Pan Am Flight Academy

[SanDiegoFlyer]

I am a civilian pilot that is considering enrolling at Pan Am Flight Academy in Ft. Pierce, Florida.

I would like to know what the career pilots think about the academy? Is it a reputable school? Is it a place where your respectiveairline would consider hiring graduates?

Thank you in advance for all of your comments.

 

[qwerty]

Stay in San Diego, join one of the many good flying clubs, find a good instructor, and rent yourself a pad on the ocean and a new car with all that money you saved.

I work and fly out of San Diego. You can take ground school classes at Miramar college for $11 a unit. Rent 152's for $40 an hour at MYF and probably find a CFI that will ho out for free. (you get what you pay for)

There ain't no short cuts in aviation, I have tried. PM me for details if you want.

stay put

 

[bobbysamd]

Training

No, there certainly are no shortcuts to training. Go to the regular message board and run a search on Pan Am in Ft. Pierce. You'll get plenty of opinion.

I like the idea of going to class for ground school. Somehow, people discount the importance of ground school and say you can learn all that you need to know through home study. I've done it both ways and I disagree. You absorb more knowledge and you learn it better through preparing for class, doing assignments and interacting with the class and instructor. You use all your senses when you go to class. You might get college credit if you to to where Qwerty suggested, which, with additional college, you can parlay into a degree one day.

It seems there are a couple of good schools near where you live. Why don't you check out the Scandanavian Aviation Academy, http://www.scanavia.com/introFrame.html ? I hear it's very good.

 

[canosoup]

I attended PAIFA in Vero Beach when they were building the Pt Pierce facility. The training was excellent but management was lacking. I have followed some posts about whats happening there these days and this is what Ive gleaned.... to get looked at to get hired you gotta have the hours and everything will run smoothly up to the Comm Multi. Everything breaks down when it comes time to get the Instructor ratings and compete with the other 100 students for an position. And I imagine that they are a little top heavy right now since hiring has been slow for everyone regardless of where you went to train.
Students are spending 80k to get all the ratings plus a mandatory 7k Aircrew Coordination Evaluation course to be considered for an instructor position and then are pushed outthe door. I am not down on PAIFA, if I had the extra $$$$ I would have tried to stay and instruct. Instead I ended up here in SD where I did my CFI for about a third of the cost.
Stay out here and spend your money on a good instructor, not a uniform! We get resumes all the time from Pan Am students in Arizona looking for work.