Hi FattyBarr
Would like to get a feel from a few people who have attended either school, whats good and whats bad.....
Obviously we have to be careful how we answer this as we can't go upsetting any FTOs in the process...
I graduated Cabair Integrated in 2010. As far as the ground school instruction was concerned I can't really complain. The lecturers were fairly sound and you get a pile of in-house produced text books to go with it. I will say, however, that you cannot rely on the lectures alone and you will have to go away and go over everthing if you want to keep up. You get 6 months to cram 14 subject and they don't hang around. The 14 subjects are split into 4 blocks of between 4 and 6 weeks a block. So that's only a few weeks to learn up to 6 subjects before exams. In short - they cover a lot in little time so you WILL have to put in a lot of effort outside the classroom. Once you get behind it's a job to catch up.
In my class there were 11 of us and only 3 of us passed all 14 exams on the first attempts. Most people retook at least 1 exam. Like I said though, do your homework and you'll have no problems.
As far as the flight school part of it goes...what I will say is that they have slightly less rescources than I would consider comfortable. ie you can expect to be sat around a fair bit due to lack of aircraft available. To be honest I think this is fairly standard with any FTO. It does help if you show up every day and make yourself known, even if you're not scheduled to fly. People that don't show up or don't put in the effort will be 'overlooked'. All the flight instructors I had were great - very friendly and very helpful. Both the CFI and Head of Training are very sound guys and will hear you out if you have any problems.
Last time I heard they had a policy now of charging for any extra flying hours on the spot so keep that in mind. As far as passes go, they do have a good IR pass rate. I struggle to think of anyone that failed their IR.
Last comment..we were sent to Florida for 3 months for our basic training (up to single engine cpl stage). We then came back to the UK and had 15 hours of SPIC flying to complete (IFR nav, so no looking out of the window) before converting to the twin, doing 6 hours and taking the CPL test, which is a VFR navigation. Point here is...you do all your VFR nav in the US then come to the UK and get virtually no time to adjust to UK radio procedures, airspace or navigation before taking the CPL skills test in the twin. This causes people a problem and hense some people fail the test on the first attempt and require more VFR nav training before retaking it (and are therefore charged £200/hour for it). Just a warning..
The standard of training overall is ok. I completed the whole course in 18 months (they quote 13) but I also lost nearly 2 months due to weather, so that's pretty good going. I also only exceeded my sylabus hours by about 6. If you pull out the stops it is possible to complete the course on schedule and not incure any extra flying costs etc so with that in mind the FTO can't be too bad. I would, however, advise against paying the course fees up front...keep to a monthly payment plan!
Hope that helps. All the best.