PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Training, hours building and first job prospects in America
Old 11th Oct 2008, 04:10
  #843 (permalink)  
darrenphughes
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: An Irish dude in Houston, TX. I miss home!!!
Age: 43
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Careful Now!!

Ok, so that just doesn't seem right to me. Guaranteeing that you will finish up your CFII and a Turbine transition for $65,000 and saying that there are no hidden fees, even if you go over the FAA minimum requirements seems like it is too good to be true. It's pretty much the same as guaranteeing someone a job as a CFI in your school, once they're done with their training.

I suggest to anyone that is signing up for this course to read the fine print very carefully. Or better yet, take the school contract to a lawyer to read it over and have them explain it to you. This promise, that they're giving you could put a small school out of business very quickly if they got the wrong student(s).

Althought it doesn't happen very often, you will have people from time to time struggle with getting all their ratings in under 200 hours. So lets say you have a student that takes 250 hours to get finished up. These guys are basically saying that they will absorb the extra cost of these extra hours. What if it takes someone 300 hours to become ready to pass their CFI checkride? That's a lot of money, and I doubt any small business or any large business in it's right mind could or would absorb these extra costs.

Whatever you do, if you do sign up with these guys, don't pay all up front. Because if the school does have the bad fortune of having a particularly dense student(or worse, a couple of them) then those guys will be eating into all the money that you put up front for your training and before long, VOILA, you have another Silver State Helicopters situation on your hands, all be it on a much smaller scale. But if a school does close up shop still owing you anywhere between $1,000 to 65,000, that is never small scale for someone who is trying to become a pilot.

Now I stand to be corrected, like always, but this site has tripped some of my common sense alarm bells and I urge everyone to approach it with caution. Otherwise, it does seem like a really good deal when the Turbine Time is thrown in!!!
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