Paying Up Front
 

What's the problem paying up front, pay on a credit card if you can get a good flying rate, you are protected over £100 by the card company.

Well technically you're not protected by the credit card company, they'd drop you like a hot potato given the chance. You're protected by the Consumer Credit Act, which the greasy loan-sharks are obliged to abide by.

Yes, you can get your money back if you don't get the goods/services you paid for, but it takes a while and it's a pain in the ass, red-tape, form-filling nightmare.

The furthest I'd go is buy 10, get 1 free. Certainly wouldn't pay a whole course up-front unless there was a major financial incentive.

With the way the economy is looking I would want to know that the organisation I was prepaying was in very strong financial order...

Two other things to think about.

If you don't get on with your instructor or the CFI, or perhaps you're unhappy for some other reason, you can't just vote with your feet and move to another school.

Also, I used to be very friendly with the instructors at a flying school and used to often drop by for a cup of tea in their ops area, so I often got to see the operation from the inside. If ever there was a scheduling problem, one of the first things they found out was whether either of them had pre-paid. If so, it was the pre-paid one that got bumped because they already had the money. Anybody who hadn't paid yet got priority because it was guaranteed extra income.

An organisation which

(1) is so desperate for cash that it has to borrow working capital

(2) is so dodgy that the banks won't touch it with a barge pole

(3) is trying to con students into giving it loans

is unlikely to last out the length of the average PPL course, given the usual UK weather.

So, although you might get your money back from the credit card company, eventually, there are two other considerations:

(a) you'll be out of pocket for at least months, possible a year or two, whilst all the paperwork and court cases are settled

(b) you'll be needing to look for another school to finish your PPL course ... so why not just choose a non-dodgy school in the first place for heaven's sake??

Mind you, I personally have a serious aversion to hassle. If you, on the other hand, actually like getting yourself involved in unnecessary hassle, then by all means pay up front with a credit card. (But do be aware of the upper limit for compensation as well as the lower limit, if going for a professional licence.)

A few years ago I took some flying to qualify for my CPLA, on a three week course. I was asked in advance to pay up front but I declined because no discount was being offered. On arrival I was immediately asked to report to accounts, who seemed overly interested in rapid payment. I became suspicious! I became more so when they phoned up every few days to ask me to go and settle my bill as I went along. It seeemd obvious they were having cash flow problems and I sensed the writing was possibly on the wall for the company involved. I wasn't wrong. A short while after I left, the flying training side of AST Perth folded.

For anyone who wants an extreme example of why it's a bad idea to pay entirely upfront, jump over to the Rotorheads forum and check out the Silver State Helicopters debacle... Appears (legal weasel words here) that ~2700 students are out ~$70000 due to SSH's recent collapse.

Tango

Reminds me of many years ago when my local flying club offered £600 worth of flying when you paid £500 up front. I paid my £500, got £70 worth of flying on my first trip. Next time I went to fly I found they'd gone bust. Most expensive hour I've paid for so far.

As an FTO we don't ask anyone to stump up in advance more than they are going to use that day. In fact, we normally just ask them to settle at the end of the day before going out the door - and if they don't they don't fly that next day until their account is all square.

We never ask for more than £200 deposit for a course - enough to stop people backing out of a booking at the last minute.

That seems fair to me and I would be very wary of paying much up front - a mate of mine lost £35,000 when SECOAT went belly up (and had to work in Saudi for 12 months to earn enough cash to complete his CPL!).

Never, ever, pay up front for flying lessons, whatever the payment method you use.
Even the best run flying organisation can be hit by a cash crisis and a small reduction in cash flow often leads to the swift demise of their business.

In defence of advanced payment
 

Payment in advance works well for many people, don't take the odd problem as the norm.

I guess it's only natural that the horror stories are the only ones to get written about, which is rather unfair. I had my house re-roofed a couple of years ago, an excellent job, pleased to pay the bill. You'll NEVER get the firm that did it on 'Rogue Traders' on the telly. A 1/2 hour programme about satisfied customers and the companies they employed would be boring, I suppose.

I paid up-front for my original CPL course and made stage payments in advance to PPSC for my correspondence course. No problems at all. More recently I made stage payments in advance for my FI course, again no problems. The school I did it at routinely offer discount to hirers who pay £750 lumps up-front, seems to be popular and works well. Another big school I know sells a wide range of packages in advance, again the uptake is good and I don't know of any issues with it. A big advantage with advance payment in my mind is that at the end of a flight, you should be concerned with the de-brief and completing the tech log etc, not worrying about being chased for payment. People CAN accidentally leave without paying if it's busy, then there's the hassle and embarrassment of having to pay for the previous flight before you can fly again or maybe even be chased for payment if you don't appear for a couple of weeks.

I have one student who pays with £20 notes from his back pocket at the end of every flight, very unusual!

Cheers,
TheOddOne

I did my PPL at Cabair Denham/OFT Kissimmee. "Don't pay up front" with them would certainly (IMHO) be valid advice when dealing with them - it was surprising how many extra charges were put onto my account, many of them inflated and in some cases just plain wrong.

However, having just done my hourbuilding at Old Sarum Flying Club, where I paid upfront to get into their discount scheme, I would gladly do the same again, as the accounts are totally transparent, and the scheme worked very well for me. No dodgy dealings there.

Form filling!!! ??? difficult??? I got £230 back from the co-op bank for my lawnmower which broke down and was out of guarantee(bought from Focus which refused to help) The only difficult bit was when the bank phoned and said they were not liable because xyz etc etc but when I asked the girl if she was legally qualified to make that statement she eventually backed down (she wasnt) and after being threatened with county court action they paid up. never filled any forms in and it was a very easy process. Using the same determination you need to be a professional pilot also gets to protect your rights---pay up front on a credit card in the UK!

The most I have ever paid up front was when I did my CPL, I payed in $1000 lumps but then again this was flown off in a couple of days. There are enough horror stories on here to put people paying extremely large amounts up front, reading of some peoples ATPL loan getting run off with for a start!!!

J.

I am having similar issues at the moment, I am wanting to do an FI course at Ravenair Livepool, but there price for the course is if you pay the lot upfront, I know the company well and cant see them not being there one day when I turn up, but it goes against everything you read and hear and not just flight training, about paying large sums upfront....

Try offering £2k lumps, you'll burn it off quick enough if you're doing the course full-time.

TOO

The size of the discount which is usually offered for an up front payment is so far above prevailing interest rates that the motivation for the offer has to be less than obvious.

At best, the school is doing it to motivate the student and prevent him leaving early.

The money is not held in escrow and this is what gives rise to the problems. The school uses the money for working capital - a polite way of saying that you don't have money and you need constant inflow of it from new customers to pay for current-customer expenses.

So when the school goes bust (they usually do, after a few years) the current deposits are lost. The average UK PPL takes a year to do (mainly due to weather but also due to occassional school related issues) so if the average life of a school is say 5 years (and I have seen a few go in less than that; a couple going down with massive inside-job frauds and police being involved over stolen credit card details in one case) you have a 20% chance of losing at least some of your money.

Another problem is that there are various reasons why one might want to change schools. The new student is in a very poor position to judge whether the instructors are any good, whether the school is well organised, whether the planes they fly are good or crap, etc, and quite a lot of people do change schools. And one can't do that if one has paid for a 45hr block up front.

The discount normally applies to a block of X hours, say 45 (the min PPL requirement) but the average UK PPL time is 55-65hrs, so one overruns one's budget anyway. I would suggest that if the punter's money is so tight that he is relying on the discount to afford the PPL course, he would be better off going off to the USA, where he will save 30-50% off the UK price, in return for a load of hassle with the TSA/Visa process taking 2-3 months to arrange.