List of flight schools worth visiting?
 

I'm still continuing my research on flight schools and as an outsider with minimal aviation smarts, I'm finding it really difficult getting a confident grasp of which flight schools are good and which ones aren't. I've now learned that just looking at websites and the level of polish on the website is not an indicator of whether a school is good or not... a bad school can have a really, really polished site while a good school can have obvious errors or mistakes on their site. What I end up doing is just researching the school here to see what has been said about the school.

I'm hoping to have a list of schools in Europe that would be at least worthy of a good, hard look from someone looking at getting into an airline job. So far, my list only includes:

Bartolini Air - Poland
Egnatia Avaition - Greece
BAA Training - Lithuania
Global Aviation SA - Greece
PTT Aviation - UK (local school)
Diamond Flight Academy - Sweden (CLP/ME/IR only)

If anyone has any other school recommendations for either modular or integrated ATPL, I'd appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.

in this bracket of school type, i would recommend you have a look around BCFT in Bournemouth. Long established, many airline placements. 2016 had 100% of graduates in pilot employment. Not too bad cost either.

Thanks! I shall give them a look as well! :)

Atlantic Flight Training Academy in Cork , Ireland. Excellent job placement record - take a look at their Facebook page.

@ Airgus:
Thank you for your recommendations! I've ruled out FTE Jerez because I count it as one of the "big boys" like CTC/L3 and OAA. The £100K+ price tag was also a factor :) I do thank you for the FIS recommendation though.... I've not seen this school before (and was one of the reasons for this thread!!) so I'll drop them an email to check.

When you say "Egnata," I presume you mean Egnatia? You mentioned 10 years ago... were you referring to Egnatia being good then or were you talking about BCFT?

As for job promises, well, they'll either be there or they won't be, and I know I'll be kicking myself without fail if the jobs are there but my qualifications aren't! :)


@ speed alive rotate:
Thank you for pointing out AFTA, again, it's one of those schools I've never heard of before. I'll be contacting them as well.

Anyway just curious why you would leave being a nurse to become a pilot?

Well, the office view alone should be enough of an answer! :) To give you an idea, I work in Operating Theatres and we don't have windows at all! It could be snowing up to 24" during my shift and it all melts away and we'd be clueless.

Nursing is a good back up career to have as I imagine you can do bank shifts (if that is still what they are called) as and when suits you through your flying training - assuming you are going modular.

BAA is growing and is a good school.
Plus they have programs with Wizz Air and Smartlynx. Which means after training you will have a job with one of those airlines.

Living expenses compared to the west are relatively low.

They have of course also the traditional route to F ATPL. Service during training is really good. They are very helpful in anyway. Absolutely worth taking in consideration.

However they appear to have some strange ideas!!

Dundee worth a closer look for those of thinking modular route......

It used to be.... until the UK government came up with a good idea that to get more nurses or to encourage them to do more work, they'd 1) put in a pay cap for the last 7-8 years, 2) withdraw the bursary from nursing, 3) put in a pay cap for agency worker rates, and 4) limit what nurses can claim tax allowance for. Yay!!

To give you an idea, agency pay went down by more than a third in about a span of 6-8 months....


Well, my gripe with BAA is just the slow response time from their rep, but I'm told these are growing pains at the moment? But yeah, their cadet schemes are what puts them on the list for me. As for their strange ideas, well, that has nothing to do with training so I'm not worried. The "managers" for healthcare has some strange ideas as well.... see above! :ok:


Do you mean Tayside Aviation?

Local as in about an 1.5 hour's drive.... cost.... weather.... :)

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here?? Regardless of which school I go to, it seems that PPL + 150hrs is what I'm looking at from most schools.

Well, maybe you should. If it is an indication of how the senior management of the school thinks I would be worried about everything else as well.

Also Perth's ACS Flight Training seems to be having some sort of recent promotional activity encouraging people to learn. Seems reasonably priced?

From what I can understand, he's talking about a fantasy scenario for people already working in the industry. A lot of people have already pointed out the flaws in his "plan." Is this the first time you've come across "managers" with "great ideas"? :)


Thanks for the recommendation! I'll have a look! My issue with schools in Ireland/Scotland/England is the fabulous weather we keep having! :)

Sweden has some good options, Diamond Academy is OK i've heard. Stockholm Flight Academy seems to offer both theory and flight so seems good.. a friend of mine did an MCC course with them and was happy!