Dear @flybywiree,
Thank you for your feedback, with the positives and the negatives. Before I continue I’d like to mention that 95% of graduates from Flying Academy who went to airline interviews in 2015 and 2016, got in.
I’ll take into consideration especially your feedback where we need to improve. However, I’d like to mention a few things, to make sure you have a complete understanding about the situation:
- Regarding the inexperienced instructors – We always have a higher number of FIs with a great number of hours and a limited number of pilots who just recently became FIs. We honestly consider that everybody deserves a chance and it's the least we can do to overcome the predictable situation at the end of the training when nobody wants to even give new pilots a chance of starting their pilot career in an airline, a charter company or a flight school because you’re “unexperienced” and so they become stuck. We believe in keeping the dream alive and helping as much as we can the new pilots who are promising and have outstanding performance during their studies. Please have in mind that we do standardize our pilots to be able to follow the same set of procedures when training pilots. If we think that only the hours of experience are important, applying the same logic it means that nobody can fly an airliner with a fresh CPL, nobody can fly in IMC with a fresh IR and no instructor can teach with a fresh FI. Why do we bother in creating new pilots then?
- Regarding the airplane problems – As you’ve probably seen, our planes fly a lot. Because they are mainly used for training, the lifespan of the instruments is really much lower than normally. We do have a set of MEL without which we can’t fly a plane (i.e. no night flying/IFR flying without Attitude Indicator while time building can be performed in day VMC without it). These are only temporary situations until the parts are being received and installed on the aircraft. Regarding the HI, broken radios etc, I do have to intervene and say that this is not happening. Security during flying classes is extremely important for us, we value our students and you probably know the procedure of announcing a squawk. Also, please mention one single plane that doesn't have GPS from our fleet, since I am absolutely sure that this is an overstatement of yours.
- Regarding our base in a CTR – 90% of our trainees go for Airlines. We have the experience and can say that this is a major advantage of learning to fly like a pro. Indeed, when flying from a controlled airport you encounter costs. However, we are talking about as little as around 4 Euros for a landing, 6 Euros to leave and reenter the CTR. Comparing to the rest of Europe, these costs are minimal. Indeed, if you want to be a PPL holder and fly in the weekend only, I agree that flying from an ATZ with a grass runway, no taxiway, no briefing office and the closest you will be to an airliner is when you look up in the sky, it’s a much better option.
I need to disagree that the landing and communication fees are hidden as we mention to all trainees approximately how much they should expect. Bare in mind that we cannot control landing and communication fees especially when a trainee is doing the time-building module of the program and maybe deciding (on his/her own) to fly to a major European airport; the costs for that would be even hundreds of Euros. Because of this, when future pilots want to join us we just set their expectations that they will encounter landing and communication fees during their training of approximately 2.250 EUR for the 0-ATPL program. We tell this to each and every trainee before they start. Why would we hide a cost which is not ours?
- Regarding delays – I agree with you that in the peak months some delays do appear due to the late arrival of the aircraft (just like in the airlines). We’re constantly trying to find new ways to optimize the schedule, to motivate pilots to respect the schedule and return when planned in order to minimize delays time. Regarding any scheduling of flight after sunset when NR is not available, I am confident that this was an isolated and simple human error. As all our trainees have the night training, the person doing the schedule thought by default that you have it as well. We apologize for the inconvenience.
- “Forgetting” to signup trainees for exams – We don’t forget to sign people up, but there are moments when we use all available slots in that respective month in the CAA. The more in advance a trainee plans his/her exams (PPL, ATPL, IR EN etc), the faster we can confirm the slot with the authority. It is a procedure that we cannot 100% control, since it is not fully depending on us.
- Did we lose your Medical certificate, PPL/CPL license, logbook or that’s what you’ve heard? If such a situation exists, i would like to know about it.
- Regarding the bottle-neck you’re talking about on the IR Training part, that was solved as of the second half of last year. We identified the problem and we fixed it with maximum urgency.
- Regarding the relation with the CAA – if there was any backlog in scheduling the check rides, it was due to capacity. We have allocated 2 to 6 slots/week so yes, due to the high amount of trainees, sometimes these slots are not enough. We know about it and we’re working with the authorities to increase the capacity of the CAA. However, once again, this is not a situation that is 100% in our control.
- Regarding the briefing-debriefing costs for IR (10.000 CZK ~370 EUR). This is a minimal cost in the IR training as a result of the feedback we received from the Instrument Rating Instructors (Airline/BizJet Pilots), since trainees need extensive briefing before each of the IR flights. In order to not charge per hour (27 EUR), we’ve made a package for the entire training of 50 hours (the cost is now about 4 times less than paying per hour for the service). We have made this decision especially to help our students to plan their budget. like this, they do not need to count hours and to estimate fees. They are transparently shown to them.
- Regarding accommodation in Brno – we have several places where we accommodate trainees. We use them on a first come first serve basis and we communicate this fact upfront. If you were so "far" from the airport it means you opted to stay in the city center. Please remember that the airport is connected with the city with a bus that goes every 30 minutes and it's just a 25 minutes ride. In Prague, we have the airport connected with the tube, an advantage that not many flight schools have even in Western Europe. If this accommodation was no longer suitable for you, a simple email to Customer Service might have solved the situation.
Again, many thanks for your feedback. As mentioned, we’re always open to hear what trainees have to say, in face to face meetings, emails, phone calls or even a public forum.
If you want to add anything else, please do send it to me. i can reassure you that we will treat feedback seriously each and every time.
Best Regards,
Radim Olbrecht
Head of Training
Flying Academy