Originally Posted by
TayBee
For what it's worth, the ground school experience I had at LE was better than I could have ever expected - obviously haven't been anywhere else but the instructors were all incredible and, whilst I like to think I would do fairly well anyway because I'm fairly academic off the back of my degree, I wouldn't have been in the high 90s without them.
This forum is littered with posts about L3 but tl;dr they acquired a premier flight school in about 2017 and proceeded to destroy it through a series of highly questionable strategic decisions.
This all being said, my knowledge about L3 is very dated now, so someone may come in and say actually they've changed. I somewhat doubt it though - there's something recent on these forums about L3 selling their flight training division; I haven't read it in great detail but that doesn't sound like a good thing.
I know people at CAE at the moment and they've been delayed by upwards of 6 months post ground school (or offered money to leave the course altogether) and the flying in Arizona is few and far between.
The lack of audited accounts from LE by virtue of them taking the small company exemptions (yet providing a strategic report which is not required for a small company, many questions) makes for confusing reading, but the increase in deferred income and a lack of proportionate increase in tangible assets or cash at hand is odd - as someone wrote above, it presumably means the money has been spent on things that are not converting into assets. It also raises eyebrows as when I was at ground school there were a lot of students - ca 10-20+ per class every month, which would render their turnover well above 10.2m, and they employ more staff than the small business exemption allows.
If you read Skyborne's accounts, they also have a high deferred income (10.2m as of 2022) which is higher than LE, but they have 26.5m in tangible assets - they presumably own their aircraft. Thus raising the question of how LE, with a comparable (8.6m) deferred income managed to acquire a similar amount of money and not convert it into something positive on the balance sheet - they have a grand total of around 2.3m in assets: a few buildings maybe?
Skyborne also do not take small company exemptions, so they have cashflow on their reports and allegedly turned a profit in 2022 - I haven't had an accountant read it in detail though and I am very much not qualified to read them in any educated level of detail so there is always the possibility of creative accounting.
I am thinking of taking a similar route to yours. A modular route. However, I’m struggling to find a cheap way to build hours and gain a PPL. Do you mind if I ask where you obtained your PPL to start the Modular course ?