AGS (Airline Ground Schools/Flamingo Air) Distance Learning Course Review

A lot of programs are good with decent instructors. What's most important is what you do when you go home. Do you make notecards of important FARS, Wx info, A/C aspects, Performance etc and quiz yourself? How about getting together with other classmates and working together. Probably if you're in this forum you do this stuff - plus you make the contacts here and elsewhere which will get your foot in the door. This separates from 80% of others who sit in class and later hope HR can find them a job...I'm preaching to the choir I know...
 
Since I have finished with DX school, I thought I would share my experience going through the AGS online course and the 6 day residency portion. For a little background, I signed up for the course in Dec of 2012 and went to the 6 day residency portion at the end of June 2013.

First off, I'd like to say that everyone at AGS, aka Flamingo Air or Airline Ground Schools, was extremely friendly and helpful. There was a definite family feel to their school, yet everything was professional. I called and talked to Sharon (the school president) as well as Marty who both emailed me more info on the course. When I decided to sign up for the course, I made a down payment of $595 and was allowed to make monthly payments for the 6 months leading up to the residency portion of the class. This was very helpful since it meant that I didn't have to shell out the whole amount for the class right up front nor did I have to wait and save money to pay it all at once. Within 30min of emailing in my application, I got a confirmation email/letter with login info for the online portion of the course as well as a list of books that needed to be purchased. You could either buy everything on your own or purchase the book kit from them. I just bought everything on my off Ebay and saved a few bucks.

Online Portion: They use DigitalChalk (http://www.digitalchalk.com/) to present the online units. Most units are presented as a mix of a powerpoint kind of presentation with the audio of someone narrating things. It's very similar to sitting in a classroom and having an instructor teach you. Aside from the digitalchalk presentations, there are many units which are really just links to AOPA presentations, FAA videos to be downloaded and viewed as well as actual powerpoint presentations. I will admit that a few of the online units are downright lousy due to the "instructor" that is just reading the slides. For the most part you have an instructor speaking, explaining things and teaching you, but on about 5 lesson units they have a guy as well as a girl that just reads (actually misreads allot) what is on the slide and does no teaching. I ended up just muting the volume for these units and read the slides on my own. The rest were thoroughly enjoyable and I learned a whole lot from them. The online course is broken up into sections, i.e Meteorology I, Met II, Emergencies, Navigation, Practical Dispatch and so forth. At the end of each section, that is, after watching all the presentations and completing the AOPA courses for each section, you are given an online, open book written test that you must pass to move on to the next section. Each test is just questions taken from the ADX exam and the info covered in the preceding units don't really prepare you for those little tests. I guess it's just another chance to go over some of the ADX questions. The online course is approx 152 hours of material, though in reality it takes much longer to complete since you will most likely be pausing to take notes and some of the AOPA courses take quite a while to complete. One nice thing about all the AOPA online courses they make you take is that you get Wings credit if you're a pilot and this goes towards your BFR.

Aside from your online course work, you will have various books to read and study, such as the Aviation Weather Services book, Aviation Weather, the Dispatcher Oral Exam Prep book as well as the FAR FC and FAR/AIM. I actually didn't read through all those books by the time the residency portion rolled around and so I just had to look some stuff up in class. They warn you over and over again that you shouldn't sign up for this course if you are the type of person that procrastinates and is not self motivated. Man, are they telling the truth. I worked pretty regularly on the online stuff but didn't spend as much time as I should have on studying the books and preparing for the ADX. Well, it came down to 1 month before I was supposed to go up to Cincinnati and I had to spend every free moment I had studying. I literally had no life for a month. I'd study in the morning before work and as soon as I got home, I got back to studying and would study until 11pm every night. That went on for exactly a month and it wasn't fun. I sure should have spaced things out more and spend more of the 6 months studying my books and preparing for the ADX.

Regarding the ADX, they strongly advise you to have take and passed it prior to arriving for the residency portion. Fortunately I did, but there were about 4 people in our class of 11 who had not taken it yet or who had not passed it on their first try and they were so much more stressed than the rest of us. On top of that, while those of us who had already taken it could spend our evening prepping for the oral and practical, they had to study for the ADX on top of everything else. Pass the ADX before you get up there!!

On the the residency portion: Flamingo Air/AGS is located at historic Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, OH in the historic terminal building. Man, that place is full of aviation history! The terminal was built back in the 1930's and they have an Aeronca hanging inside. One nice thing is the onsite restaurant in the terminal called the Sky Galley Restaurant. The neat thing about this place is that it was the first restaurant to provide catering to the AA flights out of Lunken. Anybody seen the catering trucks at the airport with Sky Galley on them? Well, that company started at Lunken in that restaurant! Needless to say, it's a great place to get lunch everyday (Prices are $7-12) with a good selection. You get 1 hour for lunch. Also, somebody from the school offered to take anyone who wanted to go to a grocery store about 10min from the airport.

Hotel: AGS has a deal with the downtown Radisson for rates at $62 a night for a king or double and $69 a night if you want a fridge. That's a super good deal since the expedia rate was over $100 a night. On top of that, the school has a free shuttle everyday that will pick you up from the hotel and drop you back off. The hotel has 2 restaurants as well as a very nice indoor pool. (Not that you would go. You should be in your room studying! :) ) Most of the class stayed at the hotel and we would have dinner together some of the nights or get together to have study groups. Oh, the restaurant has a nice bar which is a great place to get a beer when you finally pass everything.

Class starts at 8:00am every morning. They give you a 10min break every hour which is very nice since you're covering so much information. It really helps you keep your mind fresh and keeps you from getting bored. They have quite a few different instructors and it just depends on who you get. We had Danny for the first day and then for a another afternoon and Pete for the rest of the time. Danny is an amazing individual with so much experience and so many stories. He's been an ATC, pilot as well as a dispatcher. What a nice guy! Everyone thoroughly enjoyed his method of teaching. Pete was also a very good instructor. He was an ex-Air Fore pilot (flew the KC-135 among other things) and then went on to fly cargo. He is a very patient individual and very helpful as well. I will say that it was hard to follow him a couple of time in flight planning because he jumped around some. All in all, he's a very good instructor.

Class is intense. As they say, it's like drinking from a fire hose. Your brain will literally hurt from all the info and it's really hard to make it come together at first. On Wednesday, they start prepping you for the oral test all morning by going over and over stuff. You also do more flight planning. I forgot to mention that when you get to school the first day, they give you a couple more books as well as a binder with all the B737-300 performance specs as well as your airport info for the different city pairings. You use all that in your flight planning.

Thursday was another flight plan that had to be done on your own with no help as well as a 50 question written, closed book test. I think they would sign you off if you passed both those. The rest of Thursday was oral exam prep and general review of the info.

On Tuesday they start scheduling times for the oral/practical. I decided to take mine Thursday afternoon after class. I was hoping that everything would be very fresh in my mind and plus, I just wanted to get it over with. I didn't want to get nervous over the test that night and freak myself out on Friday. Some took their test on Friday and others took theirs on Saturday. They have 1 FAA examiner as well as 3 or 4 DEs. From talking with classmates, sounds like all the DEs and even the FAA guy is fair and won't try to throw you any curve balls or fail you over something stupid. I will say that the weather package they gave me scared the crap out of me. There was a line of TS from Canada down to Louisiana. I had to plan a flight from MSY to CVG. I spent 45min going over and over the SIGMETs and weather making sure I wasn't missing something and then I played it very safe making sure I didn't fly through any TS, something that many people have done in the past and failed because of. The DE told me that he just wanted me to come up with a plan. He didn't care if it was a good plan or a lousy one, but to have a plan. He kept reminding me not to fly through any TS or bust any regs. I guess I didn't do any of those things because I passed the practical portion. I took a 15min break before I started the oral portion. All in all, I sat down with the DE at 3pm and didn't leave until 9pm. Boy was I tired. That celebration beer sure tasted good! :cool:

As I mentioned before, I was extremely happy with both the online as well as the residency portion of AGS. It's a very good school with a bunch of nice people working there. I also made some very good friends with some of my classmates while I was up there. We're definitely going to keep in touch.

If anyone has any questions or wants more info on anything, please let me know. If my little review helped you decide to go to AGS, please PM me. I was told there is a reward program for referring people and I'll give you my name in the PM. We could even split the reward. Also, I'll post some pics as well. Hope this helps some who have been on the fence about whether to sign up not.
Thanks a bunch for the great review. You didn't say if you had previous aviation knowledge or experience before signing up for AGS, it would be great if you told us about your background.
 
Thanks a bunch for the great review. You didn't say if you had previous aviation knowledge or experience before signing up for AGS, it would be great if you told us about your background.

I was a private pilot when I started the AGS course and was working in my instrument rating. It was very challenging and honestly don't know if I could have done it with no aviation experience or background.
 
Dumb question...but since they dont do financial aid (most ADX schools dont it seems) how are most of you financing school? Savings? throwing it on credit card? Taking a personal loan? Few banks do student loans anymore, and the ones that do only seem to do them with "approved" schools
 
azmedic said:
Dumb question...but since they dont do financial aid (most ADX schools dont it seems) how are most of you financing school? Savings? throwing it on credit card? Taking a personal loan? Few banks do student loans anymore, and the ones that do only seem to do them with "approved" schools

I used a 0% interest credit card and paid it off before the promo was over.
 
In terms of earning potential vs. Dollars spent on education, it's one of the best investments you can make.

Absolutely. I challenge people to find a cheaper career path investment where you come out on top making the kind of money you do dispatching. I exactly doubled my income going from the ramp to dispatching at a regional. I again doubled my income when I went from that regional to a major.
 
I used a 0% interest credit card and paid it off before the promo was over.

Thats the route I'm probably going to end up going. Just so happens I got a flyer in the mail the other day from Amex advertising a 0% promo APR :) I was just curious how creative some people got
 
azmedic said:
Thats the route I'm probably going to end up going. Just so happens I got a flyer in the mail the other day from Amex advertising a 0% promo APR :) I was just curious how creative some people got

Google credit card promo offers. You'll likely find a better deal than what you got in the mail. :)
 
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