Originally Posted by
jonkster
Not sure the large sausage factory, cookie cutter schools ever really have a long term viability, too dependent on economic conditions - when the 'pilot shortage' phase of the inevitable boom/bust aviation cycle collapses they tend to be too cumbersome to scale back.
I think the larger schools would have a better chance of surviving in the long term than the smaller ones.
But as an aside, why do so many people denigrate large "sausage factory, cookie cutter etc" flying training schools? The big employers want pilots trained to strict SOP's, who have come through structured, standardised training with a lot of oversight and who all have roughly the same way of thinking and tackling problems. They want a fairly standard product at the end.
What I'd be very wary of is a pilots trained at smaller schools where one instructor could teach radically different methods based on personal preferences to each other and nothing the employers want.