Cabair - To pay or Not to pay

[c152pilot]

Hi,

Just a quick question, do you think i should pay for my full time atpl course all up front for £48k or pay monthly for 50K?? what are the risks and what have past cabair students done??

c152pilot

[High Wing Drifter]

I would never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever pay that much up front. For convieniance, I would pay in chuncks of £2-3k up-front...maybe.

[CheesyPeas100]

Never, EVER pay any aviation organisation up front unless it is in small amounts that you can afford to lose. You've got no idea how solvent these businesses are and any one of them could disappear tomorrow with your money and there isn't a thing you can do about it.

You are facing as much risk as handing the money over to a complete stranger on a bus!

[Jerricho]

Just echoing the above, I have heard more than a couple of stories of people paying up front for courses, and having the company fold for whatever reason. And on the list of people who try to get any money back, they were number last.

[scroggs]

Only pay up front if you feel you can afford to lose the money and start again somewhere else. That answer your question?

If it's in their bank account and they go bust, you've lost it. If it's in yours, you haven't. End of story.

Scroggs

[High Wing Drifter]

This even goes for Career Development Loans. I was suprised at this as you don't personally receive the money AND one would have thought that the money should not be handed from the Bank to the trainer up front for training not yet started. Ask the unfortunates who got caught up in the Pilot Assist fiasco.

[Jinkster]

Pay £2 - £3k a month. On Visa card then at least you are protected. Plus if you pay the card off straight away I am aware that you can make money on it!

ATB,

Jinkster

[moo]

can you credit your credit card with £48K and then pay te whole amount on credit card? Surely your money would then be protected. I asked the very same question C152 when I went up for one of their saturday seminars and they told me in no uncertain terms that the money would not be protected in the event of a fold. Cabair is a huge group of aviation companies and so would be les likely to fold (not to say that its impossible of course)

[scroggs]

Do NOT rely on the size of the company; very much larger concerns than Cabair go down regularly, and customers are at the bottom of the creditor lists.

You can try and negotiate with your credit card company to credit the money on your account, but that is not the best way to do it. If you can't set up an escrow account to pay the monthly amount, place your loan monies in a high interest account at a bank (try Egg, Cahoot or other online banks for the best instant-access interest rates). Then set up a standing order from your credit card to your FTO, and a similar standing order from your bank to your credit card. Make sure you take full advantage of the interest-free period on the card (the period between paying out from the card and paying in from your bank). If you can, move credit cards every six months to take advantage of whatever good deals are out there (because I know you're going to incur other costs on the card - or are you going to give up eating and drinking?!). The best at the moment is the Halifax One, at 0% interest for 9 months, followed by 9.9% on all transactions thereafter. Egg isn't bad either - but you should change cards before you incur interest on any debt.

You need to protect yourselves, and to minimise the amount you're going to have to pay back to the bank, parents or whatever. Don't get yourselves in a position where your FTO ceasing to trade would bankrupt you - it's happened before; look back to SFT and PPSC's demises. If you've borrowed 50k, get it somewhere where it will earn interest for YOU, not for the FTO. The extra cost of 2K for paying monthly will be repaid by bank interest, with probably a bit to spare.

Be careful - more than one Wannabe has ended up owing the bank 50K and hasn't even got a PPL to show for it!

Scroggs

[c152pilot]

thanks for that guys, i am going to have to do some serious thinking :d

c152pilot

[Formally Known As]

There was a case of a young pilot who was about to commence flying training at an outfit at Manston. A week after his parents paid the full amount up front the school went under.

My advise don't do it, ever!!!

[Send Clowns]

Be a good consumer - go where they will let you spend the money as you want. There must be plenty of organisations out there willing to let you pay for each flight after you've flown it - cannot get less risky than that. I work for two of them (although admitedly one does not give CPL/IR training) so they cannot be that rare!

[no sponsor]

Good advice from Scroggs: I just got the halifax card. The other one to look at is the offer from Barclaycard: 0% interest for life if you spend £50 or more on the card each month.

Many of the smaller schools seem to let you pay at the end of each flight, if you wish. My own club lets me run up quite considerable sums before I get a gentle reminder.

[Alex Whittingham]

Unless you have a death wish, don't pay. As long as you still have the money you control your training. As far as the additional security obtained by using a credit card goes, I seem to remember that there is an upper limit that applies to credit card purchases where the joint liability, and therefore security, ceases. It's either £20K or £30K.

[A and C]

Don't ever pay "up front" to any one in this business ! and NEVER NEVER NEVER pay a penny to cabair there are much better places to get the FATPL.

[QNH 1013]

Beware the Barclaycard "0%" credit card offer. I looked into this and found it was another "Hoover Offer".
The fine print shows that you have to spend a minimum of £50 per month on the card (min £600 pa) and this attracts their high interest, but you can't pay this off until you have paid the rest of the loan off; all the money you pay them each month goes to reducing the debt of the "0%" part. You therefore are building up a debt at high interest at the rate of £50 per month.
Do the sums and you will find its another "Hoover Offer".

[Eliza]

I can only echo the warnings above about companies going under just after you've paid them a handsome sum! It happened to me a while ago (nothing aviation related) and I learned the hard way that unsecured creditors are at the bottom of the list!

However, saying that I have been going through my PPL by putting down sums of £1k at a time as it allows for a certain discount of the price of lessons. Before I did this I checked the company accounts were in order just to give me piece of mind!

Try www.companieshouse.com - you can find general info about the company and can order certain documents. I would recommend getting the latest full accounts and returns filed for Cabair before putting any money down. Cabair have a number of companies within their group, check them all if you can (it will cost £4 per company but nothing compared to what you could lose) - they are probably all guaranteeing the other. Just remember though, that this method is not fail safe - companies can go under in a very short space of time, but at least if the accounts look fine, it is a lot less likely!

Good luck!

[moo]

What do u base that on A & C? There is many a good word to be said about Cabair on this forum :confused:

[clear prop!!!]

NEVER ever ever ever ever ever ever ever pay more than a few quid up front. As long as you have YOUR cash... FTO's want it ... so keep it that way and stay in the driving/ flying seat and,... stay in control!
Take that from someone who got ripped off by a certain Florida FTO who's name can't be mentioned here. I did'nt lose any cash, but got a crap deal which would not have been the case if the money was in my wallet.
Escro accounts are the only way you can protect yourself, but if an FTO demands cash up front, ask yourself the question WHY?!!


DON'T...DON'T DO IT!!!!!

By the way, I don't know what Cabair's accounts department is like now, but when I was with them it was a disaster!! If it was'nt for the fact that I had NOT paid in advance I would have had a hell of a debate!

[A and C]

Twenty-five years of this being in this business has led me to be of the opinion that Cabair may not do anything illeagal but are not aversed to sharp practices such as teaching all sorts of exercices on positioning trips , this leads to the student paying for flying that is not nessesary for the exercise in hand , landing fees are added to the students bill at the adhoc rate when Cabair have an annual rental contract with the airfield that includes no charge to cabair for landings.

The gold and silver type membership rates that I have seen in the past have left the students unsure of what they have actualy paid for !.

With all this in mind I would think it better do business with a company with a more transparent system of fees.

From what I have seen over the years reputable companys such as the Wycombe air centre , bonas aviation , stapelford flight centre , WLAC , and the Bristol flight centre to name a few will produce a clear set of charges and will not position aircraft at your expence.

[whizzer]

Well i decided to pay my full course fees up front and managed to save quite a bit of money but i can understand your concerns. What i would advise is take up the offer of using an escrow account...where the money is held away from the grasps of the school until the aggreed payment date.

[JT8]

If you ask Cabair will set up an escrow account with Barclays bank for you. That means all the money goes into an account in your name. Each month the bank pays Cabair. It costs about £1000 to set up so you do lose some of the benefit of paying upfront. However should they go bust your money is not lost.

[Send Clowns]

Why would you want a company to have all your money anyway, even if it is safe in escrow? What if you decide that another provider is better for you? It happens, it happens to even good schools chosen carefully.

I've met people who have changed from prominent schools in the middle of CPL courses. I know someone who went to a school I have heard to be very good, that I would happily recommend on the strength of the reports of people I trust and about which I have never seen a bad comment here. My friend is not satisfied and is considering changing FTOs for the IR. How could you do that if you have signed an agreement and handed over your money to joint control? Even if you manage, the legal wrangle could drastically delay your training (with a loss of some of the money, I have seen up to 25% of contracted training costs).

If there are places that will offer you a course where you pay for the flying you are about to do, or even that you have done, you can keep control of your own training. You are the one who can best judge your requirements, you can make sure the FTO listens to them. The schools should be looking to keep you satisfied at every stage to get your next pound (or £330 as the case may be :ugh: ), rather than looking at you complacently as a completed deal.