I said previously that BAE Tamworth seemed a good option. Do they have the capacity for 500 residential pilots at the one time? I wouldn’t have thought so. Do they have enough civvie QFIs? Could they even surge that much?
This is going to be a very, very difficult proposition as the issue they’re trying to solve (lack of pilots) is going to impinge on their ability to train the numbers they’re talking about.
If my memory serves me, each of the seven student buildings could accommodate about 30 people - although there was never that many at BFTS at once. As for the training staff, mix of military and civilian, were probably set up to train a maximum of 60ish students across three ‘classes’ at once. They also had to run the flight screening program.
I’d think that unless the background work for this had been started quite a while ago, the BAE staff may have started to look elsewhere for employment.
Probably the biggest question regarding the viability of this option is whether or not the aero club has capacity for Friday night drinks!