Wow what a balanced thread about a school for once on here !!.
I too trained at Stapleford, and agree with most of the comments on here, both good and bad but this one caught my eye as it is the one thing that really pi
ed me off about Stapleford...
When you're paying over 45k somewhere you are at the end of the day a customer as well as a student.
That is what lets them down, their "customer" service - some of the people on the "customer service" side of the business seem to forget that you are not just a student, but you are a CUSTOMER too, and one that is spending a small fortune with them - well enough to pay for Colin's shiny new Merc anyway !!. If you walked into a car showroom to spend £45k+, and you were gossiped about and called a cyounexttuesday, then you would walk right back out again and go elsewhere.
Sadly though with aviation training, nobody wants to get a bad name for themselves right at the start, so probably don't bother to complain for fear of being failed on a test or loosing out on a job or an interview as a result (aviation is a small world after all) so Capt Dobney feels he can get away with it as there is not even anyone to complain too about it !!.
I don't expect smoke to be blown up my a$$ or have things done for me, I have worked hard for everything I've achieved so far and I've been in the industry long enough now to know that how things are at Stapleford isn't how it is in the real world, so why he feels the need to make people feel uncomfortable there I don't know - maybe it's an ego thing, or maybe he is just bitter and twisted as all these students passing through are potentially going on to have a successful airline career
. But when I'm paying good money for a service I at least expect them to help me out if I have an issue or need guidence on something, especially when it is related to something which they are supposed to know about.
They mucked my training up big time by not acting on info I had given them until it was too late, and it ended up costing ME as a result - both in terms of extra time and money - didn't even get so much as an apology despite them having plenty of notice about the issue and being reminded several times.
It annoyed me so much that I actually looked into going elsewhere to complete my training - however the only reason I stayed was because I was going onto the IR, and the IR instructors there are excellent, and the DA-42 and the sim's were pretty much the best on offer at the time.
At the end of the day though, if you can put up with a little BS from time to time, the instructors are excellent, they did what I'd paid them to do and I walked away with that blue book, and still saved money on what other schools charge despite going over hours through no fault of my own.