BAA and its cadets programs are just a scam, cadets program being just a bait for the future pilots full of ambition and passion for the job. Wizz air ran away from them , Turkish airlines did the same , the poor management of this school and its incompetent managers is impossible to hide , as this has been mentionned lots of times in this thread. They will reply to your first emails at the speed of light , but as soon as the money is sent you will find out that they will reply less and less and at one point you will be left alone , this is how they work .
To make it short for anyone interested in BAA,: GO AWAY FROM THIS SCHOOL:as independant or cadet programs, it will be one of the best choices you have ever met in your avaition life ( btw its Vueling and Volotea but they love BAA so much that they hide themselves from it , and the new avion express program , i will take care of explaining you what happened to one of my classmates you won't be dissapointed)
BAA flight school: Theory: Used to be quite balanced in term of content during my time there ( about 2 years ago) : instructors were average , some good , some didnt know why they were standing in a classroom .... The management was quite poor , difficult to get a planning or help about anything..
Flight Training: I won't be long on that one , 95% of whats mentionned about in LLieda base and all the management around is absolutely true, very chaotic especially if you start vfr in november... good luck.
The big highlight of BAA to me would be the lack of communication and informations, as a customer you are left on the side like a kid , no matter how much you paid , how long you have been with them, they don't care , emails are useless as you don't get answered, not much more chances for the calls , the only solution is to see the managers in person that only manage to do a big smile saying they are sorry and everything will be ok , or the famous : this is aviation...
BAA Type Rating via Avion express: This is the spicy one , to make it short its what happened recently to one of my classmates that got enrolled in Avion express cadet program somewhere in 2018, Avion promised him and other cadets to get a F/O postition as well as 500h on A320 after the succesful completion of all the training+Type rating ( which is succeed without any problem). Very attractive isn't? So he made all his training without issues, reports got sent to Avion every months ( or they pretend to). Unfortunately when he finished his training ( 2 years ago or something like that) Covid slowed down terribly all operations, and they put the cadets on standby until may or june this year , calling him and other cadets for the type rating (29 000 euros from their pocket by the way), he passed the type rating through baa type rating, which is apprently the same disaster as baa flight school in terms of information , support and professionalism, in the middle of the type rating , avion asked him to do a full set of interviews and online tests ( mentionned nowhere in the contract and that was said verbally to be happening in december or january) The test were not as prepared as they should have been as it got mentionned barely a week before, difficult to prepare something else than type rating for those who have been through it ...
He passed without issues the skill test in october if im correct , and the week after he got an email from Avion saying bye bye thank you for your interest without any reason , neither second chance...To summarize this guy is now jobless , with an a320 type rating paid for 29 000 euros. So be really carefull guys, this friend was really serious and dedicated for this job and they didn't let him it ... Fortunately for my case i didnt choosed avion and im now flying for another airline as i got lucky, but i find it relevant to let you know about whats happening behind the scenes in BAA and their partners, remember :BAA , Avion Express and Smartlynx are all part of the same company :Avia Solutions Group.
His base training part is also very funny if i dare to say that : he got notified 6 days before only , ( all expenses to be for the trainee account of course) to be in Lleida Spain. And upon landing in BCN the evening of the day before him and his mates got an email of cancellation due to the provider of the plane to able to give one)... he lost around 350 euros for that messy planning and found out a day after that other guys from Avion did the Base Training on the dates my friend had been given before.....3 weeks passed since this happened and he is unable to reachout managers there to get any informations and he is waiting at home, cannot find a job due to the short notice of BAA, and wasting time and money , this is really terrible.
I thought it was necessary for the sake of aviation to add comment and experiences from pilots that passed in BAA , in order to avoid people to fall in that scam, there are other flight schools in europe way better than BAA , be reminded that BAA is only good at marketing, once the money send, be ready to be treated like nothing but a number.
Avoid BAA at all costs , and fly safe !
cavok370