Flight School Help Again......

[SAAB Driver]

Fact 1. A rating is a rating regardless of what you pay.

Fact 2. First year F.O. pay is $17,000 to $22,000

Fact 3 Second year F.O. pay is only somewhat better.

Fact 4. If you borrow between $30,000 and $45,000 for all your flight training, your payment will be between $300 and $400.

Fact 5. F.O. pay, after taxes, after medical deductions is around $1000 - $1200 a month.

Fact 6. If your pay is $1200 (high end) minus $350(mid) for loans, minus $200 for food, minus $200 crash pad, you see where I am going.

Overall, First and Possibly second year F.O. pay are low, and the more you spend on flight training the less you get to keep.

 

[JediNein]

Best investment to make: MS flight sim and a yoke. Go home after each lesson and repeat the lesson. MSFS won't work too well for day landings, but it's excellent for learning night landings. Navigation, cross country flight planning, practicing maneuvers, all of it works very nicely. You can get an older edition that works fine on older computers really cheap.

 

[jagmagic]

If you want to make the trip try regional airline academy in Deland. Went there for my cmx and had a good experience. It has been about 4 years since I was there, so things could have changed but I am sure they changed for the better. There are tons of flight school in your neck of the woods so go visit as many as you can and get a feel for what they are all about.

P.S I was a instructor at American Flyers for 3 years and you should stay as far away as you can. If you are going to do your CFI's then they are they place to go, but for everything else they are overpriced and not worth it!! And from what I here stay away from Daytona!!!!

 

[unreal]

American Flyers, have been recommended on forums as being very good. They say they can pass me in 4 weeks and provide me with a weekend ground school course. all this and charts books etc for $11,500. But accomodation is on top at $69 a night.

Orlando Flight Training (OFT) say they can pass me in 3 weeks, accomodate me in there own housing which looks good and give me the option of doing my PPL in either a Cessna 152, 172 or Piper cadet. for $6,200..

Pheonix east will do the ppl in 3-4 weeks with no ground school or accomodation for $4748....

I really hate when schools promise to have you done within a certain timeframe. Honestly, it's not that simple. Yes, you could theoretically get through all of the lessons in 3-4 weeks, but that's ignoring the fact that you're not a robot, and flight training isn't conducted in a vacuum.

Let me share a story: I have a pre-solo who was assigned to me in late August. Basically, all we had to do was get him through his solo. He studied, worked hard, came prepared, and even flew pretty well. In fact, all of his maneuvers were pretty on the ball, and he was showing good progress. Then, we hit a brick wall. He couldn't land. We went up over and over to try to get him to see the sight picture, but he wasn't getting it. I even put him up with a much more experienced instructor, and while that helped, it didn't fix the problem. Unfortunately he just didn't have the aptitude for it, it seemed.

Well, now it's coming up on January, and he's still not done. We're almost there, but not quite. Theoretically the course can be completed in a much shorter time than that, but his progress was slowed when we hit that wall. On top of that, he had some personal obligations like school and work that most people will have when they're going through training. That can contribute to a slowdown in training, as well.

Point is, don't be in a rush to pass the checkride. I've seen quite a few fresh private pilots who were *just* able to pass the checkride, and they're scary. Completely unable to be self-reliant, and really unable to fly effectively or make decisions without an instructor. You don't want to be like that, trust me.

 

[Swass]

Google "Prairie Air Service".

 

[FlyingToIST]

I love it when people say 'we will pass you in 2-3 weeks'. Last time i checked it was a check ride, not a pass-ride.

 

[taters]

MPP aviation in LNK.....$3800 to get a private Cessna 150 $67/hr

 

[craftkeeper2001]

Why do you dump on DCA , If you don`t like it get out . Some of us enjoy it and it`s people like you that give us a bad name

 

[acpilot]

find a local flight school with a cheap two seater and an instructor you like and get your PPL there. playing dress-up with a pilot uniform at some big expensive 141 school paying +$100/hr for a plane and +$50/hr for an instructor won't make you a better pilot. you may as well save as much as you can now, you'll need A LOT of money down the road (if you plan to "go pro").

 

[Flying Ninja]

Lots of very valuable information on this thread. I agree with what SAAB Driver posted on his "facts". As for promised time frames, I'll just say that I got promised 10-12 months, budgeted for 12 months, and the actual training took over 17 months. Those extra months translated to extra expenses that was not in my original budget and that translated to additional loans, which translated to higher monthly paments, which, when added to FTSI/CAPT's total lack of professionalism, total disregard for ethics, irresponsibility, and lack of honor, resulted in no job and high debt. And now they want $100k for 225 hours of loggable time. Totally ridiculous.

So pay attention if you're shopping for flight training. This thread has some great advice for people looking into aviation.