Irv is absolutely right. I know that when my daughter started her PPL, she and I went to almost all of the flying schools around London and I was appalled by the lack of general standards of not just commercial common sense but friendliness and, dare I say it, professionalism. When we visited these schools, we agreed at the outset that we would never mention that I was a pilot – just to see what the view as a general ‘punter’ would be. I will not name names but all I will say it that Irv’s experiences, sadly, appear to be ‘the norm’!
Personally, if I were the Editor of one of the UK’s flying magazines (Irv, you can tell the boss he can have this one for free
) I would start a ‘Mystery Customer’ article and go around one or two flying school’s a month, posing as a customer – and then write an honest appraisal of what you find, warts and all. . . . Sure if the school advertises with the magazine and they get a bad review, the magazine may lose a small chunk of advertising revenue, but I suspect it wouldn't be for long and My God, it would ‘put the cat amongst the pigeons’!!!!
