FI Course CAVOK Hungary
 

Anyone got any recent experience with this school and in particular their flight instructor courses?
It seems very reasonable compare to other schools across Europe...

What sort of pricing are they offering? also, you'd need to add the extras for accommodation, food etc., as opposed to doing this closer to home. I've been considering going 5 hours away (by car) to do an FI course, but this would require me to rent accommodation etc. for 6-8 weeks - as opposed to paying more for the course at driving range from home - and I can keep my "normal" life at the same time. Also consider where you're planning to use your FI rating after you've got it. I believe (not sure though) that it's worth doing the rating with an ATO closer to home, if that's where you're planning on using is.

Home for me would be Norway and there is no flight schools here that offer the flight instructor courses so that would not be possible for me. I already have an offer to fly at a club here and regardless I would need to do it abroad which they are fine with.
Some places offer quicker courses if they theory is done beforehand! Have you heard about Multifly in Hungary?

If you believe that you are in for some surprises. The nature of a FI Course is that the theory can ony be done effectively by integrating it with the flying. You learn what to teach, how to teach, you practice it, long briefings and short briefings and then do it in the aircraft.
I can't think of any FIC instructors who would be happy to accept a student who had completed the theory elswhere. In most cases they would just do it again. The requirement for a FI Course is that you complete it at an ATO under the supervision of a Head of Traiming. There is no provision for mixing and matching bits of courses at different locations. If you did, I doubt that anyone would want to employ you afterwards.
I have seen the results of a number of cheap FI Courses over the years, to the unsuspecting candidates they were nothing more than a waste of money.

I did my FI course at Cavok last summer. They are quite a big flight school in the area, operating from Gödöllő Airport, which is 20 km away from Hungary. However if you don't have a car, it is troublesome to get to the airport if you live in Gödöllő or Budapest. But I think they offer airport accommodation as well. The instructors are really friendly, I know some of them personally for years. I keep my aircraft in the same airport, so I see Cavok operation almost every day. They fly a lot if the weather is good, so you can finish the course pretty fast. They have AT3, Tecnam P2002, Viper aircraft. I don't have experience with those as I did the training in my own plane, a Pipistrel Virus SW 121. To sum up, instructors are nice, airport has its retro-style charm, with 1 km long grass rwy, and close enough to Budapest. I liked the FI course itself as it deepened my knowledge in many ways. I developed skills I use very often when I instruct my students nowadays.

As a HoT, I had to standardise a new instructor from this school to start teaching at the ATO that I was responsible for.

I also teach FIC and examine for pilot licences plus MEP.

I wrote to the CAA saying that the course that CAVOK taught was non compliant, no Teaching and Learning theory was covered, board briefs had not been taught or practiced. From what I could work out all they did was fly around.

The ssment of competence that was done in Hungary was just a short flight along the lines of a PC with no lesson assessed at all.

I had to teach all T & L theory, and about 7 hrs instructor training.

in my professional opinion I would strongly advise anyone considering a FIC to avoid this school at all costs. Unofficially, the CAA are of the same opinion.

Always good to get a factual insight. Many thanks for sharing that experience.

Well they can't be that concerned as they are allowing all training from such establishments to be valid on UK licences for another 2 years.

The decision making part of the CAA is currently hamstrung by its overwhelming desire to maintain as much alignment as possible with EU legislation in the hope of achieving some sort of mutual recognition agreement. Consequently, there is little to no chance that they will take any action against an organisation that holds EASA approval, no matter how damning the opinion of their front line staff who actually understand the problem. There are plenty of other ATOs in eastern and southern Europe that are as bad, if not worse.

Like Ionian Aviation in Megara, Greece !
Stay away, by all means.

Gerrit Pols
The Netherlands
[email protected]

BillieBob -
when I contacted the CAA my main concern was that they had issued a FI rating on basis that the course was completed at an EASA ATO with an AoC.
Their explanation was that they had no choice but to issue the rating because it fell under EU law regardless of how big a risk that is to aviation safety.

Ironic given what the initials actually stand for. I assume now that the U.K. will not have this problem but just consider how many poorly trained flight crew have been produced by these schools.

I wouldn't assume anything, the UK is intent on maintaining the status quo and has made it almost impossible to change anything without a laborious legal process.

After working in GA commercials ops and instructing in different countries and different continents, I always find it interesting that people think their country has higher standards than others (this isn't meant to be an attack on you or the UK by the way. It's the same the world over.)

In the last couple years in the UK I've seen FI and CRI AoC's passed with the candidate reporting they never once touched the controls or demonstrated any instructing during the brief flight. I've been asked to send PPL students on their first solo after they had done 5 hours of circuits but never been taught any of Ex.6-10. I've seen a student sent solo on a QXC flight having never done any engine failure training (NONE. Not even one EFATO. She had no idea it was supposed to be part of the syllabus!). I've seen candidates passing PPL tests without demontrating stalling, abnormal circuits or nav diversions. I stopped an instructor sending a ppl student on a solo nav to an airport reporting <1000m RVR for the past 2 hours. The list goes on...

A few years ago I was examined in a dust bowl by an African local who'd never left his country, from an airstrip with lions lying under the pole that presumably once held a windsock. He was an excellent pilot and examiner and I would MUCH prefer him to teach my kids to fly than some of the white shirt, tie and bar wearing instructors I've met at large ATOs in the UK.

It really comes down to the individuals, not the country.

Anyway, that's my old fart lockdown rant done for today. Back to YouTube videos I go...

Then surely as an Instructor, it is your responsibility to ensure that they meet all of the requirements for solo flight. You check the training records to see what they have done so far and how well they have performed. Ask the candidate what they have done and then brief them on all of the requirements for solo flight including holding a valid medical certificate. In this case it would seem they have another 6 hours to do before even thinking about it.

All of which I did, and then informed the HoT that they had at least one instructor who took it upon himself to decide he could satisfactorily complete all exercises before Ex.12 in two hours of flight time. The term negligence comes to mind...

Though surely the bigger issue is that this instructor went through an FIC, AoC, ATO standardisation training, and had performed a couple hundred hours of ab-initio instructing believing this was an acceptable way to teach someone to fly.

All I'm really getting at is that these sorts of things happen all over the world, in every country. I'm sure you've seen plenty of it in the UK in your time Whopity!

I think the standard of FIC instruction for many of the modern instructors is far better than it was for some of the older ones. I have seen FIs with less than 100 hours give better briefs than some with 10,000 hours. Where they were taught does have a big impact on it though. I have seen FIs who completed a course in 2 weeks, something we know is impossible. EASA reduced the requirements for a FICI from typically over 2500 hours instructing, which was a start point in the UK, to only 500 hours, thats like building a wall with no foundation.