I have recently had a bad experience doing PPL with One Air in Malaga, Spain and wanted to share a detailed review. When I was about to start the PPL course (autumn 2020) many places in Europe stopped doing PPL training due to Covid restrictions. Because of that and also due to the weather I picked OneAir. At the time there wasn’t much feedback available (most of the reviews here only came up recently) and they were also one of the cheapest. I will try to give a detailed review of different aspects or the course so that others can make an informed decision - mentioning positive and negative aspects. Of course all of this is purely my opinion and everyone’s experience is different.
Tl;dr: It seemed very disorganized, the course took a long time to complete as not enough flights were scheduled, communication was poor and often rude. The only upsides for me were the simulators and the price.
Course price: The price is available on their website (9600 EUR at this time) and is actually quite competitive in my opinion. Most of the ATOs I’ve contacted charge more, sometimes significantly more. The price also included all the equipment and there were some extra perks if paid in advance. The only elements that were not included were the Medical (120 EUR for Class 2 Initial in Malaga) and the ICAO English test (160 EUR). I managed to complete the course within the paid hours - in fact, I even had extra 1.5 hours on my balance which I flew after the course.
Communication: Everything went smooth during the introduction and until I had signed the contract and paid the money. After that the only people I had communication with were the so-called “Quality” department. Their communication style was often passive-aggressive, hostile and at times plain rude. If I asked a question, the answer usually began with “As you have been told” (even if I haven’t) or “As you know” (even if I don’t) to set a passive-aggressive tone right away and blame this on me. It also inevitably included a template phrase about how everyone in the school is working very hard to make the course great - which to me sounds sarcastic. If I tried posting a question to the wider WhatsApp group with other students in it (and, crucially, the management), someone from the “quality” team often began to message me personally within minutes for “breaking WhatsApp group rules” and threatening to remove me from the group. That’s right, someone in a supposedly professional ATO spent their working time policing chat groups. In fact, the school seemed to have a myriad of rules, written and unwritten, and they regularly sent messages threatening “sanctions” for breaking the rules. It seemed like a weird mixture of military and kindergarten when it comes to the rules and communication.
They have often pointed to the contract (which is obviously heavily weighted in their favor) and denied that they’ve promised anything else. If I happened to have evidence of those promises in writing those were simply ignored (as it was with the course duration).
Scheduling & Course duration: Flight requests are accepted once a week for the following week (i.e. on Monday one would send a request for the week after the following one). Students send availability in a simple email template - there was no proper booking system. Once the request was sent and the schedule was issued, there was no flexibility at all. I could not contact programacion department by any means whatsoever - they never responded to any of my emails. The most I have ever been scheduled to fly in a week was 3 times, even though I was available to fly all day, every day most of the weeks - and wanted to fly more.
Sometimes the flying slots were not aligned with the syllabus - e.g. when I needed to practice landings I was scheduled for time slots when touch&go are prohibited (before 9am). As I couldn’t contact the Programacion when that happened - I could not do anything. Even when I asked the instructors to help and they spoke to Programacion - nothing has changed. Since scheduling is done way ahead and cannot be changed, it can take weeks, even months to complete the navigation flights. If there happened to be cloudy weather on that 1 day a week when I was supposed to have a dual navigation flight - no one would try to help me and move it to a more suitable day. They just canceled the flight and I had to wait until next week. This has only changed in the very last week of my course when a cancelled flight was rescheduled for the day after, so it is possible - just never happened to me until that very last week.
It took me 7 months to finish the PPL course even though I had full availability for flying. In the initial communication, when asked about the course duration, I’ve been told “4 to 6 months but could be less”. Later they tried to claim they meant just the theory part and that I misunderstood.
Finally, when I needed to cancel a flight 2 days in advance for personal reasons, they demanded “documentary evidence to justify the cancelation” and threatened to charge me for the flight. That vividly brought memories from primary school when one had to bring a note from parents for the classes missed. Only after I pushed back several times citing the contract did they eventually back off.
Instructors: As in many places, the quality of instructors varies from very poor to excellent, with most being somewhere in the middle - in my opinion. The biggest issue with instructors is that there are too many of them and I didn’t have an assigned instructor. In fact, in my first 11 flights I had 11 different instructors. As such, there was no consistency whatsoever. Many didn't know me and will probably never see me again. Also, every person flies a little differently and they all wanted me to fly “their” way - and the next instructor too. This slowed down the progress significantly.
Airport: The PPL flights are from LEAX, a small private airport about 60kms from Malaga. There are a couple of issues with it: 1) The airport is rather small and only 3 aircrafts are allowed to be in the circuit at any given time. Since there is 1 more school flying there (Aerodynamics) it means there is often a “fight” to get a place to practice circuits - and those who aren’t lucky to get their spot will have to go do something else even if they don’t need it. 2) It is a non-towered airport and all communication has to be in Spanish (which they did not tell me before I started the course). I speak some Spanish socially but it's far from fluent. I managed the standard phraseology fine. However, at busy times the frequency turns into a chatterbox and it's difficult to follow if one barely speaks the language. With the initial stage of training being overwhelming enough this adds an extra pressure and I felt it was slowing me down as well. It was also a safety concern when not everyone around understands what is going on. They provide you with a “Spanish phraseology course” of a whopping 1.5 hours duration. Ever tried to learn a language in 1.5 hours?
Ground school: The theory classes as well as all administrative things are held in their office near Malaga airport. The premises are very fancy and the equipment they use for the ground school and simulators is generally good. I found their “basic” simulators to be helpful to prepare for the real flights as those resemble the DA20 cockpit and one can practice the “flow” many times so it takes less time in the real aircraft. The theory seemed to be normally taught by the least experienced instructors and quality varies, from very poor to very good - with again most somewhere in the middle. For English part time PPL the classes were held 3 evenings per week on a rolling basis so the whole theory took around 3.5 months to complete.
However, they did not let me fly until I had completed and passed PoF, OP, Meteo and AGK - as well as LEAX procedures, SEP course and Briefing. In practice, it meant that I could not fly until I had completed all of the theory. No flexibility - even if I was due to complete it next week, they did not let me send the flight request until the week after. All materials are supplied in an electronic format on a USB stick - however, it doesn’t include the latest versions of the presentations. I needed to chase the instructors to send those to me after every class.
Personal impression: I think the biggest issue in the end was that I didn’t enjoy the course. I always dreamed about learning to fly and envisioned the PPL course to be an exciting and fun experience. However, due to everything mentioned above for me it was a constant stress and an uphill struggle and I couldn’t wait for it to be over - which really isn’t the way it should be. I felt saving a bit on the price of the course wasn’t worth it and if I had to do it again - I would certainly pick a course in a different school that I would actually enjoy. It might be a little different if one is doing the full ATPL course where it’s not purely for fun - in fact, most of the students they have seem to be young students doing their ATPL course. It could be part of the reason for many of the strict rules and obsession with “procedures”.