Murdoughnut
Well sized member
Ha - so my bad luck continues. I wanted to share this story with you guys mostly due to the humor of it (I'm just glad I can laugh about it), but also as a heads up.
So I found a place in central Florida that advertised a multi-add on to the PPL for about $1,200 (plus examiner's fee). They use a '57 Apache, and the program is supposed to include like 5-hours of dual, followed by the checkride. The school is an "accelerated flight training center" - they pride themselves on the fact that they once had a guy finish his PPL in 9-days. Sounds more scary to me than anything, but the place came highly recommended, so I called them up.
I told the guy that I work during the week and was looking to knock out the multi-add on in two days over the weekend. "No problem" he said "we can have you take the checkride Sunday afternoon." So I paid the $500 deposit to reserve my weekend.
Fast forward to Saturday (yesterday) morning. I drove in from St. Pete and showed up at 8:30am. I was scheduled to begin at 9am - that's what they told me on the phone, and that's what I was booked for on their online schedule. When I get there, there's about 50 geriatrics hanging around the place, not really doing anything but shooting the poo. I finally found the guy I was supposed to train with - the owner's son. "Oh, I didn't expect you until noon" he says. "Uh, your online schedule has you and I booked from 9-4pm today". "Well I must not have gotten the message". So the first two hours I'm there, he has me browse through the POH while he makes phone calls and handles all sorts of admin stuff for the school. At about 10:30 I query him and find out that he booked an aerobatics student over top of my scheduled time from 11-12. After BS'ing with some of the old farts that are still lingering around the airport for no apparent reason whatsoever, he and the aero student eventually go up,getting back around noon.
From noon to 1:30 ish was ground school time, which consisted of him teaching the ground portion when not interrupted by various tasks for the flight school. All the while, random people are coming in to shoot the poo with him some more during our ground lesson. "Ahh, I remember the time a guy in a 310 came in here and lost his critical engine ... blah, blah, blah". Seriously, who are you F tards and why the hell do you insist on interrupting my ground school.
We were supposed to go up in the plane after the ground, but the MEI had to wait for someone to get back from a garage sale shopping trip to answer the phones, so I sat until 2:30 at which point I finally got to take the plane up. Now I'm a bit freaked out at this point because this is the busiest non-towered airport I've ever seen - at least 4-guys in the pattern all day long, and twice I saw two aircraft flying directly above each other in the pattern. Also, one of the reasons I wanted to get my time in early in the day was because weather was moving in. Didn't turn out to be much more than light rain, but still kinda frustrating. The plane actually flew great, and the instruction was good, but we came back in after 0.9.
So then I sit around until about 5pm ish when I'm introduced to a new instructor who I'll be going up with. Guess my MEI who I was booked with all day didn't have the time for me. New guy is very nice - just two problems. Now he's teaching me the same stuff I just did in the first lesson, and at no point does he appear concerned by the fact that as we're flying along, other a/c are passing dangerously close to us without either of us noticing. At one point when he was deep into explaining something to me, another a/c passes about 50 yards beneath us. The MEI notices the plane and gets on the radio to joke with the other CFI about the situation. I'm less entertained.
So we head back close to 6 and I find out that the examiner doesn't like to do Sunday exams, so they've scheduled my exam for next Saturday. F@#$! The whole point was to knock it out in a weekend so I wouldn't have to come back. I headed to my hotel I had reserved for the night, not feeling too confident about the place at all. I told myself that if the hotel would cancel my reservation, I'd accept that as a sign and head home. They did and I drove my arse back to St. Pete.
The flight time I got was valuable, although I probably lost about $40 of my deposit by not returning. I called the flight school this morning and made up a story about having to leave town all of a sudden. I'll take what I learned elsewhere for sure, but the whole situation was just so unprofessional. It definitely seemed like they couldn't have cared less that I was there - they were far more concerned with chatting it up with the local yahoos. I just couldn't see giving them any more of my money.
If anyone wants to know the name of the school, PM me - I certainly don't want to get into a pissing match with them since they have my credit card #. Thanks for letting me vent!
So I found a place in central Florida that advertised a multi-add on to the PPL for about $1,200 (plus examiner's fee). They use a '57 Apache, and the program is supposed to include like 5-hours of dual, followed by the checkride. The school is an "accelerated flight training center" - they pride themselves on the fact that they once had a guy finish his PPL in 9-days. Sounds more scary to me than anything, but the place came highly recommended, so I called them up.
I told the guy that I work during the week and was looking to knock out the multi-add on in two days over the weekend. "No problem" he said "we can have you take the checkride Sunday afternoon." So I paid the $500 deposit to reserve my weekend.
Fast forward to Saturday (yesterday) morning. I drove in from St. Pete and showed up at 8:30am. I was scheduled to begin at 9am - that's what they told me on the phone, and that's what I was booked for on their online schedule. When I get there, there's about 50 geriatrics hanging around the place, not really doing anything but shooting the poo. I finally found the guy I was supposed to train with - the owner's son. "Oh, I didn't expect you until noon" he says. "Uh, your online schedule has you and I booked from 9-4pm today". "Well I must not have gotten the message". So the first two hours I'm there, he has me browse through the POH while he makes phone calls and handles all sorts of admin stuff for the school. At about 10:30 I query him and find out that he booked an aerobatics student over top of my scheduled time from 11-12. After BS'ing with some of the old farts that are still lingering around the airport for no apparent reason whatsoever, he and the aero student eventually go up,getting back around noon.
From noon to 1:30 ish was ground school time, which consisted of him teaching the ground portion when not interrupted by various tasks for the flight school. All the while, random people are coming in to shoot the poo with him some more during our ground lesson. "Ahh, I remember the time a guy in a 310 came in here and lost his critical engine ... blah, blah, blah". Seriously, who are you F tards and why the hell do you insist on interrupting my ground school.
We were supposed to go up in the plane after the ground, but the MEI had to wait for someone to get back from a garage sale shopping trip to answer the phones, so I sat until 2:30 at which point I finally got to take the plane up. Now I'm a bit freaked out at this point because this is the busiest non-towered airport I've ever seen - at least 4-guys in the pattern all day long, and twice I saw two aircraft flying directly above each other in the pattern. Also, one of the reasons I wanted to get my time in early in the day was because weather was moving in. Didn't turn out to be much more than light rain, but still kinda frustrating. The plane actually flew great, and the instruction was good, but we came back in after 0.9.
So then I sit around until about 5pm ish when I'm introduced to a new instructor who I'll be going up with. Guess my MEI who I was booked with all day didn't have the time for me. New guy is very nice - just two problems. Now he's teaching me the same stuff I just did in the first lesson, and at no point does he appear concerned by the fact that as we're flying along, other a/c are passing dangerously close to us without either of us noticing. At one point when he was deep into explaining something to me, another a/c passes about 50 yards beneath us. The MEI notices the plane and gets on the radio to joke with the other CFI about the situation. I'm less entertained.
So we head back close to 6 and I find out that the examiner doesn't like to do Sunday exams, so they've scheduled my exam for next Saturday. F@#$! The whole point was to knock it out in a weekend so I wouldn't have to come back. I headed to my hotel I had reserved for the night, not feeling too confident about the place at all. I told myself that if the hotel would cancel my reservation, I'd accept that as a sign and head home. They did and I drove my arse back to St. Pete.
The flight time I got was valuable, although I probably lost about $40 of my deposit by not returning. I called the flight school this morning and made up a story about having to leave town all of a sudden. I'll take what I learned elsewhere for sure, but the whole situation was just so unprofessional. It definitely seemed like they couldn't have cared less that I was there - they were far more concerned with chatting it up with the local yahoos. I just couldn't see giving them any more of my money.
If anyone wants to know the name of the school, PM me - I certainly don't want to get into a pissing match with them since they have my credit card #. Thanks for letting me vent!