Crew Uniform Procurement: What Flight Schools Should Ask a Supplier

Buying uniform for one person is a shopping decision. Buying it for a cohort that renews every intake is a supply decision, and the two go wrong in completely different ways.

The failure that hurts a flight school is rarely a bad shirt. It is the shirt that was fine last year and is no longer available this year, so the new intake does not match the old one. Below are the questions that surface that risk before it becomes yours.

Continuity

1. Will this exact fabric still be available in eighteen months, and in three years?
2. If the mill discontinues it, what is the substitution process, and will we be told before it changes or after?
3. Do you hold stock of our sizes, or is every order made to order? What is the lead time in each case?

Sizing and fit

4. Can we have a full size set to try on before committing to a cohort?
5. Are garment measurements published by size, or only body measurements? Garment measurements are the ones that let a student order correctly without a fitting.
6. Is there a women's block, cut differently, or only a smaller version of the men's shirt?

Customisation

7. Can shoulder straps for epaulettes, school insignia, embroidery or a name be added, and at what quantity does that become viable?
8. Can you develop a piece we do not see in your catalogue? A ground crew polo, a cadet jacket, a flight bag.
9. Who owns the pattern and the artwork if you develop something for us?

Logistics and commercial terms

10. Can students order individually against a school account, or does the school have to buy and hold stock?
11. What happens with returns and exchanges when a student sizes wrongly?
12. Where is the garment actually cut and sewn? Expect a specific answer, not a country of dispatch.

The question behind all twelve

Every one of these is really asking the same thing: is there a person at the other end who will answer the telephone in two years, and does that person control the making of the garment or only its resale?

A supplier who buys finished shirts from a wholesaler cannot answer question two or question eight honestly, because the decisions are not theirs to make.

How we answer them

D'HERITAGE Aviation designs its own pilot shirts and has them cut and made in Vila de Cucujães, in the north of Portugal. That means we can develop a uniform piece in collaboration rather than only sell what is already in the catalogue, and we can be specific about where a garment comes from.

We work with flight schools, aviation professionals and pilot associations. If you would like our answers to the twelve questions above for your own cohort, in writing, write to aviation@dheritage.pt with your intake size, the pieces you need and your timeline.

The current range is in the Aviation collection.