The situation in the flight training department is bizarre.
First of all lleida is quite a horrible place to live and to fly. The summers are too hot for the tecnams to fly- it’s not uncommon for the temperature to go over 40c during peak summer. Winters as we all know is too foggy. Limited ifr so the period when you can actually fly is spring and autumn. But the management wants you to stay in lleida, all year around , just for you to come to the airport and get cancelled. They do this because they want the schedule to look full, but in reality it will just be cancellations. The schedule is sent a day before, you get a roster with “red days” so days off but the situation is so unpredictable that most people agree to be scheduled on their red days. You cant plan your life almost at all. It’s also common for you to be scheduled on a broken plane. The management knows that it’s broken, and as they do not reply to texts or emails it’s impossible for you to know that it’s broken unless you go to the airport and find it out for yourself. And they do because as mentioned before the schedule should ‘look’ full. As the others have pointed out the maintenance is done in sabadell or reus, which means that it probably will not get fixed soon. Moreover the maintenance BAA pays for is cheap. The guys come all the way to Lleida airport without tools, then after that they’ll come with tools to fix it, but not properly as nearly after 3-4 flights there is always something. It’s incredible.
So as you will spend most of your time in lleida let me describe how it is to you: it’s a town in the middle of nowhere, it’s main income is from farming, but as the local youth move to bigger cities as Zaragoza and or Barcelona there is a lack of workforce- which means that there are many paperless immigrants doing this job, but as it’s seasonal most of the time theyre in the city- they dont have the best reputation and because of this the city is quite unsafe. It’s heavily policed, for a small town you will notice that there’s a lot of police. However the police don’t do anything, theyre useless and corrupt, if you are a student who looks foreign ie. arab, pakistani or black, expect to be harrassed by EVERYONE, cops, security guards, bouncers. It also doesn’t matter which nationality you are, say french passport holder but you’re black- to the locals you will be a paperless african immigrant and will be treated as so. Its not uncommon to be denied entry from cafes or bars if youre of the ‘wrong ethnicity’
The city is very unclean and it stinks- there is a rat problem, there are needles from drug addicts everywhere but worse of all there is dog s***t everywhere in the city and no one does anything about it. Locals do not know how to throw trash, they leave it outside the trash bins and this is one of the reasons the city smells. The other reason is because of farming. Students are very unhappy and many go into depression- they cant also escape the place because they might be scheduled and they will have to do preflight planning and depending on which stage you are it might take a while, its very inconvenient. If you want to find out how lleida is like you can follow the local news outlet on insta laveudelleida.
The airport is around 20 mins drive from the city. There is no public transportation to the airport. BAA have 2 shuttle bus drivers, who have certain schedules and certain stops, but the frequency is poor. According to the schedule around one ride every 2h. Baa charge you 3e each way, they send you the bill at the end of the month and then they add VAT of 21% on top of it. There is also another problem, one of the shuttle bus drivers does not follow the published schedule. So he will give you place and a time to pick you up, which is more convenient for him, so he can shorten his duty time at your expense. It’s quite common that he will ask you come 3-4h before your flight or pick you up only after 3-4h after your flight, so your entire day is basically wasted. In general he will refuse to give you a lift if you are the only passenger and you will have to wait for another fellow student. This said drive is most commonly found sleeping in the briefing room couches. And this the reason why he will not pick you up according to the published drivers schedule.
Lets talk a bit about your training. You will have 10 hours and then you have check one, yes you read that right, you have 10 hours and then you are expected to perform a solo traffic pattern. As mentioned before, because of the aircraft availability, maintenance problems and weather these 10 hours will take 2-3 months. It is not uncommon for students to have a gap for one month and then go for a check and fail it. Then they assign you extra hours and the price is as follows- 1hr 230e tecnam p2002 1hr 315e c172 and 1h 580e p2006T (which they dont even have, they rent it from EAS Barcelona, their price is around 200e for 1hr)
Around 50% of students fail the first check.
Then we have the MEP phase 8hrs on a rented plane and then CPL, however these 8 hrs take 2 months, even without a backlog, mainly because of management issues, and their unwillingness to rent the EAS mep.After this 8 hrs you will have MCC 15hrs on a sim which takes one month , because they will prioritize type rating student and you will have to wait one more month to be scheduled. After one month without flying you will have the cpl skills test and you are expected to pass it, if you don’t you will be unemployable and pay a recheck fee of 300e. The management will extend your contract without your permission, illegally and for any reason which they can find (which they have probably created- failing a check (cuz they didnt schedule you consecutively), taking ‘holidays’ because you were sick etc.) And if you do not fit into this category they will make a reason up- COVID (this didnt actually affect your training but who cares right?). They will write you an email where they take advantage of the students desperation to finish and will write something along the lines of this “hey, we really want to schedule you but in order to do that you will have to sign the contract extension” If you want something in the extension to be changed you will be sat at home until they fix it, and only schedule you to fly once you have signed this illegal extension. I’d also like to point out that they are not willing to cooperate with you, all your phone calls, emails will be avoided. If you go to the airport to talk to them the management will hide from you or just blow you off ‘i’m very busy’.
The contract which you sign in the beginning has many clauses for BAA to not to bear any responsibility for delaying your training, Namely excusable delay which is defined as follows “ means any of the following occurrences which substantively impede the performance of the training course 1) issues with the customers visa 2) customers unsatisfactory performance 3) illness or absence of cutomers flight crew partner or other inability to perform the course 4) technical failure of BAAs equipment 5) unexpected delay or cancellation of flight 6) change of instructors schedule due to an important reason 7) unforeseen unavailability despite exercise of reasonable diligence of baa instructor, simulator or other equipment 8) acts or omissions of the customer under the agreement, which negatively affect BAAs ability to perform its obligations hereunder;”
Then there is clause 11.3’ should any circumstances arise whereby through no deliberate fault of baa it fails to provide the customer any training course due to reasons other than force majeure or excusable delay then baa may only be liable to the customer to the extent that baa shall grant the customer at no additional cost the non provided training course on alternative dates convenient to the customer and subject to the availability of BAAs facilities, equipment and personnel.’
The contract you sign in the beginning is against you in every possible way and you as a customer will have no idea what you are signing into as you will not know the reality of the training, availability of the aircraft,backlog and how your training course is laid out etc.
If you do however manage to get in contact with the management to talk about the issues, they will reply to you in a very KGB manner. Instructors got a warning from the management to not to give any info regarding the situation of the maintenance of the planes. There is recorded footage of the COO threatening students “ students who do not cooperate with their flight school tend to have bad careers” , previous flight operations director has given threats to students, in response to not being scheduled - that he will not recommend them to any airlines. The company has issues with other aviation bodies in spain as well, for example the COO has not payed maintenance services for up to 6 months, which ended up in terminating the contract with the said provider. EAS Barcelona asks BAA for upfront payment for renting their multi engine as they are not credible anymore.
The state of the briefing room is horrible as well, rats, spiders and lizards inside. 2 or one out of the numerous computers working. Printers barely working, to print charts etc. You are not provided with an ifr enroute chart, you get this yourself. There are 2 toilets and they dont function either.
When BAA posts out propaganda, they generally interview groundschool students, which for the most part is alright and of high quality. These students have not gone through flight training yet, or are in the very beginning which is why they will not have a lot of negative things to say.
There is also a youtuber- pilotjonathan who gives quite a good picture of BAA, however as he has been advertising for them, his training has been alright and BAA tries to accommodate him and his requests, since he does the advertising job for free. I would not trust his statement because of this. Also BAA forbids students to say anything negative about it, while in training.
If you are thinking of applying with this school, I would recommend you to get in contact with a student who is already deep into their flight training, other than BAAs own marketing students, get their review and then think about it. Groundschool students do not know the reality, due to this KGB attitude of withholding the truth and not replying to emails, phone calls etc.