I think they deleted my thread, I'll post it again.
I am going to try to update this every day to tell you about my experiences here.
Day 1
After driving 5 days to get here, I show up early in the morning to get started on my time building. I was told that Mary was gone for the day to come back tomorrow. At least I got assigned an apartment so I used this day to get unpacked and settled in. I was shown the planes, and was pretty shocked. They were nothing like how they were talked about on their website.
Day 2
Had ground school. I was told things like "this gage doesn't work, this _____ works some of the time, that _______ works 70% of the time, this thing has never worked, don't worry about that gage, it doesn't work and you don't need it anyway"
I was scheduled to fly at 2, didn't get a plane until 6pm.
Went out to the plane, lights didn't work, went out to the second plane, it didn't work, went out to the third plane, they couldn't find the keys, finally the fourth plane worked. While flying my maneuvers I saw blue flames shooting out of the exhaust pipe, scared the crap out of me. Was told not to worry about it, this plane does it all the time.
Day 3
Finished up my checkout and was told I could fly that evening. Plane broke down and didn't fly. Since I wasn't flying I made plans to go to dinner with some friends in Stuart. That afternoon the wireless internet provided by the school stopped working. I called and Josh said he would be by at 6 to fix it. I canceled my dinner plans. At 7pm he still hadn't showed up. I called the airport. Someone told me Josh was in the hanger washing his car. At 7:30 called Mary, she said she would take care of it and get Josh over to fix it. At 9pm, Josh shows up with no appologies for being 3 hours late. Fixed the internet.
Day 4
Got to fly a few hours, went ok for the most part. Internet stopped working again.
Day 5
Plane broke, couldn't fly. Still no internet
Day 6
Got to fly 4 hours, went ok. Still no internet
Day 7
Flew for two hours, lost the fuel pressure gage in the plane. We didn't want to keep flying not knowing if there was fuel pressure or not. Internet surprisingly working today.
Day 8
Went to go on a cross country at 10am, gear in transit light stayed on. Had to land. Was scheduled for 6pm. Arrived at the airport and was told the plane was broke down. Only got 0.7 in today. The plane that was broke I was scheduled in at 7am the next day. Called and left a message that because my plane wasn't working and maintenance couldn't get to it until sometime the next day that I wouldn't be in for the 7am flight. Told them to call me if the plane was fixed and I would be right down there.
Day 9
Was scheduled for 7am but plane was broke. Told them to call me if they got it working. They called me at 3pm and told me I was on the schedule for 10pm since I had not gotten to fly this morning. Showed up at the airport at 9:45. At 11pm and waiting for over an hour, no plane and no flight partner. Went home, didn't fly today.
Day 10 (Today 12/13/06)
Called today to complain. I was told they would take care of the situation and from now on would be able to fly every "night". Of course I would like some day flights every now and then, but at this point I will be happy if I can fly at all. In the last 9 days I have only logged 16.3 hours. Came to do 250 but at this time I think I will only do the 125 I have paid for. So far I have only averaged 1.8 hours a day. At this rate it would take a long time to do 125, let alone 250.
I will try to update this everyday or two, depending on if my internet works.
All in all this school has done nothing they have promised. There website says the planes are equipped with GPS, some have weather radar, and some have auto pilot.
Only a couple are equipped with GPS and you are lucky if you get that plane. One has weather radar I think, and it doens't work. A couple have auto pilot and they don't work.
There are days I don't fly. I spend the gas to drive the 20 min drive to the airport just to be told the plane is broke down, sorry, try again tomorrow. When I am able to fly it is only for a couple hours cause the planes stop working early in the flight.
Most of the time I don't have internet service.
The housing is good.
When I call to complain I get something like this:
ME: "Hello Mary, this is my complaint, blah blah blah."
MARY: (interrupting me) "Ok, we'll take care of that, sorry about that, *click*"
I paid for the cheapest time building program I could find and got a heck of a good deal. But when you factor in the gas I am spending to drive back and forth to the airport once or twice a day, and paying rent by the day and sometimes not flying for days at a time I don't know if I am really saving anything.
The planes are in the worst condition I have ever seen. During ground school while being told "this doens't work, and that doens't work, and this works some of the time" I said you kinda need this to be IFR legal. The response I got was shocking. I was told, "Well, you have to use your own judgement" CRAP! You don't use your own judgement, you follow the fricken rules in the FAR's. You don't EVER use your own judgement on the rules, YOU FOLLOW THE RULES, YOU FOLLOW THE LAW!
You get what you pay for here. You don't pay much, and you don't get much.
Like I said, I will try to update this every day or two depending on if I get internet service that day. I am not here to tear down this school and build others up, so I won't mention the name of the last school I went to. I will say that the other school I flew 230 hours, and during all those hours I never had to reschedule, I never had a broken plane, I NEVER HAD A SINGLE ISSUE WITH THE CONDITION OR SAFETY OF THE PLANE.
I am not here to tear down this school, and I am just reporting it how it is. Hopefully these guys will pull their sh*t together so I can get some hours flown. I asked Mary over the phone before I came down here how the maintenance was and how often the planes were down. She told me the maintenance was great and the planes didn't go down very often. Bull sh*t. One day when I went down to the airport 8 out of there 13 planes were't flying cause they weren't working. I also asked over the phone if I would have the opportunity to fly at night. I was told that a lot of the time builders choose to fly at night. Bullsh*t. Night is all I am scheduled for. Don't get me wrong, I like that I have the chance to build some night time but I would like to do a day flight every now and then. These planes are in such poor condition that it makes me nervous to fly them at night.
I think that is all I have for today, will update again as soon as I can.