I agree with about 90% of what charles321 said.
The course made me very de-motivated very fast. I started the course in 06 (no fee help) and noticed costs rise yearly in Jan/Feb. I think the first hike in 07 that I witnessed was due to "rising fuel prices". After they fell - prices stayed the same, and then eventually went up.
I completed about 175hrs with my CPL (no S/E IFR crap that the new syllabus has) but it only cost me about 55k... nowhere near to the 80 mark some other people are calling.
Never got to fly into YMEN. Only got to land in Colac for a dirt strip - oh and once out of sheer luck on a dirt strip somewhere out near Bendigo.
$1,100 per year in "admin fees". apparently this is to cover costs of them photocopying notes for us (when I asked it was the only answer I got on several occasions over the years). We still got charged the 900$ or so per year for the subjects onto our HECS (as the theory is a swinburne subject). That's $3,300 all up in 3 years.... if any past students have had any issues/success with getting this money back - PLEASE priv message me.
What was said above is mostly right. Classes were in hindsight mediocre. They were good the first year or two but got worse as time went on. It really depended on the instructor you landed - and I cant compare to other schools as I have not really spent much time in any. Some instructors were slack and left us self-studying while some were superb.
Training wise - I landed good instructors who drilled me and really tried to bring the best out in my flying. And my close friends who graduated with me agree the flying training in the actual a/c was fine - maybe we all had good instructors. But it did become a numbers game through no fault of the instructors - filled out with bookings and very very little time to sit down with you and consult you on what you need to improve on. They were all over the place.
Didn't really get to experience any sort of mx related stuff or things that would have benefited me more in GA. Something I was lucky enough to experience quite early on with a GA operator in the bush when I hit the road.
The atmosphere wasn't friendly. It felt more like a business (and yeah, it is but cmon) rather than a training school. After being briefly in other schools in MB - and even though my experiences there were brief - I noticed a clear difference in the atmosphere and how more personal the training is and the relation between isntructor and student and the effort the school puts in to helping you out and making sure you enjoy the journey.
Swinnie students got shafted in bookings behind cadets. At one point in 08 I came very close to doing my training elsewhere and I hear a lot of students do do their PPL in other schools. They might try tell you that you cant - but you can. If you want the degree I believe you only need your CPL test done with OAA as it apparently counts as a subject thats needed for your paper (no credit subject)??.
If you wanted something done or booked in - you had to do all the chasing up. in 2006 when I started it was fine but then it went downhill fast. I had to keep calling and chasing up instructors etc and push them to book me in for flights that I wanted. From 0 hours to my PPL - I was thrown between about 4 instructors (first 2 left for airlines half way through - cant blame them). post PPL - night rating - back and forth between 4 or 5 guys. CPL I was lucky to stick with 1 guy although bookings were tight. Though that's probably to be expected when your training takes close to 4 years to complete (double degree).
It's just not as structured as you might think. It really comes down to the instructors you land - ie why some hate it and some dont mind - although some students hate instructors I've flown with and vice versa. The ones I flew with were good and I believe they did what they could to teach me what they could. No real complaints there. My blame lays in whoever is running the joint.
If I was leaving yr12 now... 95% sure I would not be going back to GFS/Oxford.
rant over
