Jaayysus, lowballer. What a horrible story yours is. Thanks a lot for sharing with such granularity. Like I said, I heard stories but I never imagined things were anywhere nearly as bad as you reported them. I'm just not sure why you're determined to stay anonymous. You clearly are one of many victims of Soar and beyond how sad and despondent this makes you feel, the two things you can do at the moment are: 1. preventing that others like you before join that school and 2. fight for justice and get your money back.
As for the obsession with perfection, this is such overrated nonsense. Look, back in the early days of my training I passed my first flight test with an examiner named Max Sereno. The bloke has a certain reputation for being tough at Moorabbin, one that I certainly didn't know back then. Ask around if you've never heard of him and watch for reactions. Anyway, back to the flight test. We weren't even done taxiing to the run-up bays that it became crystal clear to me that this was going to be no merry-go-round kind of little tour in the training area. His presence and behaviour was intimidating and just didn't allow me to get comfortable. Plus, it was winter and he set the cabin heat to the max which meant that I started roasting like a chook after the run-ups. And then there's that, my horror scenario. I gave him the sacrosanct takeoff and safety brief while taxiing to the holding point, amen, and then, at the holding point and line-up checks done, I suddenly realise that I actually haven't heard him say a word since we left the run-up bays. So I ask: "All good? Do you have any questions before I make my ready call?" His mouth did move but... no sound. Panic! Instantaneously switching into troubleshooting mode: "Do you read me? I can't hear you!", cables in, volume up, down. Murphy's law at its best, the mother of all teachings: You'll learn the fine print of the Garmin 430 in your flight test. That was it, the longest 15 seconds of my pilot life (actually it felt like minutes), the longer time passed, the more I started accepting the fate that I would probably be the first student to fail his flight test with a flashy flight time of 0.0, let alone the money that the whole circus would anyway cost. I just thought, at least this is one environmentally friendly way of failing, certainly no one can blame that. It turned out to be the squelch, obvious, hey!?. He had been fiddling with the cabin heat AND his squelch knob while I was testing the engine and not paying attention to him. Squelch back to an acceptable level, he looks at me and says: "Don't forget your ready call". And that was that. I made a mountain out of a molehill, and molehills would be many more to come in subsequent flights. The flight test went well, not overly perfect, not without mistakes but none that I wouldn't correct during the normal course of the flight. Debriefing that flight he told me that we're all expected to make mistakes and, equally, we're also expected to detect and rectify them. A pass and no drama beyond what you make of it. Certainly no need for a whole repeat. I'm not saying that SOPs and checklists are not important, but mistakes should be put into perspective and weighed against the big picture of your overall performance.
I have two more stories of flight tests where I made mistakes early into the flight and was sure that I was toast but maybe for another time. In both instances they were also a pass and those things I forgot are now engraved into my skull forever (no, carb heat is still not one of them!)
The biggest mistake that I repeatedly made was thinking that a flight flown to the perfection would be the only key to success. It turned out that developing a positive mindset with a good cockpit hygiene is just a 100% more bulletproof. I've been to 5 operators for various stages of my training. I've seen the good, endured the bad (luckily not for long), the spectrum in between, flown with young and old instructors, new and experienced ones, and then I've also had the chance to learn from one school that really, truly stands out. I know that they're picky about who they take on as students but if you have a good story and want to experience a much more thorough approach, then give Peter Bini Advanced Flight Training a ring, or pass by for a chat with their instructors. My only regret is that I got mislead by the "Advanced" part of the name and believed that they only provide training for multi-engine and IR. I can only say that the IR training that I got there was nothing short of stellar. They had a waiting list of a couple of months though. I guess that speaks for itself. Once the training starts, it's highly personal and fast paced though.
@Sunfish, So no, Australian aviation is not hopeless as such. There are good and (many) bad apples. I hear that another school named FAST Aviation operating at Lismore NSW has a very streamlined 4 week multi+IR training. There too is a waiting list of 2-3 months. The danger for prospective students is that they are fooled into choosing the seemingly cheaper and more obvious training path of the integrated CPL, or lower rates, early into their training when they don't have the knowledge yet to realise that they are in fact taking a huge financial risk/gamble by placing their eggs into a single operator all the way.
Blame the regulator for not doing their oversight job properly, I agree. I'm however still curious as to why students stick with it for so long.
Clinch your fists and fight my friend. $80k for a RPL in a Foxbat of just about any colour is fraud. Many, many times over. At that rate it'll cost you a million to get your CPL and probably another one to get your IR.
Last edited by Okihara; 12th Nov 2019 at 20:41.