Hi guys,
Just got my PPL this summer and from my incredibly high experience of 58hrs with Flying Academy I can say I'm satisfied overall.
And I can post my first stuff on Pprune now that I'm officially a pilot
Instructors are young and are not airline pilots yes, so what? Yes it could be cool to have airline pilots instructors, but I believe the most important when you're learning something, is to have a good feel with your instructor.
If you don't like the guy and the way things are explained, you won't enjoy and you won't learn much, no matter if the guy is a 777 captain with 15,000hrs.
That said, I heard fellow students saying some instructors are not good. Well you can always ask to change I guess.
I had several instructors for my PPL, some better than others, but I mainly flew with one of them, Max for those who know him, and I wouldn't have passed everything easily if it wasn't for the good vibes during instruction.
PPL completed after 45.1hrs, passed at first attempt. Theory passed after repeating twice meteorology only, English and RT passed at first attempt too.
I spotted mistakes twice in my transaction records, but the 2 ladies at the front desk are really nice and help you when they can (Prague base, Letnany, I don't know much about Brno).
Same goes for scheduling, especially now for my TB, I check availability online, I call, they book, boom I fly, easy. Yes if you're the 5th person of the day, usually you will have delays. Well, book a week in advance and book for early mornings. Flight Radar 24 is your friend too, it may not be exactly accurate, but it gives you an idea as to when you can expect your airplane to be back to base.
Flying Academy has good coffee to wait otherwise...
Safety is good, never heard of major incidents. Airplanes are maybe oldish, but they fly well. It's maybe a personal choice, but I prefer older planes, I tried a Tecnam P2008, it's a nice little machine, but it feels too much like an UL for me. Whereas a good old C172 or even a C152 feel more like airplanes. But again, that's just my personal feeling, I like old school machines.
I passed the PPL in around a year and only had once the left magneto making some noise.
Recently during my TB I had the attitude indicator bouncing all around, but VFR day, who cares. Incidents are reported and planes go to maintenance when needed, as far as I'm aware of.
2 inops in 1 year, I guess it's acceptable?
As for the hidden costs, well guys, just make yourself an Excel budget simulation and factor-in all possible costs. And I mean everything, I even count the car fuel and depreciation to drive the 40km to the school!
We are all supposed to have a minimum of aviation costs knowledge, otherwise we are not really passionate...So you should know what are the costs of flying. You know you are going to pay landing / com fees, RT, English fees, licence issuance fee etc. I hope you knew before the school told you that these things are not for free??
So just ask the school don't wait for them to tell you. Ask how much is the landing fee here and there, are low-pass charged, how different is the night charge blablabla etc. if you don't ask yeah they might not tell you, they're sales people, it's their job to sell and not to answer questions you don't ask. I work in Procurement, the basic rule is to dig info from sales people, they won't give it to you if you don't ask!
So far I'm above my cost estimations by 600 EUR, I guess my simulation file works quite well.
Ask your instructors where they want to fly, check the AIP of all airports you will probably fly to during your training and just add this to the average flight hour fee.
Again, just sharing my experience, and mostly for their base in Letnany, I don't know about Brno. So far so good for me.
I'm probably not going to do my ATPL theory there because for English speakers it's in Brno only, and not in practical times for a guy like me who works and live in Prague.
But I guess I would continue with my IR/MEP/CPL flight training with them, mostly because of my good experience with their instructors.