What's Really Important ?
Here's the factors that really hurt doing my PPL :
- Poor scheduling. I hold down a day job and was just flying at weekends.
- Liked my instructor, but he failed somewhat with me, and was subsequently shown to have failed with a bunch of other students. Bad news.
- Hard to schedule instructor.
- Aircraft down-time.
I ended up quitting for a bit and switching schools. Sadly most of the problems were the same (i.e. my fault) though I did eventually get my private certificate 15 months after I started.
Learning from these lessons, I just did my Instrument in 3 months or so, which has been hard work, but very satisfying. Here's how I did it :
- Lots of studying when not flying
- Scheduled night ifr xc with instructor to meet the 50 hour xc requirement
- Flew couple of regular lessons / xc on the weekends
- Found the money to fly three times a week
The most important things is to find a good instructor, and be able to fly regularly so you don't forget things. 3 times a week is good. Good aircraft and scheduling is good too.
Talk to ex-students of a school. Find out if the instructors are good. Find out whether the aircraft have a lot of downtime.
Good Luck !!!!