As a student PPL I don't really have the experience to judge how good my flying school is relative to others. However, some things that I've really appreciated are:
1) Having lots of other pilots hanging around - from other students to skygods. To have some kind of comfortable club room is critical. Keeping it cold to encourage sales of club hoodies (a story I heard) is false economy. I'm sure that I learn lots of somewhat intangible but important things through listening to pilot stories.
2) Good (i.e. flyable) weather most of the time. I know this can't be guaranteed anywhere, but some places are much better than others.
3) Bad weather most of the time. In my book, ideally the weather would be moderately challenging most days. It should obviously be CAVOK, nil wind every Saturday so that first solos can be scheduled though.
4) A few schools told me that they were currently too busy with intensive students to take on any more. My current school probably has slightly too many students for the course to be completely 'intensive'. This leads to fairly substantial cost increases - it costs at least several hundred pounds a week to be off work and perhaps staying in a hotel. If you're intensive you want 2-3 hours a day whenever the weather is willing, and anything that means you only get 1 is a problem. Really, this has been the only issue I've had with my school. As I like 'most everything else, I can live with it.
5) Transparent costs - I've found this works both ways. Many schools fail to mention landing fees, which if they are applied to touch-and-goes become rather substantial. My school neglected to mention the fact that landing fees are included until I asked. The list of 'extras' such as airside passes can end up being quite substantial. The flipside of the deal is that prospective students should reward honesty and not be put off by flying schools that have more costs listed.
6) I bought lots of materials such as the Air Pilot's Manuals and a flight computer prior to starting my course. I couldn't find a school that would discount the price of a full PPL on the basis that I owned a lot of the materials already. I agree that the discount wouldn't have been substantial in flying terms... But it seems terribly inflexible to me.
7) In the current economic climate, I decided that I didn't really want to pay up front for lessons anyway in case the school went bust before I had completed the course. If I'd been able to find any flying school that held money in escrow or gave a rebate at the end of the course I'd have counted it as a major plus point.
Another thought - I once heard somebody mention that people enquiring about PPLs were almost always dreamers who wouldn't come back. I guess this may be true sometimes - maybe even often - but any sensible punter will talk to at least half a dozen flying schools before making a decision. I think I must have talked to about 12 and looked online at rather more. The impression on the ground will inevitably be that most people don't come back. The inference that most people weren't serious about flying isn't justified.
Anyway, I wonder if this partly explains the fairly indifferent attitude towards prospective students that both I and many other people on this thread have noted.
Last edited by abgd; 7th Jan 2012 at 07:37.