Hi Paul, i can assure you that FTE is nowhere near as bad as fedupinjerez is suggesting. The school is growing at a very rapid rate with more and more sponsored students from what seems new airlines every couple of months coupled with self sponsored students numbers increasing too, that is surely a good sign in itself? That along with the fact that most of us are getting very good groundschool (above 90%) and flying grades with the guys that are struggling getting all of the support that they need from more than willing instructors.
It is true that quite a few exceptionally good groundschool instructors have left recently but they have all been here over 5 years and it the cascade effect when one decided to leave, a few more decided that it was time and followed suit. The school is currently trying to replace them but its a mammoth task trying to replace such experienced staff so they are having to bring in new instructors who take some time to be trained up and bed in and when they are, they are constantly being judged against the ones that have left.
On the flying side, i agree with Fedup in that the staff are brilliant and the management are bringing in new aircraft to deal with previous problems with massive backlogs, mainly due to a very wet and unflyable winter last year and also preempting the increased demand, thus why the school is looking for more staff too. Id also like to point out that the aircraft are very reliable with the only problems tending to be very minor with the engineers always on hand to sort them out as soon as possible. Am i right Fedupinjerez that you havent actually started flying yet? so are depressed in you room doing 4 months of groundschool so desperate to fly and like to take it out on the school because of that? On the down side, the controllers are usually the problem as chris says, with only 2 aircraft in the circuit allowed at any 1 time and seville approach also very limiting on IFR flights. As for the actual flying schedule atm, it's relatively clear so if you do have problems with atc, there is enough space to rearrange it within a decent time frame but its still frustrating sometimes.
Although i dont necessarily agree with the charging of the coffee (understandable to reduce costs, the importance unfortunately shown by cabair recently, and im not saying that not serving free tea, coffee and toast is a magic solution, just an easy few bob saved!) and the increase in price of drinks (20% on everything apart from draught beer at happy hour which has risen from 60cents to 1euro 20) its still very cheap and 60cents for a beer? that's just ludicrously cheap! This is just keeping up to date with increasing costs of drinks. Even with this, the bar is buzzing on friday nights especially with people always in there during the week.
Sorry paul, i cant really help you with facts and figures about how many students have got jobs through FTE in the past year but i know plenty of past students with jobs already. I would definitely recommend FTE to anybody who was interested in it. Theres nothing better than being able to take a break from studying by laying by the pool with a very cold drink while the temperature is 35degrees plus! Hope this has helped