Hola Javier

Do any of the Madrid schools offer distance learning?

Do you have the name or e-mail address for the Malaga school?

Gracias

Dick W.

Having trained at one of the schools in Malaga and flown quite a few times into Cuatro Vientos in Madrid I hope that I can give a few pointers.

1. Expect schools in Spain to be fairly slow. If they say two years plan on three. This is normally due to bad organisation coupled with inadequate fleets for the number of students.

2. Cuatro Vientos is a small airfield that serves almost all the GA traffic in Madrid. It is extremely busy, even quite dangerous at times. This congestion means that you can expect to use a fair ammount of your training time sitting at the holding point waiting in the queue for TO and likewise to join the circuit for landing.

2. Cuatro Vientos is also a strictly VFR airfield, this means that you will have to travel a fair distance to practice ILS's and will do 'mock' VOR approaches at nearby Navas VOR. This is not ideal and will also often be overcrowded.

3. Fog can be a problem in the winter in Madrid.

4. In my experience all the schools in Malaga have a long list of angry students that feel cheated to a greater or lesser degree. This often due to the shortage of aircraft or instructors with the result of courses being delayed. Make sure that you speak to some of them before parting with any cash.

5. In the other hand Malaga has very good Wx and is a busy international airport with at least 4 other international airports nearby all with a good variety of IFR procedures. This is also true to a lesser extent of Valencia (the base of Airmed).

6. Training in Spain it will be a lot cheaper. Courses are cheaper and specially living expenses are a lot cheaper. You will be very hard presssed not to have a ball (when you are not arguing with the school about when you might possibly get to fly next, that is).

7. is an MCC course in an A320 such a good idea? after all how many sim checks (for a job) are done in an airbus/side stick type aircraft?

My final piece of advice if you think that Spain is for you is:

Hagle the price like mad (some people in my course paid almost half of the list price).

Try to get a firm finish date for the course with a good compensation if it is not achived.

Be relaxed things take time in spain

Hope this helps


Cal