 26 tracked keywords are sitting in the top 3 — 18 of them at position 1 across the Kelso WA core market.
The build
The site we built for Cascade Air.
The live homepage at cascadeair-nw.com, captured from production — every training pathway, pricing detail, and booking step built to turn quiet research into real enquiries.
The challenge
What Cascade Air needed to solve
Cascade Air had real operating depth — a family-owned business, a full Cessna training fleet from 150/152 through 182RG, a Beechcraft Travel Air for multi-engine, on-field A&P and IA maintenance, and a Kelso School District CTE aviation partnership — but none of that depth was visible to a first-time visitor. The site collapsed every training stage and every operations service into one page, kept pricing behind a generic contact form, and ranked for almost nothing in the Kelso, Longview, Vancouver WA or Portland catchment. Local would-be students who would have happily booked a discovery flight were bouncing because the path from 'curious about flying' to 'book the first lesson' was not on the page.
Our approach
How the engagement was delivered
Discovery
Mapped the Southwest Washington student pilot journey — discovery flight, private pilot, instrument, commercial, CFI, multi-engine, complex / high-performance, recurrent — alongside the parallel operator journey for FBO, maintenance, rental and corporate-aircraft visits. Identified that every individual training stage and every individual operations service needed its own page with its own intent.
Astro static rebuild
Rebuilt the site on Astro 5.5 as a server-rendered static build with a dedicated page for every training pathway and every operations service. Each fleet aircraft is named by tail number with hourly rate and avionics detail (Cessna 150L, 152, 172K/M, 182RG, Beechcraft Travel Air). Discovery flight pricing — $180 + tax in the 150/152, $230 + tax in the 172 — is published openly. Ground school is published as $450 + materials over 8 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
Local SEO foundation
Targeted Kelso WA core terms (flight school, flight training, flight lessons, learn to fly, discovery flight) alongside Longview, Vancouver WA, and Portland regional intake. Wrote LocalBusiness schema tied to Southwest Washington Regional Airport, named area-served regions, and built local-coverage sections into every training page so suburb-level intent had somewhere to land.
Content cadence
Published a community pathway page for the Kelso School District CTE Aviation Science partnership and a Washington Career Bridge funding page for adult learners exploring WorkSource-affiliated training support — both linking directly into the relevant training pages.
Timeline
Week 1–6: discovery and full Astro rebuild. Week 7–12: local SEO foundation and pathway page deployment. Month 4 onward: monthly site polish and ranking work on the small set of weak spots — the Vancouver WA and Portland metro expansion gap is the active growth lever now that Kelso core is held.
Results
What the work produced
22 / 26
Tracked keywords in top 3
Most of the tracked keyword set sits in the top 3 for the Kelso WA core market — flight school, flight training, flight lessons, learn to fly, and discovery flight all at position 1 in the most recent ranking window.
18
Keywords at position 1
Eighteen tracked keywords across training, FBO, and fleet-rental intent currently hold position 1 in the Kelso-Longview catchment.
Astro 5.5
Server-rendered static build
Rebuilt on Astro 5.5 with a custom design system, dedicated component library, sitemap module, and Playwright end-to-end tests. Every training pathway and operations service has its own page with its own SEO target.
Published
Fleet, training and ground school pricing
Discovery flight pricing ($180 / $230 + tax), every Cessna and the Travel Air with tail numbers and hourly rates, ground school ($450 + materials), and the maintenance shop rate ($110/hr) are all on the page — pricing transparency that competitors in the catchment do not match.
Vancouver + Portland
Expansion gap is the next lever
Kelso core is held. The remaining ranking work — Vancouver WA and Portland metro — is the next 6-month growth lever, not a baseline gap.
Where this case study is referenced
The offers + tools built around Cascade Air
The mechanics from this engagement feed directly into the OTGM offers below. Each anchors on the Cascade Air numbers — pricing, conversion benchmark, ranking proof — so you can follow the offer that maps to your situation.
Your sector
Want results like these for your flight school?
See how we approach flight school marketing — positioning, SEO, website, and lead flow — on our dedicated sector page.
More proof
Other aviation case studies
Your turn
Want results like Cascade Air's?
Tell us about your business and we'll put together a plan tailored to your sector and market.