Its always sad when an FTO goes down.
Lets try not to become fractious.
Some people have moaned that this forum did not give enough advance warning of SFTs demise. A few months back when it was floated as a rumour I checked with a friend of a friend that SFT had students. They did and they had bookings as well.
It looked like they were in no danger of going bust that week.
Obviously there was more to the story than that. But hey, PPRuNe doesn't employ Roger Cook on the sides to look into these things...
Over the years through countless email enquiries I have never recommended SFT as they seem to have had a series of problems. For the last year I always viewed them as the weakest of the big four. If people emailed me directly then I said as much. But it is/was not my place to do down a FTO publicly unless they are engaged in sharp practice at students expense which SFT certainly weren't.
I am very sorry to all those that have lost money. If I were paying crica £50k for a course I would only do so with an organisation that was the 2nd largest defence contractor on the globe... But the advice, as always, remains DO NOT pay upfront.
My feeling is that Wannabes should stay out of big time flying training for the next 6 months or so.
Cheers,
WWW