Anonymity - a great thing...
Cunarsil – Careful who you take advice as you will find that almost everyone on this form, including Colin (hef) have their own little agenda going on and enjoy the fact that they can pass judgement on companies or individuals and remain anonymous.
I would recommend that you don’t choose your flight training school while sitting on the other side of the world. Arrive a couple of weeks before you want to begin your training and then hire a car and go and visit each of the schools that have on your short list. As TeKahu said make sure that your money goes into a trust account (if paying up front) and the school can only draw down the funds after you have flown. As you will be self funding you should not need to pay up front if you don’t want to.
A short list I would recommend:
Ardmore Helicopters
Garden City
Helipro
Wanaka Helicopters
Heliflight are history so no point considering them. Went bust second time around about 2-4 weeks ago. Reports I have are of the CEO out of country in self imposed exile. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who's lives are ruined as Heliflight has their money with no hope of seeing it again. Hence my comments on trust accounts...
As you will be entering New Zealand on a Student Visa you will only be able to train with a NZQA accredited company. That will most likely rule out a lot of the small operators. Big company vs little company, well we could argue the pros and cons about each for years. Big - generally have good training systems and culture even if they have low time instructors. Usually have senior pilots floating around mentoring the low time guys and flying with the students periodically to make sure the training is up to scratch. Small operators can offer a personal ‘feel’ and 1 on 1 training however sometimes standards can be a little lower so you need to dig deep when considering a small operator to get past any bull**** and bluster.
I find it amusing that certain individuals continually complain about the student loan scheme in New Zealand flooding the industry with pilots and ruining the job prospects for everyone else. I recall comments from the same type of individual back in the early 90’s, when I took out a $55k bank loan to fund my training. If they put as much effort into finding a job as they do complaining they would have many thousands of hours under their belts by now.
Pigchaser – sounds like you have the right attitude, write up a list of the senior people in each NZ company and call them once a month. If you get your name out there your persistence will pay off. Do you have a HT licence and DG? I couldn’t agree more with dragman.
EMS R22 – so do Rick and Mark offer training for free do they? Fantastic where can I sign up! When you snap out of your little dream world you will find that every helicopter operator in New Zealand is continually thinking of new ways to extricate your hard earned dollars out of your bank account. Some are just a little more subtle than others.