Suggest you buy a good jacket and an Indian phrase book before you head over there.

Yup, easily a 1/3 of the blokes at Mainland are Indian.

That the students or instrucotrs who are Indian?

Students, AFAIK, all the Instructors are Kiwi.

Well as long as I can understand my instructors and there good at what there ment to do. And nice safe aircraft to fly, i'm sure i'll be happy:ok:

Got a responce from Garden City Helicopters "You need to be a New Zealand citizen to qualify for a student loan" Looks like some of these schools don't no aussies can apply for the loan:ugh:

Or they dont want you, which in that case, you wouldn't want to go to anyway.

Do you want to fly Helicopters or Fixed Wing? You seem to be tossing between them.

I sure am tossing between them both. Would love to fly choppers but there seems to be a real lack of jobs until the 1000hr mark or so. And with fixed wing seems to be a little easier to get work. But I also wan't to be a pilot, not just sit and manage a aircraft, I wan't to FLY it :ok:

Found this on the NZ immigration website

If you are entering New Zealand with

• a valid Australian passport, or
• a current Australian Permanent Residence Visa, or
• a current Australian Resident Return Visa

you will normally be granted a New Zealand residence permit on arrival.

So being a resident permit is all you need to apply for student loan :ok:
Wonder why the schools don't know this:cool:

It's not that they don't know, it's that places are limited (due funding) and there's lots of people wanting the places so they'd rather give them to NZ'ers.But hey keep trying elsewhere, might get lucky. I've heard great things from BayFlight, dont try e-mailing them though, quite slack with that. Websites a bit outdated to.

Yep bayflight don't like us aussies either gota reply from them as well:ugh:

I called Mainland and they didn't seem to mind that I'm an Aussie. Got to round up my education results and CV and send it along to them. I also sent an email to bayflight and new plymouth today.

That's a shame to hear about bayflight, I used to live in Tauranga.

Most have probably picked up on this but I moved to NZ and did mine at Mainland back in 2005.

One thing to remember is that they get calls and emails from 'timewasters' all day everyday.

I moved to NZ (Granted, I had rellies there) before any of the courses accepted me. A show of commitment goes a long, long way!

Regardless of your nationality, if you are entitled to a loan AND CURRENTLY IN NZ, you WILL find a position on one of these courses.

I must politely disagree with you on this. Back when I was instructing we always had far more applicants than we had fully funded training spaces available. We had to pick and choose who to accept based on a variety of things. We simply did not have enough 'Efts' to accommodate everyone who sought funding.

Yeas, but what I am saying is that between the different operators you should find one that has a spot. If you are not set on one particular town in NZ, that is.

Strechka, Simon Spencer Bower is your man for helicopter training. He is the best there is in NZ.

There's a few Aussie's at Massey!

Poor bastards.

Us or them?

A little bit of both. Palmy is'nt the a$$hole of the world, but you can see it from there.