HAC don't have my permission to have my student records. If they even touch them I'll be suing both HAC and HIAL under the data protection act. The only people with the right to touch the student records are the CAA and the student themselves. I suggest No Bearde Woman and his cronies stay well clear.
All that has been proven in this situation is that we have had confirmed that an aero club can utterly ruin the flying school that's associated with them.
We've seen this all before.
My suggestion to any other training provider is to stay well clear of HAC as they will only cause you pain while the current commitee is in charge. A more horrid self important bunch of -ancient- attention seekers you could not meet. This I'm told reliably that this was not always the case and that the club was interested in promoting flying training. Now it's just a bunch of mainly old folks that want to have a place to sit, drink tea and talk about how they can tell the professionals how to do it. You have been warned.
For those of you that are not members of HAC or have not renewed your membership, hopefully another training provider will come and take up where HFS left off. Nothing is set in stone, it's highly possible that some or all money will be returned, have faith. If you do lose money then that has to be the saddest thing of all, there's nothing worse than seeing your hard earned money disappear, you have my and the not so vocal majorities thoughts.
For those of you that have airside passes with Highland Flying School on the top, your passes have been revoked at the request of the HAC commitee and you will have to pay the fee again. Happily if you hold a current CAA/JAR/EASA licence then you do not have to join HAC to get a new sponsor, contact the airport and they will arrange for you to re-register as an independent pilot. Why they had to revoke the existing passes, I do not know.
If you have existing student records, they will be retrievable from inside the HFS building you will need to contact HIAL to recover these, I urge you to avoid HAC as they will only give you further grief than you already have, unless the current commitee move aside that is and let reasonable people do the job of organising social activities.
Be patient, something good will come of this (so long as HAC can keep clear and actually let the professionals do what's needed.)
One final thing, for those HAC people that feel that the efforts of the HAC commitee have been justified by HFS going out of business, perhaps you'll spare a thought for those people that have been caused trouble by your actions. While it almost certainly isn't entirely HAC commitee members fault that HFS have had to close, you played no small part in it and should be held responsible for what you've done. No interest in promoting flying, just self publicising grumpy old men, like No Bearde Woman.