beanbanni, as I was a student at Egnatia, I can confirm your post is full of s**t.
I have no idea where your friend got this information from, but from what I can summise he is smoking some seriously strong stuff. Might want to advise him to lay off the wacky backy if he intends to become a pilot, it's not good for his health, and from what I can see, it's certainly not good for yours either.
Firstly:
unless you "become friend" with the owners, and you know what i mean (this is how things work in greece).
In my time there, I have NEVER seen anyone get preference because they know the owners. They owners don't go anywhere near the schedule, that is handled completely by Ops.
They have already burned 2 (two) engines of these new aircrafts!!!!
Engines have a life span before they have to be replaced, and of course, in the real world things do break and need to be replaced. For the amount of time Egnatia has been open, and for the amount of aircraft that they have running, 2 engines being replaced is a total non-issue. You did leave out the fact that Egnatia have on-site full maintenance. So even if a aircraft does go tech, it will be sorted in a days or so, if not hours.
The instructors come and go every 2-3 months, probably because they are not well-paid, so there is not a good training environment.
Either you don't know much about the current nature of aviation, or you have a grotesquely incomprehensable sense of humour. Instructors generally move on because they get jobs with airlines, however, the ones I have known had been at Egnatia for much, much longer than 3 months. In addition, Egnatia employs a number of retired ex-miltary and airline pilots as instructors, therefore they will not be moving on to other airline employment.
Also the chief instructor is famed to be kicked out as a B747 pilot in a british company, possibly after an air incident or an ATC report filing or something similar.
I really don't know what to say about this one, except it is complete and utter fiction. The CFI at Egnatia is a respected retired ex-military gentleman from the Greek Air Force.
The village where the students reside is a ghost-town in winter and in summer a mosquito-prevalent. After 19:00 you cannot come out of the houses!! It reminds me the Vietnam conditions, swamps and malarias
.
The town is called Keramoti. I suggest all who are thinking about going to Egnatia read about it on the internet. Check out the photo site
www.flickr.com and do a search. Keramoti is a beautiful town in the summer and gets many tourists, the beaches are incredible. I don't know why you would not want to go out after 1900, unless you are a hermit, which I suspect you may be.
The greek ATC also is not the best in europe, so the air traffic is "surprising" very often!!!
Ok, so Greek ATC is not the best in Europe? Where is? UK? Germany? Ok let's say it's the UK (for argument sake). Do you suggest that in your career of an Airline Pilot you should never fly outside the UK? I don't know about you, but sounds to me like you're in the wrong career if that's the case. I am beginning to see why you are a strong candidate for the hermit award.
If you are an Airline Pilot, you will fly to many, many different airfields in many different countries, ATC will be far from perfect in many of them, you will have to learn to adapt. The ATC is Kavala is adequate and serves its purpose well, the controllers are friendly and curtious, I have never had a problem (unless it's pronouncing the names of some of the towns, still can't get the hang of it.. portolivosomething??).
At last, Greece in my opinion has not surpassed yet her "aviation midlde age" !!!
After the rest of your post, I don't think anyone would care about your opinion, unless of course they are a hermit.
So to everyone else who is intelligent and wants to learn to fly, I recommend ignoring ignorant nit-wits like beanbanni. Go give Egnatia a visit and see what it's really like.