It is a shame that it has closed, but I guess there are a number of reasons why. Due to Westflight at its largest only having 3 instructors, it would have been uneconomic to hire another member of staff for admin, therefore I think this gave Chris a large amount of work which must have been hard to deal with on top of his normal job running another company. Also with increasing costs for both fuel and approach fees etc. it is difficult to keep costs competitive without a simulator.
Chris has set up an excellent flying school that achieved results that reflected this. For example so far my instructor Barrie Thomas has never had one of his students fail or even partial at Westflight– every single student of his achieved first time passes on CPL/ME/IR, and with no selection.
The integrity of Chris and the instructors has been proven beyond doubt over the last month. I have had 4 IR tests cancelled due to weather now (genuine bad weather I might add!). My 170A was about a month ago now, but Chris has kept Westflight open with all the facilities available to me for this last month. I haven’t been flying much – perhaps 2 hours in the month, but they have kept the aircraft insured and the school open. I wouldn’t like to think how much it costs to keep a perfectly serviceable Seneca sitting on the ground doing nothing.
My instructor has also been an absolute star, being available whenever I need him to fly, meanwhile not being able to get a fulltime job elsewhere due to me. For his efforts I am exceedingly appreciative. A big thank you to Chris, Barrie and Mark for all their help.
On a side note I really hope Monday will bring a first time pass for me and perhaps finally my IR saga will be over. Then maybe I will finally get some sleep…