@PID @Nurse2Pilot thanks a lot I really appreciate the extensive explanation and will definitely help in my choices!!

Baltic Aviation Academy
 

Hi everyone,
I am new on this forum and since I'm starting my training soon,I wanted to ask if anyone has recent feedbacks on Baltic Aviation Academy?
Do you know which CAA are they related?
feel free to message me in case.
Thanks in advance

_____________________________________

You can’t use the Private Messaging system, add url links or images until you have an established posting history.

Guys, simple question. Since I wasn't accepted to any of the Cadet programmes at BAA, is it worth picking up studies as 'independent pilot'? Is it real to find a decent job later on? I'm in fear to invest big money in the studies and later on have the best offer of 1.5k Euro/month netto salary (which I can make as an Uber driver without any special medical requirements, expensive licenses, etc) at some low-end airline with bad Terms & Conditions...

Thanks

Read the reviews at their social media page first.
They are the biggest scam in Europe. Plane accidents, angry employees, cursing students... Avoid it with your life.

I must say that I agree. BAA is not the school you want to choose unless that is the only choice you have. I've been trying to stay positive but now when I am about to finish it, I feel it's time to admit to myself that this has been a bad choice. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't even consider it. There are many reasons for that. Most of the instructors are simply not good, the staff is terrible, I am talking about the management. It is obvious that they don't know what they are doing and in some cases they've been treating us with no respect. Now they have opened a new base for training in Spain. When you hear Spain, it sounds great, but it is clear that they have made a mistake since that produced massive delays, people were asked to return back home, etc. Some of the key people have decided to leave the academy, so you get the point. It is just not so good. You may think ''Yes but they will give me a job at the end''... If I would be in the same situation again, I would choose modular for 40ke and simply apply for various jobs. Don't make a decision based on some unjustified fear that you will not get a job unless you choose BAA. It is just stupid. Good luck!

It is nice to read all positive/negative comments about BAA therefore prospect students can get a clear vision. The problem here is students can't find a person in charge to share their problems and frustrations. Once you start your training you are all left alone. There are many problems in BAA and students have difficulty to get explanation from first hand. Always some excuses from BAA side but never know the story behind therefore students talk within each other to understand the situation which leads often to a misinformation. There is lack of communication and transparency between school and students. In addition, I cant stop to mention there is significant lack of skills of office workers and management.

For instance, school can invest on new FFS but they can't hire enough number of Flight Instructors then training delay. Or another example of bad management; school acquired 4 new aircraft during this summer however all arrive at the end of the flying season therefore there was quite some delay due to lack of available A/C. Also, students send to new Spain base to start their training or finish the remaining part but without flying any hours they sent back to home for several weeks of waiting due to some reasons. The list can go longer.

It might worth to choose BAA if you are selected for Wizzair Scheme however for remaining 2 airline partner (where new admissions to third one is stopped) I would recommend you to try different training organization.

Hi Guys, I'm a modular student ready for the MCC. I was wondering if someone can give me some feedback on their MCC courses being done on the 737CL?
They offer a course with 25h ground school and 20 hours SIM training. Anyone knows if it's good quality?
Greetings!

Hi Barmn

I did it there and I wasn't happy. There were some lacks during the theory (for example abbreviations DODAR/NITS were put on PowerPoint presentation but not explained at all, hopefully I saw that in RYR topic here) and there is an important lack of breifing before sim (you do your 20 hours of SIM, of course, but you are not properly prepared for an efficient session).
After BAA I went to another school for JOC certificate and saw there how MCC and JOC courses should be organized
Caution, it is 737CL Full FIXED simulator in BAA, not FFS.

Hi RomanK, thanks for the reply! So you would say it's not sufficient then. Where did you do your JOC course?

Barmn, in SKY4you

feedback
 

Here is my feedback :
ATPL :
Probably the most standard part of the training. After all, you only need a classroom and an instructor. Nothing special.
There is an obvious large range of competency among the theory instructors. Some are efficient and will reply to all your questions. Others don't even know what they teach. But to be honest, the school reacted accordingly to the feedbacks and change of instructor if necessary.
Most of the work is done at home anyway, when you study on the atpl database for the CAA exams.

Now let's get straight to the main point, the flights: Run away from that school.
Run.
Away.

They have enrolled for those last 2 years too many students they are not able to train. Every 2 month comes a new class of students. The school has now around 240 guys to train.
Many of them are on « stand-by » because the school doesn't have enough instructors and planes to train the students. So many of them are waiting now at home.
There is currently a 5 months delay between the VFR phase, and the IFR phase.
And you will understand very soon why, if you read below.

The Fleet :
· 6x Tecnam P2002 currently (for VFR – 1st part)
· 4x Cessna 172 (for IFR – 2nd part)
· 1x Tecnam 2006 (for Multi-engine training, last part)

That fleet is clearly undersized for that school. Do the maths:
240 students. 11 planes.

Even small schools that nobody knows have more planes.
6 P2002 currently in Spain. Today only 2 are available.
Among the 4 C172, 2 are permanently on maintenance (1 is even new, but has already a Garmin fault. It's been on maintenance for weeks...).
Today there 2 C172 out of 4 are available... 2 C172 for the whole school...

Let’s compare with another big school:
4x C172 ==> FTE Jerez has 20 IFR aircrafts.
1x Tecnam 2006 (Multi-engine) ==> FTE Jerez has 6 Multi-Engine aircrafts –

Even Air Bartolini in Poland & F-Air in Czechia (2 other “tecnam eastern Europe schools”) own 2 P2006, and they are way smaller.
The school is very very greedy on investing in new airplanes.
Consequently: much much much waiting before you fly. And when you start flying, there will be a gap of 1 week, 10 days before the next flight.
Some students really rub elbows to get the slot instead of you. Some guys literally harassed the administration and the dispatcher to get the simulator/plane slots. It’s just clientelism, no planning. Such an attitude should be banned in a pilot school. That is not a quality we want to experience in a cockpit? Pushing the others under the train, to save his ass?

Instructors:
VFR instructors attribution is a lottery. You can get a serious one, or a young one who cares only about building up his hours and chat with his friends on his phone during flights. They all are just fresh out of their CPL.
Those poor FI are so low paid, that they resign and run away to see a greener grass somewhere else. They treat their FI like they treat their students: with no respect.

FNPT2 (IFR simulator):
Only one for the whole school.
Yes. You read correctly.
Only one old FNPT2 for all the students starting IFR.
Old, crappy. It sometimes reboots during an IFR session for no reason.
I told you. Greedy school.

Organisation :
The WORST point of BAA.
It's a total mess. Nobody knows what they do. They got no information. They don't communicate. They don't plan. They don't reply to serious emails, especially if it's an uncomfortable topic.
They created an email address connecting the students straight to the administration: don't bother, they choose to ignore if the topic is embarrassing.
There was absolutely no planning about the flights in Lithuania. You just go see the dispatcher, who barely knows about the next day. Come back at the end of the day to get some info for tomorrow.
The administration even told us: « you have to come directly to the briefing room to get information day by day »
Is it so hard to update a planning online of the upcoming flights?
They have apparently changed that in Spain, now there is a daily PDF about the flights for the day after.

But during 1 year, we got a message on whatsapp, sometimes in the evening at 10pm, that tomorrow morning at 6am you gotta be at the airport.
After the theory, they came to us with a very amateur excel file, about the upcoming months of our training.
No math about the number of FI & planes. They, as always, promised us that everything is gonna be okay, smooth and easy.
Bingo! Everything went wrong: lack of planes, lack of instructors, no back-up plans.

The last dirty trick they did to students: promising them to fly the multi on the 5th of November, so those guys went to Spain (paying transportation, finding an accommodation, etc at their own expenses of course)... When they arrived, they were said they would finally start the 8th. Then the 13th. Today is the 28th of November and they are still waiting.
Most of them came back home. 2 weeks in Spain for...nothing €€€
That’s a total of 2 months waiting for them.
Same story for the VFR students now, they arrived in Spain too early: flat rent, food, waiting… usual mess
They don’t even realize that students have no money.

The situation:
The current students at BAA are all delayed because of the school.
Students complain to the administration, but it’s useless. There’s not enough plane, and they don’t want to buy new ones. Period.
The school doesn't plan to buy new aircrafts, neither hire new instructors. So that mess will keep going on for 2019. Sorry about that.
They can put a lot of pressure on students to pay, but the global philosophy is clear: once you pay, they don't care about you. It’s all about marketing.

My opinion:
With that money, you can get a much better school. Especially now, the market is thriving, go for a quick modular course, save money and apply to airlines as soon as possible.

Do the maths. Minimum 9 months of living expenses, waiting to fly, etc. And I don’t even talk about the lack of organisation and respect to their students which will drive you crazy.
Their 24 months ATPL is 72,000€, compared to 40,000€ in a 15 months modular course.
Make the right choice.

Those « cadet » programs at BAA don't mean anything: you can get a job at each of them without being a cadet :
Smallplanet is falling apart.
Smartlynx deal is a huge scam. Their cadets had been betrayed by the airline during the training.
Wizzair is accessible from any random school, especially if you come from an Eastern Europe country. Wizzair also changed the conditions of employment during the training of their cadets…

Their marketing and communication is, in contrast, very professional: they make road shows all over Europe; they organize events for nice pictures of students with stripes on the shoulder watching airplanes, they are very active on all social networks...and ban any uncomfortable comments.

You see that picture on their main page of a blond nice girl and a male student, on their facebook events picture?
The girl is actually an administrative employee who put stripes, a tie and sunglasses for the photo-session. The guy was an atpl student with 0 flying hours. It's legal, sure. But it’s a metaphor of lies that school is expert in.

And I don't even talk about those YouTube videos; the actors showing an emergency procedure in an A320 don't even have their PPL or any commercial licence.

There are plenty of serious and competent schools out there. Have a look on German, Swedish, Spanish, French, Polish, Czech, Irish schools.
For 40,000€-60,000€ you can get a very serious training in a reasonable time, and being respected.

BAA is a very greedy and incompetent school.
I'm sorry the current students of that school, but there is no clear positive sign of evolution.

Hi Dukaster,

Thanks for the extensive opinion about BAA. I wasn't anywhere close to thinking it would be this bad. I'm in contact with Simtech and will most likely follow an MCC there, they seem to have a good reputation, good reviews and are quite renowned in the aviation industry. After all, as you mentioned earlier, it's probably the most standard part of the training but having good instructors makes the training in the end.

BAA received a new ME P2006 today.
Ex 5B-CLR ferried from Cannes to Lleida.

@Dukaster thanks for sharing your opinion. All the things you mentioned is not more or not less, it is very precise evaluation and information.

Only thing I want to add is that they should have 11 Tecnam 2002 maybe only 6 of them actively used or ferried to Spain. As you mentioned currently 5 months delay in flight training which is expected to be even longer because school policy is to give a dates to students which can't be materialized, just to absorb the pressure on management. However, closer to that dates, students often receives a mail or sometimes they hear via via from other students that the given date is postponed even further date.

Well, it is still entertaining to see ridiculous "oh btw they've added one more rubbish into their fleet bla bla bla" messages after @Dukaster's feedback.

It was a fact not a positive vibe towards BAA, just a coincidence with the timing. I'm upset about this school as much as everyone here.

tecnamflyer;

I mentioned nowhere that it was solving something. I just stated what I saw on eurocontrol today. I would be the happiest if it was solving something. We're all in the same basket !

I agree with Dukaster. The "managers" (mainly training but also sales) provide very bad support. They will most certainly always reply with "I don't know". The funny thing is that they apparently have a "2h" policy by which they mean that they have to send you an email back within 2 hours. Not necessarily with a solution but at least so that you know they have received it. I can say that this 2h policy is 2 weeks in reality, if you are lucky.

The training managers focus more on posting pictures and videos from the office on facebook and instagram instead of trying to solve problems which students have. This is mainly because people with 0 or close to 0 experience in aviation and organization are assigned to such positions. Best example is when a girl from the front desk got promoted to a training manager (a training manager of a flight school).... Such things happen only in BAA..... I mean maybe she is a nice person, but totally not for such position considering the fact that she doesn't know to say hello when you enter the office and starts laughing in your face as soon as you ask more than 1 question.


Question for the Dukster:

Could you please explain more what do you mean by " Wizzair also changed the conditions of employment during the training of their cadets… "?

Thanks

Classic BAA. Doesn't surprise me at all! But as av8tor396 said, not every wannabe reads this forum. Very good suggestion mate!

@Duchess_Driver

I understand of your position however students are not the experimental object to make potential of staff to come out. Students pay money, quite big money therefore they have right to complain. Imagine you buy a bad product from a store what would you do next day? Bring that product and either refund it or get the better one. BAA sold the bad product to students and continue to do it. Finally frustration is not only about Spain but regarding to whole operation.

About (a) there is no operation in LT especially VFR during winter season and this is minimum of 4 months. (b) BAA must hire a instructor to fly them. They could spend couple of hundred thousand EUROS for marketing, millions on FFS however they cant spend any single cent on instructors which are keystone of the flight training.

Those pretty chicks working at the administration are around 25 years-old, no experience, and as you said, spend much time to party in their office, take instagram stories, facebook posts. There is a pool at their floor, they can enjoy their working time, when you wait at home to fly...
The fastest way to contact is to chat with them on facebook. Sounds very professional...
There are many s*x stories between the administration girls and the students.
What kind of serious school does that?


Wizzair increased the bond from 3 to 4 years.
If you leave before, you have to pay 35.000€ minus what has been taken from your salary.
If you stay 4 years, they transfer to you 10.000€.
You can easily guess that western guys will want to move out before the 4 years so the Type Rating would cost 35.000€.

To all BAA Training current and future pilots,

Reacting to the current situation at our Ab Initio school, we apologize for inconveniences that we have caused you.

With the growing student number at our Ab Initio school, we have added 4 additional aircraft to our fleet and a flight base in Spain in order to extend our training capabilities. Nevertheless the number of force majeure situations that appeared during few past months left us with struggles to replan flight training schedule accordingly. We acknowledge facing longer delays of flight training than initially planned for approximately 14% of our current students.

Understanding the seriousness of the issue we have done a set of steps in order to change the situation and get back to the normal flight training schedule.

We are:

• undergoing the selection processes for multi-engine and single-engine IRF and VFR instructors to join our team in December, January and February
• closing a purchase process for an additional Cessna 172 to join our fleet as we speak
• negotiating the purchase for one more Cessna 172 to be added in spring
• ready to transfer Tecnam 2006: as soon as the weather will allow the aircraft will depart from Vilnius to Lleida

The whole BAA Training Ab Initio team is putting their utmost priority and daily efforts not only to make changes but also communicate openly with our students through this process.

There are some things that I can’t still believe and understand.

First: Maybe instead of apologize to us, try to think in advance. You had more than one year to calculate how many aircraft would be needed in order to provide every single student smoothe, fluent, efficient, effective and proper training. Was it so hard to calculate that 4 C172 would be too few for 40 and even more students simultaneously? Well, aparently everyone can see that this basic maths was too hard for you. Furthermore, the number of students is growing month by month. You need to offer something in return, not only sitting and checking the income.

Second: You wrote that you are hiring instructors for upcoming year (december, January, february). Do you know maybe where have previous instructors gone? If you don’t, then I’ll enlighten your mind: they have just quit their job. If you don’t know why they have done that, then let me explain you why: deteriorated working conditions. The salary has decreased. Instead of trying to keep them in company by increasing salaries a bit, you have just let them go. Now, because of your greed, we as the students are struggling with lack of instructors, which equals to lack of flying and sending home the students that were supposed to start flying in Spain. Another problem is that you don’t even help your own employees in Spain finding any flat etc. So please tell me how is that possible in such „honoured” company with so many positive opinions? Allegedly, you are the best flight academy right after Lufthansa. That ranking made by your parent company explains everything.

Among us, the students, there are some guys that were leading and are still leading their own business and trust me, if you don’t have anyone that could organize that massive mess at the management department, then just ask some of us. We will find a solution, it is not hard, you just need to have good ability of logical thinking in advance. I can’t find that feature among your management workers. You need to keep in mind that we are not only the cash provider. We are the customers, we expect that goods, that you’ll sell us, will be good. And now you are selling us nothing more than empty promises. The only thing we can be sure is DELAY and the answer „we don’t know’’. When it comes to pay next instalments, we receive email everyday, but when we expect some answer to our questions from you, you have a problem to give us logical reply.

Dear BAA, we are not stupid, we know that very bad things happen inside the school, we speak with instructors, other students and so on. So please stop blurring our eyes. I don’t think that your are providing us efficient training. More than 4 months break at our initial stage of flying, I don’t think it’s good.

„big enough to offer large capabilities, close enough for personal care” that’s the slogan at the bottom of every page of your notebooks, that you are giving to students. Well, don’t you think that it’s time to change that slogan? You are not big enough to offer large capabilities AT ALL.

I know that the IFR student pilots in Spain have still less that 20 hours each, even though there are just few of them. The rest is sitting at home and waiting till the first group will finish. BAA, why did they do barely 20 hours in more that 2 months? Can we expect any answer from you?

Students and instructors are complaining a lot about that school and don’t recommend it to anyone. That means that the problem lies within the company.

So to sum up, instead of hiring hundreds of workers for useless stuff, maybe it’s time to focus more on students, who provide you huge income and instructors, that will ensure you effective students rotation. Otherwise I can’t see any reasonable solution. You’ll go down one day thanks to your own greed. So far I can honestly say, I wouldn't recommend anyone even to think about joining that school

Well well well...
Look who's going out of the wood when some negative feedbacks pop up.

The marketing & communications department is really efficient, as I wrote in my post ;)))
Here you can't ban me, huh?! ;)
The delays started in summer 2017, 16 months ago.

At that time, the VFR season was not finished for many of your students, some of them barely did 30 hours in 4 months.
More than half of the students didn't finish the VFR in 4 months.
As a total, the VFR part was done in 6 months...80 hours (13 hours per month !).
You are not a professional flying school, you are an amateur flying club.

So it's not about "the current situation", it's a very long term situation that you chose to ignore.
Today, you suffer the consequences
...or not. You'll get your salary anyway.

I'm going to make a translation here for the readers who are not insiders or former students of BAA :
- "The growing number of students" started in winter 2016-2017, 2 years ago. It's not a new phenomenon. It's been 2 years !
In 2016, you took one class of 10ish people in October, 10ish people in december, in 2017 25 people in february, and so on...without increasing the fleet, and now you are surprisingly in a panic situation?
You must be kidding.

- "Force majeur situations" are about extreme weather, unexpected closure of the airport, etc... Not about a lack of airplanes because the school decided to save money on the fleet!
Even if there is a crash, you were so greedy that you didn't have any enough back-up planes, like all any schools have.

- 14% is a lie. Students of all stages are delayed.
The multi-engine students are waiting for 2 months so far, and they have to wait until january to finish their flight training, they are not even sure to make it before the end of the contract. Their training will finish 24 months after starting. In other schools, it takes 16 months.
The IFR students are sent home until minimum end of February (some of them finished VFR in...September!!)
The VFR students don't fly as planned. Of course, there's half of the VFR fleet available. Fog appears in Lleida, winter begins.

It's a huge mess. You should tell the truth to your students and the people out there.

You didn't even plan how many instructors available you will have in the school for the upcoming months?
You can't make your work and study how many aircrafts you can fly, how many students you must train, how many instructors per students?
Basic calculations... you are not even able to do them. Remember your poor excel file you showed in spring, that was a total lie.

Same story as in 2017. You promised changes, you promised a bigger fleet, you promised a smooth training.
Nothing of those happened.

You shouldn't buy one more Cessna. You should double or triple your fleet !!!
How come CTC has 43 C172 and you have 6 poor flying C172 ???
FTE has 20 IFR Warriors. You have 6 IFR planes available.
Look how the students are stuck and desperate to fly !!

You really live on another planet.

Then how do you explain that the next group starting the multi-engine is planned for the 7th of January?
The multi is just not ready. And you have no idea when it will be for practical flying in Spain.

I just checked, Air Bartolini has 3 P2006. You have 1 and maybe soon 2. And that school is way smaller than you.
CTC has 17 multi-engines ! You have 1 and maybe soon 2.
European Flight Training has 14 ! You have 1 and maybe soon 2.
Should I continue?

The basic organisation is not even performed.

I should also add that the school (which includes the flights) closes 2 weeks for holidays.
Absolutely all the flying students are enduring a huge delay, BAA might not even be able to finish the students before the end of the student contracts.... but BAA closes 2 weeks for Christmas !
Go work in a regular company, you will get back to work the 2nd of January, and some people work during the christmas week.

Force majeure you said ? The delays are big? THEN GO WORK DURING HOLIDAYS !

Your team just plays pool and make social network pictures. All your system is about making Youtube videos by beginner students in a 737, roadshows, events for promotion of your school. The team seems to realise only now that the mess is huge.
Seriously?
You should fire all the cylinders now, make simple calculations about the number of airplanes/students/FI, make a plan, buy planes, hire enough FI and pay them properly, so as they don't escape like they all do.

Do.
Your.
Job.

Actually the post by "BAATraining" is just a copy-paste of the mail the students received yesterday.

You can't even explain yourself on a students & pilots forum.

You are just amateurs.
An amateur school which has no idea how to run a flight school.

I heard of many delays at this academy

@tecnamflyer

I just come to a conclusion about these numbers below.

2017 Feb groups have experienced delays of around 4/5 months.
- 2017 June group has experienced delays of about 6/7 months (are people in that class who finished VFR in June 2018 now have been told their IFR will be January 2019).
- 2017 September group has delays again of 6 months minimum (likely to increase because the current progress of IFR students ahead of them in Spain is very slow).
- 2017 October group has delays of about 7/8 months (People in this class finished VFR in September and latest news is they will not go to Spain at all, but start IFR in March/April back in Lithuania)

Looking from financial side of the window;

Considering the delay of 6 months ATPL integrated can be completed in any other training organization in around 16-18 months. Most of the students choose BAA because hoping to receive OK-ish training at reasonable price and plus airline partners (where I want to mention one more time expect Wizzair, rest of the airline partners are just make no sense to choose BAA) . However, if one finished training 6 months earlier, during this 6 months roughly inexperienced pilot can earn around 3k net. In addition, life expenses in that wasted time lets say on average 800 Euros in Lithuania -if you live somewhere this could of course get higher-. Therefore (6*3000) + (6*800) = 22.800 Euros. In my opinion this is the money students lost due to delays and all these happenings. Simply adding onto training cost; 72K +23K= 95K anyone considering to choose BAA should think about these numbers and make decision accordingly. Close to that amount you can even have training including accommodation and 3 course meal provided in some schools.

At the end of the day, simple student' training total cost, including all the life expenses will be as much as top notch schools such as CAE, L3 or FTE. BAA is just a random school. Without Wizzair partnership they wouldn't enroll more than 30-35 independent students per year.

Do you even know what force majeure means?!? You have been planning a move to Spain for over a year. OVER A YEAR! And after a major flop of operation in Spain for few months, you sent students back, ended up short of instructors and airplanes. Thats not force majeure, that is a JOKE OF OPERATION with a BAD MANAGEMENT.


Again, thats a lie. More than half of your students are effected. That is not 14%. Maybe you should take that compass test to improve your math.

Have you ever stopped to think why you are ending up placing an add for new instructors every month on Aviation websites? Do you even for one minute have stopped to think as to why no instructor ever stays for more than few months?

So, you had over a year to think about the Spanish operation, meanwhile enrolling more students but you are now almost NEGOTIATING or CLOSING A DEAL to purchase 2 Cessna 172s? Well whoop tee do to anyone who is dumb enough to actually feel happy about this (fake?) news

You communicate until you receive money. As soon as there is any problem, your solution to any problem is to stop communication or just play dumb.

In my opinion, you are probably THE worst institution in aviation history.

Before those so-called "cadet programs", that school was a random unknown school.
It was like a vacation club, rich kids driving Porsche Cayenne or the last BMW 6, quiet heaven where the pressure didn't exist.
Things have changed, the tills are full, but the holiday camp organisation remains the same.

Party is over. Go back to work!

I don't know what the Airlines think about getting students 6 months after the promized time.
Any Airline would be very upset to get their cadets with such a delay.
In the long term, those airlines would be totally right to break the contract with BAA, as the school is not even able to provide their new f/o in a reasonable time.
So be extremely careful about that school. Who knows what can happen soon...

Instead of going back to your present students to offer solutions or to get their opinion about possible future planning alternatives, you have just registered a new account here today to post your message on an open forum.
Even this act alone shows that your objective is to do some marketing towards 'future potential pilots'.
You people are incompetent in every aspect of aviation business.

Students are so desperate that they created a Facebook group to make fun of the school.
Go check it out, type Baltic Aviation Academy memes on Facebook you'll have some fun for the evening

Many things that are going down at BAA are basically ripped straight out of the Soviet playbooks: misinformation, keeping people in the dark, exerting psychological pressure and a clear lack of anything that could somehow be construed as a "customer friendly mentality" (oh, wait, no, the people shelling out tens of thousands of euros to attend a private flight school are not "customers" apparently...).
Mix all of this goodness with a fresh dose of newly imported capitalist greed and you've got one hell of a combination.

I could write an entire book about all the things there that it defies the apparent fact that this is a training organization operating under an EASA license. Clearly someone, somewhere, made a terrible mistake or ten.
Of course, many of their transgressions can surely be forgiven. Clearly they would pass any and all audits that might be conducted in the future.
The barely competent ground school instructors, some of whom speak English at a level that is far removed from even ICAO 4 and mostly play YouTube videos because "this subject is quite complicated"? Forgiven.
Making up nonsensical rules about "conduct at school" and exerting psychological pressure on the student body wherever possible? Forgiven.
Cutting corners to the absolute maximum extent possible ("Oh, you will have to pay for those epaulettes!"), singling out malcontents and trying to milk the current flood of students as much as possible before that house of cards they have created for themselves inevitably collapses? Forgiven?

Things are bad, there is no sugar-coating it. The idea to move operations to Lleida over the winter was so poorly thought through that it is hard to imagine what kind of process they must have followed as far as decision-making is concerned.

Fact is: winter weather in Lleida is terrible. The current maintenance solution is untenable. Operational conduct and planning are okay at the best of times and disastrous at the worst. The fog is all-encompassing and barely any flying will happen.

Add to that the fact that it is not a nice place to stay. Pretty much no one speaks English, few people are willing to rent to foreigners and especially not on short notice.

It goes without saying that training there is a major expense for many students with no help whatsoever provided by BAA. Let's not forget that all current students signed contracts for training in Lithuania. Nowhere does it mention having to move countries again. For many, this has been a giant hassle after having brought all of their ducks in a row in Lithuania, particularly for non-Europeans (think of residency, permits, etc.).

The biggest joke was that, though rumors had existed that a move to Spain was in the cards, concrete information was withheld for AS LONG AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. Why did they do this? What did they stand to gain from leaving people in the dark and preventing them from preparing a move to the other end of Europe? We shall never know.

Competent instructors have been leaving in droves. No wonder, they are just as shafted as the student body, if not worse. BAA provides little support to them, in addition to simply appalling working conditions and laughable remuneration. Their efforts to replace these instructors will do nothing but attract the dregs of the industry. Surely another point in favour of training quality and flight safety.

It seems that every step of the way the decisions they make only serve to shoot themselves in the foot with additional bullets. When profits skyrocketed due to influx of students, it would have been prudent to increase instructor remuneration to a level that resembles a living wage. It would have been prudent to invest in additional FNPTs in Vilnius, not simulators in Vietnam. It would have been most prudent to invest in more, desperately needed aircraft (and potentially aircraft that are actually suitable for dual seat training operations and not constantly bordering on or exceeding MTOW).

And, finally, it would have been prudent to select a base for winter operations after doing PROPER RESEARCH into the operating conditions there (it's also nice that aircraft currently cannot be maintained on site but have to be ferried to SABADELL) and not to select a base where the fog is famous enough to warrant status as a literal tourist attraction, though in all honesty, a winter base may not even have been necessary, if proper amounts of aircraft were available in Kaunas and training was scheduled in a more sensible manner in the first place...as such, the Lleida "expedition" resembles the era of imperialism leading up to WW1: it is BAA's "Place in the Sun" - or rather "Place in the Fog".

Let's not get into the, really quite irrelevant, topic of maintenance and safety, shall we? After all, this is clearly not a safety-critical industry...been there, done that. We even have our very own crash, news coverage and all. Isn't that lovely?

I wish that one day one of the higher-ups will blow the whistle on this whole outfit and release an autobiography laying out this charade in full detail. It could serve as study material for everyone from economists to social scientists - and sadly as cautionary tale for the entire aviation industry.

All this is just scratching the tip of an absolutely immense underwater iceberg of lies and incompetence. If you've not already pledged your soul and parent's savings to this band of merry fools, I advise you to stay as far away as possible. Though, do visit Lithuania if you get the chance, it truly is a magical place when you're not spending it at Dariaus ir Gireno gatvé.

I wonder if the Wizz Air is familiar with the situation in the school. I am certain that BAA didn't inform them. "Hey WizzAir, we are completely loosing control of the training process of your future pilots." What worries me is how Wizz will react when they see how terrible the situation in the school is. Will they just give up on us? It's not like BAA is the only school with the cadet program.

From the beginning of the ground school the support from the training managers was terrible or let me say 0. They present us with their Baby Dolls with 0 knowledge and think we will be fine with a constant "I don't know". I wonder if they even have interviews for employment in BAA or are the only requirements to be a female and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

I remember last December they gave us this fabulous schedule saying IFR will take 1 month. HAHAHAHAHA..... We asked the "I don't know" girl, (you can guess who it is) if it is a mistake in the chart and she said "No, IFR goes fast, It's not that many hours".....

She and every other BAA employee have to understand that we are doing them the favor by going to this school, not the opposite way. We the students are the clients who are paying a large amount of money, and by this paying their salaries. So they should stop treating us like we are in a public school and should stop rolling eyes when we ask questions.

I am not even going to mention how each sales manager imposes different contract rules to their students. Basically some students have 1 year to pay for the training others have more, others have less.
I am also not going to mention how after complaining about this chaos, the Ab Initio director told me to go to another school if I don't like it here. Very "professional" dude who aside of being famous for "knowing everything" actually tried to make a positive difference but wasn't liked by any of Ab Initio staff because he actually expected them to work and earn their salary. Not sit in the office and post instagram stories...

It shouldn't be mentioned as well that instructors threw one another under the bus this past flying season. Making reports about one another and so on. Also they are instructed by BAA to have 30min turnaround between each flight with a student. So you can imagine how the briefings and debriefings looked like. Sadly for most of the instructors they were nonexistent.
Only few brave instructors decided to actually teach their students in a proper way!

Some of the guys made it to the final check in the VFR stage without knowing that there is an entry procedure for an Aerodrome they have flown to many times in their 80h vfr training. This is not the mistake of student but the instructor who let him fly in the first place. But this is what happens when you have instructors who sleep, play games and talk on the phones, and this is not only during lesson flights but also check flights! Yes check flights! Then again you have students who prefer these kind of instructors......

I personalty told 7 people who were considering BAA to run away without looking back. That's 7x72k=504 k... Potentially half a mil EUR. Surely I am not the only one who is giving this advice. Maybe this way they will actually understand that the way they treat us will have consequences.

This feedback is mostly for the people who are thinking to join this organization, for us who are already there it won't solve any problem or give us any money back. So if you are one of the potential ,,future pilots" please read it carefully.

First of all, at the beginning you will get a beautiful impression from THE SALES DEPARTMENT. The one and only thing which they know how to do is marketing and telling you fairytales - but this fairytale is not from the Disney and unfortunately doesn't have happy ending.

They will give you all the information for joining and assessment process plus the payment which is the crucial part for them.

Facilities are beautiful as Instagram and Facebook pictures, but thats it. Don't expect nothing else.
Even the contract is written only for them not for you! (You have to, You must, but BAA has any obligations towards you)

So if you are considering also another school which is more expensive - maybe at the end its the same price. (compared to L3 academy) Because not all things which look cheap at the beginning are cheap at the end. Be ready, you will have to pay for accommodation and travel expenses - which is not a big deal, unless you have to move 3 times in a year and nobody is willing to rent apartment for less then year. (bye bye deposits ).

Regarding traveling, most of the time you get the final information in a good case one week before the flight so you can imagine also the price for the flight ticket.

Now more about the quality. I would say it with one sentence - One day you are working at the front desk and the next day you are in management.
Don't expect any proactive approach from management unless it's regarding your payments.

I just wonder how the airlines signed the contract with this organization, maybe they used also the beautiful PowerPoint presentations for them as well and didn't show them the truth.

I am also happy for the instructors, who are so brave and still providing perfect service although they are treated as a ****. Big respect for them but majority of them already left. I think it's very common in this facility to be arrogant to get a job in a management and the worst thing, the will never admit - they made a mistake. Most of the time they will make you to look like a dumb person who is unable to count 1 to 10. Maybe one day we will post also Name and Shame to know who you should avoid in your future and give them the harder feedback!

I think majority of the things regarding the number of aircrafts and schedule have been posted here before, but I just want to raise my voice and tell you - IT IS ALL THE TRUTH. Maybe this kind of feedback will bring this organization back to reality and give them wake up call.

For the rest of the guys and girls who finally woke up from #feelingblessed #futurpilot #pilottobe #pilotlife good luck and stay strong, although with the last money we have.
And if you find those few selected pilots from this organization don't believe everything what is written on ,,official" social medias.

Oh and also something which you get for your money or lets say for ,,free."

Demotivation and Frustration

GreenYoda;

They are planning to address the students tomorrow with the usual “all is good. social media posts are lies. we are buying 200 more planes and hiring 500 instructors” type of speeches. Maybe all the hidden issues should be spoken then?!?[/left]

Wow, that has been some shocking read for me.. I suspected there might be some internal mess but I didn't think it was _that_ bad! Good thing that I didn't pull the trigger to pick up studies at BAA, although it was just minutes before making the positive decision (school being just a few km from my home is quite convenient thing...). Thanks guys for sharing the reality from the inside!

Having said that, maybe someone could give some reference to a decent flight school in Poland (as metnioned above)? Anything will work - name of the school, their site, etc...

Thanks!

Dear Ladies & Gents,
Sorry to read all this negative news concerning BAA.
There is one thing I would like to say.
I got hired by BAA as a flight instructor 2 months ago. I went to Lleida in November, but unfortunately due to unforeseen problems back home, I had to put in my resignation.
I only stayed in Lleida for 5 days. What I can say is that the salary offered by BAA was above aviation flight instructor standards. I was making half of what BAA offered when I was with L3 in Portugal.
I would also like to mention that BAA HR Office treated me very well, when I had to go back home again after such a short period. So no complaints there either.
Just my 2 cents....
I wish all BAA students lots of luck with their future training !
Happy holidays to everyone !

Your not much, if you ain`t Dutch ! ;)