PPL Training Britflight, FL (now it's reopened)

[Flairns]

Hi all,

I've been lurking here for a while now and thought it time ( through necessity mostly) to post.

I will be going over to Florida in April and am trying to decide on a flight school. So far, I think I've narrowed it down to NAC, EFT, OFT and Britflight, the first three of which all seem to have a large number of good posts. Britflight (Britannia Flight Centre), however, does not seem to have any posts from recent times i.e. after they reopened (although older reports are quite favourable). Has anyone trained there recently that could reccommend it (or not as the case may be)?

On the front of their site they say the following: "In near future we are anticipating to be a fully JAA approved FTO." After saying they offer full JAA courses in other places, is this a contradiction or am I missing something?

Thanks for any help,

Flairns

PS Any further recommendations on the other three flight schools greatly received! (Choosing is proving harder than I expected...)

[Paul_Sengupta]

Britannia weren't doing JAA PPL courses for a while - not sure they are now. They're still doing more advanced stuff though. They wanted to get back into doing JAA PPLs but I don't know if they have yet.

[Flairns]

Thanks for that Paul. Any other other news from anyone?

[[u]]

Britannia Flight Centre clearly state on their homepage (http://www.britflight.com/) that they only do JAA licence revalidations. So no JAA PPL's.

I also heard Jatin, Co-Owner of BritFlight and examiner of Naples will go flying CJR's.

No idea what that means for training @BritFlight and @NAC ..


(I was planning on using BritFlight to get my PPL when they were CAA acrredited as Jatin seems to be one of the few 'good' guys. Well we'll see ...)

[Charlie Zulu]

NAC have a new CFI, he started earlier last year. His name is Andrew McLaird and is a very nice guy. However I'm not sure if he is an Examiner yet.

<<edit: Yes, he is>>

Good news about Jatin going on to fly CRJ's.

[Flairns]

Guess that rules BritFlight out then! Now just between NAC, OFT and EFT.

I have to say I really like the look of NAC but I'm a bit worried about the airspace not being very busy. Naples looks nice too!

[VisaGeeza]

I did some training at Britannia back in the good old days when they were based at Winter Haven. Last I heard (fairly recently) was that they are struggling with the JAA approval bit due to the good old CAA taking so long to deal with their approval. I think that you can fairly safely cross them off of your wish list for the time being. I have to say I really like the look of NAC but I'm a bit worried about the airspace not being very busy. Naples looks nice too! Naples is a controlled airport (Class Delta) and has busy controlled airspace (Class Charlie) airspace immediately to the North. Naples is busy with regular jet and other large aircraft movements. The air traffic controller when I flew in during December was sounding like a tobacco auctioneer the airspace was so busy! It's quite busy enough for PPL training I can assure you. I trained originally at an airport in uncontrolled airspace (Class Golf) and from personal experience; I would always recommend training at a controlled airport such as Naples otherwise the radio procedures can be a bit overwhelming post PPL. Much better to learn and become confident on the radio with an instructor sitting next to you.

[Charlie Zulu]

I stand corrected, thanks Keygrip.

[Flairns]

VisaGeeza,

Thanks for the reply there - that's great to hear and should make my decision a lot easier. NAC seems to be coming out on top!

Thanks again,

Flairns