I am 19 years old and doing my commercial pilot license at a flying school at rand airport. As you people know it is extremely difficult, expensive and alot of hard work for someone of my age to be paying for this myself.
. Anyway, i just need some advice on a issue here.
I am busy doing my night rating and I had a lesson booked for the afternoon. Unfortunately I was quite sick on that morning so I called the school just after 8am and cancelled the lesson for the afternoon. Now to my surprise when I went for the lesson a few days later I had to pay an extra R250-R300 (I don?t remember the exact amount) as a "No Show Fee" for when I cancelled the other day. I just feel that after having spent so much money at this school and I get charged for rubbish even though I have the good courtesy to call in early to cancel.
The worst part in this story is many times I have had to pay for 0.2 hours because after take off we realize something is wrong with the plane or the instruments are not working and so on. Many times I have paid for the taxi-ing of the aircraft to the refueling bay. A few times they had phoned me the same day to reschedule a lesson because the Instructor had to go somewhere or one of the planes...... and I had no problem with it despite it sometimes being an inconvenience to myself. A couple times after I completed my PPL I invited 3 friends to come up for a flight with a specific aircraft that I know can fly 4 people safely and when I get to the school I see my name is moved to another aircraft that can only lift 2 people or a third light person resulting in me having to do 2 trips!!! What about that? Did I ever complain, NO!
I can understand why they have this no show fee but the thing is I am a good student. I am always on time for lessons and so on. Now am I wrong or did I get ripped off for paying the No Show Fee despite having cancelled. I just need everyone's advice here because I am not sure?