Originally Posted by
Okihara
For those who know the people at Bini, I think you'll find that they see themselves as the other end of the curve, that is, highly differentiated, providing a personalised training, and focusing on quality and standards, and certainly not on volume. At the other end you have Soar, big on marketing and volume, obviously poor on quality and standards. I don't want to be too broad brush here, but all the other MB operators I had dealings with were some kind of trade off between the two, or stuck in the middle.
With regard to ab initio kids doing their homework, the least you would expect someone to do is hit up "Flying schools Melbourne" or some kind of similar keywords on Google. Here's perhaps where experienced pilots/recent graduates/current students with a view to improve training could do something. I don't think that it would take much more than a nicely designed web page with no affiliation (and certainly not to flight training operators) that provides a clear picture of the current flying training environment in Australia. In addition to providing an utterly clear message, this web page could have an "endorsement" where real pilots just add their name to a statement such as "My name is XXX, and I endorse the advice to prospective new pilots".
The page could be maintained by donations. I don't think it would take much and any ab initio would certainly find it worth $10 of their budget.
... and it would be filled with glowing reviews from their management and instructors, just like on here where instructors get on and harp on about their schools. Facebook would probably work better as it is somewhat less anonymous, however students would be unlikely to get on and slag off their schools. It sounds like a legal can of worms.