Hillsboro Aviation in Oregon

[flyingsa]

Hi,

does anyone have any experience or feedback in regard
to this flight school.

[RedBullGaveMeWings]

This forum is mainly based in the UK and Europe and I doubt that you can find somebody who attended a flight school in Oregon because an European that goes to America would go to a sunny place - Oregon is not that one!

Jetcareers.com
It's a great site and forum based in America whereby you can retrieve a lot of information!

[ReverseFlight]

Hillsboro is focused towards providing mass flight training for groups of airline cadets from SE asia. If you are a self-sponsored student, go elsewhere, otherwise you may be thoroughly disenchanted, as those who disregard such warnings have found out to their great cost.

[KanfeyNesharim]

Although there are se asia students , it does not mean that this school is bad. By the way this is the only school among a few others to have very positive and professional reviews.

[MartinCh]

Hillsboro Aviation has two different 'campuses'/locations, does both fixed wing and rotary training, utility contracts on helicopters and fixed wing charter. Fairly big maintenance for own fleet and outside customers.

Hardly equivalent of some (fleet large) but 'specialised' airplane school.
Cons: relative cost, delays flying out of KHIO in 'peak times' and due ATC/bizjet traffic etc. NW winter, more hassle for flying and no-fly days, but beneficial for exposure for some, like Brazilians doing thtraining there told me over some beer and steaks. Size/business meaning less of a individual person within company. But that's in all big schools.

Pros: structured environment, syllabus, if wanting to instruct, likely to pick up work/getting hired as airplane CFI (subject to being motivated etc) on the F1 visa.

If you were flying helicopters, yes, USA is much cheaper if flying a lot over shorter time, even incl the associated costs. For fixed wing, if you're after CPL basically, I don't see such extra benefit/cost saving, coming from SA. Compared to Europe, yes. Although conversion to Euro IR and ME stuff is costly, incl the theory..

Do some sort of pros/cons comparision for yourself between few 'shortlisted' options, if you're decided to go to USA.

[Baron747]

Immigration officials have recently refused to offer any OPT year to Hillsboro Aviation graduates. USCIS says that flight training is not academic training, do not offer a degree after graduation, so OPT year is not available to Hillsboro Aviation graduates. This situation has been here a few months now. Hillsboro Aviation has kept foreign flight instructors here in a questionable way after immigration officials have refused to offer the OPT year. F-1 student can work part-timely in the school where he/she is a full time student. So the school has now asked, for example, helicopter instructors to sign on to airplane flight training to continue working in the school part-timely. In a reality, these flight instructors don't take any flight lessons in a different aircraft category and do not study anything. This is just done by fooling the immigration officials in order to keep those foreign flight instructors working in the school.

If USCIS find out the truth, F-1 visa rights might totally vanish.