Silver State Helicopters - R.I.P.

[Revolutionary]

Torquetalk, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings but I believe you're missing the gist of my post, which is this: If you're a prospective student, please do your research before you hand over a large sum of money to a flight school, not after. That's not unrealistic is it? You're acting like people didn't have any choice but to sign up with Silverstate because they're the only ones who would finance their training. Well, pilots have been going to flight schools for decades before Silverstate came along and have been paying for it somehow...

If you're a Silverstate student, stop for a minute and ask yourself why you signed up with the school that ran the pie-in-the-sky radio ads and offered the 'free' training ('just pay us back later with all the moolah you'll be making as a helicopter pilot!') scheme instead of the other schools that would have given you a more sober outlook on the profession and would have offered a more conventional student loan such as Sallie Mae. It reminds me of the people in this country who took out a sub-prime mortgage to buy a house that was out of their league and now feel sorry for themselves because their ARM just reset and they can't make the payments anymore.

See Torquetalk, contrary to what you might think I do understand the credit arrangements people made with Silverstate. They got the loan because it required no financial sacrifice on their part. The fact that the loan didn't go through them but went directly to Silverstate to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars for services not yet rendered should have been a clue that they were hanging their ass out a little far financially. There were other options. They could have taken a second mortgage, borrowed from their own bank or (*gasp*) saved the money before starting training. You know, the things people used to do before Silverstate came along. All those options would have been more difficult to be sure, but they would have kept them in control financially.

Again, I'm verry sorry for their predicament and believe me there's no schadenfreude but the only helpful thing to come out of this mess is for Silverstate students and for any prospective student who might read this thread to resolve to learn from this experience, do the research, and not sign up for a school that promises the world and offers a loan that is too good to be true.