Bob Stinger, fairly standard that for Ravenair, you phone the school, no answer, its gets diverted upto ops, leave a message, and low and behold it does not get passed to school, same with emails.
They need someone full time as flight school reception, taking calls, making bookings, meeting and greeting etc etc, I have lost count of the times I have turned up to find A/C double booked, or gone tech and not so much as a courtesy call to say so before journeying there.
Fairly recently 2 cpl students have turned up on test day, to find the A/C have disappeared on a charter, letter of complaint sent in and not even an acknowledgment, never mind apology or a couple of free hours to get back upto speed. And this is not the 1st time this has happened.
The aircraft have seen better days to say the least, very poorly equipped, and generally more tech A/C than servicable, and you pay a top rate for them, people generally dont feel confident flying them, not ideal for commercial flight training.
If you want the price quoted for the CPL and IR then you have to pay for course upfront, how many times have you read or heard not to pay large sums upfront!
Unfortunately there is a lack of CPL/IR training providers in the North West, Ravenair have not moved with the times because they have no competition in the area, I am sure if a new school opened with a slick operation, modern aircraft and facilities, concentrating on there core business of commercial flight training then Ravenair would suffer heavily in this department.
On a positive, the instructors are good, know there stuff and do the best with what they have got to work with.