Learning to Fly with a new flying school
 

Danny,
Have you looked at South African flying schools many of which offer JAA courses. Some also have JAA examiners and will do all the paperwork thro JAA.
Other plus points are cheap fuel (£40 per hour dual) and tuition and very cheap accommodation and food and good weather.

Flight Training College of Africa www.ftcaafrica.com (Jo-burg and definitely does JAA)
Blue Chip Aviation [email protected] (Pretoria)
Rand Flight Academy www.randflight.co.za (Jo-burg)
Airline pilot training Centre www.aptrac.co (Port Elizabeth)

Good luck

Tony

www

Reading some of the above posts I can't help but wonder why you bother sometimes mate...

:rolleyes:

Re. WWW
 

Nowt but respect, the guy has the T-shirt and was like most of you (and lurkers like me!)

Listen to his advice.

Whilst on the subject, training is cheap (as are the costs of living) here in NZ and the licence fairly easy to redo elsewhere.

tharper- I've got information from 58 different flying schools from all over the world, including South Africa. (Plus I'm waiting for info from another 6!)

You might think thats a little over the top, but doing all that research can only be a good thing, surely?

Anyway- before me, I have a March 2003 copy of FLYER, open on page 82. On the left:
So it is JAA approved, unless their lying!!!

Yes but what does "JAA Approved" actually mean?

Check that it means the CAA will let you fly G registered aircraft with a Czech issued "JAA" license.

The concept of dirt cheap flight training in the former Eastern Bloc countries is not one which I necessarily decry. But do not commit to spending money before you have something in writing from the UK CAA would be my advice.

Good luck one and all,

WWW

This argument about what is or is not a proper licence is dragging on far too long.

Read LASORS 2003 edition, section A, page 3, which lists those states which were JAR fully approved in October 2002. You will see that the Czech Republic is amongst them, with approval for JAR FCL 1 and 3, which means that fixed wing training is approved.

So far as the source of licence issue is concerned, it is irrelevant. There is effectively no such thing as a Czech JAR licence or a UK JAR licence. They are all identical JAR licences, simply issued in different states. Anyone desperate to have "UK" on a licence can do so by following the procedure outlined in LASORS section A, page 10, which explains that the state of licence issue may be changed if a pilot works or resides in a state different from that of licence issue. There is only a small fee for this.

If a pilot has a licence issued in one state and wishes to add a rating, this can be done in any other state. This was the whole idea of JAA in the first place. So, you can fly your G-registered aeroplane until you run out of objections to the idea of cross-state acceptability. Let's hope that it won't be too long before we in western Europe are able to accept that people in other places can actually do the job just as well as we can, whatever the arguments are on pricing.

I am not on commission, but may I commend LASORS to those who want authoritative answers rather than supposition and rumour?

Yes but natural born sceptic that I am I want to see someone do it before I believe it.

It may well work just fine. In which case all eyes swivle Eastwards...

WWW

Training
 

LOW COST

I have to agree with the comment, theres no such thing, but that depends on your perspective, a £1000 - 2000 more for a repectable school may just be a prudent saving in the end.

I am looking at doing my IR, have spent a lot of time gathering brochures, ringing them up and seeing what there services are like, on and off the phone.

I personally want someone to give me a hard time while training, to expect better than standard than the minimum, we all know they want your money, and have to say only 3 i have rung so far i would consider going too, and i have made appointments for a personal visit, and then i will make a decision.

After 2 years of finding the good and bad schools during my training, you tend to get a feel. This is a particular problem with going abroad, you dont get to see before you arrive.

But i do have to say i have only ever found one bad school. I think thats a good recommendation for the industry.

At the end of the day, remember, they want your money, a reputable school will keep you informed of your progress and at an early stage too if they think you will overrun, and never pay upfront, it costs them the same, not 000's less because you paid them lots upfront

Don't put too much weight on how a school handles initial enquiries and general admin. Its the quality of the one on one instruction in the air that should concern you. The availability of aircraft and the operational interity of the home airfield.

There are a number of schools I know of who are pretty shaky at picking up the phone and have nasty advertising materials yet are excellent places to learnt o pass flight tests.

Speaking to past customers if one of the most valuable things you can do. Particularly when they have left the school at least 6 months ago. When you are there or just graduated you have an understandable enthusiasm for the place you trained. Once that has worn off a disspassionate view can be gained.

If it is any comfort I can say that there are no rogue schools in the UK. If there were any that consistently did a poor job or let their students down routinely then you would hear about it here. Which you don't.

WWW

Maybe its prudent to remember that its not just the ratings you need to get an Airline job.
To get your CV selected by the Training Captain even for an interview, from several hundred others on his desk, means that yours has to be a little bit special. In the brains of most Training / Recruitment Captains I have ever met, there is no substitute for a candidate trained in UK airspace, and by a "credible" FTO,
There may be a cheaper route to the rating, but perhaps not to the interview.
Good luck anyway.

I think the problem is that WWW was looking at the wrong part of the JAA website. It took me about 3 minutes of searching to discover this "List of JAA-NAA with Recommendation for Mutual Recognition" Here
As Peterpam says, a JAA licence issued by any one of those states listed (including the Czech Republic) is exactly the same as any other. The UK CAA will certainly recognise it.

Thanks everyone for your help and advice!
Like you say, it probably is better that I train with an established UK school with a good reputation. This school in the Czech Republic was 'just another flying school' that I'd come across and wanted to find out more about.
Is anything in aviation cheap? Perhaps I should have said cheaper