Iam very new to this website and was told to check it out by several colleagues with regards to Rainbow Air and UKFT.
I worked for both companies a while back and would like to post my experiences with everyone looking for flight training in the United States. I hope my experiences will help all of you chasing the dream.
Rainbow air is a small flight school on the fantastic Long Beach airport and was until recently a middle of the road good flight school.....they never claimed to be the best but ran a good solid operation at very competitive rates. From what i understand ownership has changed hands and the previously mentioned Ray G is no longer in charge of the flight school.
Rainbow air used to basically run on local business and trade from the LA basin with a few foreign students from Europe coming to get the FAA license. At this time the chief pilot 'DP' ran a good school and was personally involved in most of the students training.
The problems began when 'DP' left the school for greener pastures.
No new chief pilot was appointed ...... instead Rainbow Air became closer acquainted with another person by the name of AJAY. AJAY runs a website called UKFT which seems to be able to offer a JAR compliant PPL and other JAA training. As a result UKFT was contacted by mainly Europeans who were looking to build up flight time in California or even undertake the JAR compliant license. What Ajay forgot to tell these people is that UKFT is just a website and that the training would be undertaken by Rainbow air using rainbow instructors and rainbow air aircraft.
I was responsible for many of these students when they arrived at rainbow and was as much in the dark as they were for what they had let themselves in for
. Meeting with the famous Ajay was impossible to schedule after the money had been paid. The students were quite literally dumped on rainbows door step and had now become our responsibility. Instructors at rainbow air were overworked and underpaid and as a result standards dropped.
Many of you who have posted on here have been students or have worked at rainbow air....and let me tell you that the problems began at the top. Rainbow air runs an air ambulance company which drains all the money out of the flight school. I know that its public knowledge that RG has no passion for his flight school and was solely interested in his small fleet of old king airs.
As RG was busy in the crows nest UKFT and Ajay were allowed to have a huge say in how training was done.... as long as money was coming in nobody asked questions. Instead of stabilizing the ship and improving the slipping standards he used the rainbow air visa issuing capabilities to bring in as many students as possible. As a result we would have students arriving in California on a 4 week PPL course from Europe and the instructors would have never been told of there arrival. It was all a big money making exercise and who was there to take the flack from students? its was either the poor girls working at dispatch or the instructors who were already dealing with a half dozen other students on their roster. I feel awful for the folk that paid the big bucks to come across the pond for what they understood to be a fun action packed aviation holiday.
Things continued to spiral out of control when the Indian aviation boom took place. Within the space of 2 months Ajay had sent out over 70 I-20 visa forms for students paying all around 40K USD for 250 hours of flight training. It was obvious at the time that with the limited aircraft available this was going to end in tears. Long story short...the Indians arrived and none of them left within the 6 months quoted in their contracts...each student was lucky if they flew 3 times a week and all this with only a half dozen instructors doing their best to stay on top of the Indian invasion.
Instructors were told point blank by AJAY that he did not care if they left without any license in the bag.....all we had to do was fly the 250 hours they had paid for. What kind of a man states this to his instructors? As you can imagine this became a very dangerous and volatile situation. Instructors on visas were told to fly or expect your visas to be canceled.
As a result aircraft were slowly flown into the ground....spending most of the time in maintenance which was slow and seldom completed to acceptable standards....it is my opinion that several of the planes would be better of scrapped before serious accidents happen.
Why is this allowed to happen you may ask? Rainbow air seemed to have a close relationship with the local FAA so of course nothing was ever done to sort out the problems.
If any prospective student of Rainbow air has any questions regarding the school please reply to the thread...i have seen enough people make the mistake of enrolling in flight training in the united states. Its not just rainbow air and ukft, there are many other cowboy schools. Your initial aviation training is the most important and you are better off paying more for a better quality than trying to save costs and flying in the US.
I hope this help....this is not meant to be your average pprune moan but an insight as to what really went on at Rainbow Air and UKFT. I'm sure this will not make up for any awful experiences that you may have had but i hope this gives you an insight into the inner workings.
I hope the new owners of Rainbow Air work hard to restore the standards that were once there and that people like AJAY XXXXX are forced out of aviation and stop exploiting people
....people like him will get their comeuppance on day. Stay away from UKFT.