First regarding the EFT offer - does not include flight review, and I love this bit "Price Subject to Change without notice"
50 hours completed with 10 days!
Honestly what kind of constructive flying can you complete within 10 days - at average 5 hours a day? Something that would be NOTHING else then burning holes in the sky!
And are these 50 block hours open for everybody? Or just for CPL students with EFT? Not really clear from their site. Still the breakdown of the price makes it around £4000 + travel/flight review!
Back to EAA, is simply asked the opinion of fellow PPRune'rs what their opinion was of $1900 for flight review!
Add this to any hour build packages, and result is there is NO "Savings" going to the USA anymore.
Be honest, you want to go to the US, to get a new experience, but not solely to enhance your flying skills, not because you want to save money to be able to get more hours for the least amount of money.
Is it wrong that pilots want most hours for the least amount of Pounds/Dollars?
The flight schools want most amount of Pounds/Dollars for their operation, so they can be profitable.
I do not have a problem with this, that is not my point!
However let's be honest, so everybody can make their own judgment and opinion, in the current climate going to the USA for flight traing has more negatives then positives, of course plenty of posters are showing they are getting worried that posts here are being read by potential students/hour builders, who they might loose now, as they are presented with the real facts.
The only advantage Florida has is the sun and girls, which itself is not a bad thing - however the example above from EFT, 50 hours within 10 days, you probably won't see much of either.
As somebody else pointed out earlier, what about the quality of hour building? However the schools set out these rules for 3 reasons, they want as much money as possible in the shortest possible time, they do not care if the flying is beneficial for the pilot, and they will get their money regardless if you complete the 50 hours in the period given by them.
However the flight schools should be carefull now, because I hope more and more people will start using their IQ, and not just their wallet. In these economic times people have to be more carefull anyway.
There is NOTHING to save with regards to money to train in the USA for a JAA CPL/IR/ME - I am not going to present the calculations again, already done that in the past. People can work it out themselves.
There is very little if anything to save with hour building 50 to 100 hours, if more maybe a little.
The experience of flying in the USA will not be very beneficial for UK flying, weather, climate different. And that brings us back to the quality of flying - weather conditions in the UK are much more challenging, I have been flying in Scandinavia and UK, very different countries to fly in, bought have thogught me a lot in each their way.
As mentioned in another post, what good is flying 50 hours in CAVOK, ++ Visibily more then 10Km?
Is that going to make you a better pilot? Make you better to understand weather forecasts, etc.
I believe a US PPL (Florida based) would struggle more coming here to the UK to fly, then a JAR PPL (UK) flying in Florida!
If I or anyone else wants to go to hour build in the US, let's get it straight - it is for a new experience, see something new, and be able to make something constructive of the flights, planning and debriefing. However the schools have modelled the hour building like a "red light district concept" - Quickly in, and get out ASP after you have paid them for their 50 hours.
I can get 50 hours in Norway for $7000, with NO TIME PRESSURE, no flight review, and I have friends I can live at for free, and in well maintained clean aircrafts. (PA 28, C-172) and £50 FR - ticket to Oslo. In the UK similar package will cost a bit more - for both these last alternatives I am able to plan it/schedule all myself - and to make the optimal of each flight for my own benefit.
All others seems to be Rush and Go, not even time for Touch and Go!
All in all the prices here and across the pond at the end of the day will be pretty similar - and please US is a large continent, but how far will you travel in a PA 28 when hour buidling? Or do you want to leave sunny Florida and maybe get grounded for 4 days because of bad weather, and when returned to base your time period has expired and you only managed to fly 30 of those 50 hours you paid for!
Also flying from UK, does not mean you only stay in the UK, the advantage of airplanes is that you can actually fly over that little lake called the english channel to a country called France - from France it is not far to Belgium, Holland or Germany. And if you really have to much money to burn you can go down to Cote D'Azur, Marbella - you are NOT limited to only be flying within the UK airspace. I believe that is more of a challenge experiencing different ATC's in europe then just flying in circles outside the Bermuda triangle!
Does not mean I would not like to go "Over There" and experience a bit myself - but I will rather spend the $1900 flight review money on extra European quality hours - as they probably will be of more use for me at the moment!
Still to all, NAIA went bust, they was very reputable for many years, so I believe many US flight schools are very very afraid now, and good to see so many responses by people with very few posts earlier. Makes me believe more and more that many on these forums have their own protectionist agenda!
Quality - Cheap - Rush - Aviation - are 4 words that does not seem to fith together from what I have read and seen so far.
Schools/instructors want you to gain the greatest possible experience, in the shortest possible time, so they Rush you trough 50 hours in CAVOK + 10km Vis. - within 10 to 14 days, and they believe this will then give you the pilot the greatest benefit and learning experience for your further career with them or as a pilot in general!
If it was dead cheap, maybe you could justify it a little to get some more hours, guess what, it is not low shelf dead cheap - it's just as everywhere else.
Then there are posters on here saying the students are the cheapskates, who just do the easy stuff, why? Maybe because the setup is not designed to provide quality, but rather a greater quanity of students/pilots to complete and spend the most amount of Dollars in the shortest possible time.
And then someone say, oh but the student to save money takes short cuts in their training, vow boomer - that's what it seems to many schools are doing for their own students, I guess they do what they are thought by the school, take short cuts!