New sticky would be helpful....

[waterfalls123]

Hello

Has the forum ever considered a new sticky for this thread.....one that lists flight schools in the US and Europe and whether they are "good" and are honest, cost effective, and treat their students well, or "bad" where students are treated poorly and/or ripped off.

I ask because as I have some exposure to young pilots and career changers who are always asking me about "good" flight schools to go to, particularly in the US. I have not trained in many years so I am not familiar with the schools that have a good reputation so I send them to Internet forums such as this, especially European people seeking options. It would be nice if a young/new pilot could click a link on top and have a list of 10's of options where people have had positive experiences and then the new pilot would have a starting point from which to begin his search.

What do you think?

[Halfwayback]

The problem is two-fold.

Firstly, what makes a 'good' school is very subjective. One person's meat is another's poison. A quick look through this forum will show how quickly we have 'statement, counter-statement, then personal abuse' regarding FTOs. That is without the number of emails that the moderators receive from FTOs proclaiming their innocence!

Secondly it is such a recurrent theme that a couple of minutes perusing the threads in this forum will give a reader a good idea of which to avoid.

Finally if it appears in a Pprune thread and remains there it could imply Pprune approval which is something that is NOT done.

Stickies are there for most of the repetitive threads in the Read Before Posting' section - please use them for your posts - I try to keep them up to date but they get few readers.

HWB

[mad_jock]

Schools change over night as well.

As much as school owners would not like to admit it...

The school is the instructors, changes in staff can have a huge affect over the quality of training.

Sometimes its only when a senior instructor departs that people realise how much they have been fighting to maintain standards.

Personally I would recommend instructors not schools.

[Wesker]

I used to work as flight instructor in the US. Most of the instructors stayed for about a year before they moved on. It was a stepping stone for almost all of them so the school had a constant change of staff.

I think it's a shame since I believe a lot of knowledge and experience is lost that way. Instructors quit just when they start to get good at their new trade. They are then replaced by a new inexperienced instructor and the cycle repeats :(

[waterfalls123]

Yes, good points all.