Dear Diary "The day the nuke was dropped"

I just wanted to add a little positive information to this thread. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, we have less students now. The instructor to student ratio is better as well. While we do not have any new full time career students (PPL through CPL), we have done a lot of training recently. Here is what we have been doing:

Japanese PPL students: We are finishing them in approximately 60 days with 50-55hrs. The agency they use in Japan is now sending 2 at a time.

ALPS students: They get 25 hours before starting Air Force Training. We usually finish them in about a month. Right now we have one ALPS student from Columbia that just finished. I believe we have 2 more coming in June. Again, the max we get are 2 at a time.

Instrument students (10 day course): We have done a couple of these as well. 10 days is pretty demanding, considering the student has to get everything right the first time to make it. Most are taking about 14 days (average). We did two of these students recently, and I am not sure about any other ones coming down the pipeline.

Part-Time students: We have 2-3 part time students. You all know Ricky from Jet Careers. Most of them are finishing at a pretty good pace, considering they work full time. We had a recent student that flew as much as he could before being transfered to a new base. He got up to the 200 hour mark before leaving, which in his short time frame was pretty good.

ATP students: We do get these students as well, but they come randomly for the short program. We have one ATP student currently. He is happy with the program. He tried doing it at Sheble and another place in MN. So we must be doing something right! :)

I post this not to lessen the value of what others are saying, but just to show that we are constantly improving and do have success stories. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I think originally the instructor to student ratio was too low, especially in twin. When I got my MEI that really did help. Also, we are limiting the amount of students that come at one time. This helps us finish the students faster.

If any of you have questions for me, please feel free to PM me here at JC!

Les
 
wrote: I also used to think he had multiple personalities for example, when I first visited the school he was really nice. When I actually started training, and he received the funds he would not give me the time of day. From one day to the next his attitude would really fluctuate. He also had a way of trying to belittle students and had very little respect for others. Strangely enough, he liked to punish me (as if I was in grade school) every time I expressed my unhappiness after continuously waiting patiently I would be put on the “black list” or just banned from flying altogether. The most recent example I can recall is when I was going to take my Instrument written in August (yes I know April to August, wow that’s a long time for an Instrument rating). As I previously mentioned the flying was very sporadic and before my Instrument written test I had flown about 10 hours (you guessed it, comm. cross country) in 2 days and I requested about 1 extra day to study. LOL, that really sent Carl into a rage! He banned me from flying for 2 weeks (August 5 – August 19 to be exact) !! He wouldn’t even respond to my phone calls, text messages, or emails. But I’m pretty sure it was for my own good. Or in his words “You see this is why students can’t finish, they want 90 days but they are never prepared”.

Well, I have been away from this site for quite a few months now and am happy I visited again!

Maybe it's time for me to share my experience there at Accessible Aviation. I arrived there in May 07 and left in September 07. I showed up there with 40 hours in my logbook and pretty close to my PPL. I left there with my Instrument rating and about 200 hours in the logbook. After my first month or so there, another member from this site, Yoda, joined me there.

So my experience there....one of the lowest points in my life. Why? Mr. Carl Nuzzo. You see, I was the one that introduced Carl to JC and boy was that one of the biggest mistakes in my life. And I guess the motivation behind this post is to right the wrong that I induced into this JC world.

It took me quite a bit of time to recover from the extremely negative experiences that I suffered under the direction of Mr. Carl Nuzzo. In a nutshell, the setup he has there with that flight school and the conditions in which having a pristine environment to train students how to fly and nail each of the ratings along the road to CFI - the conditions are perfect. Except....there is one major overriding problem. His name is Benjamin Linus, AKA Carl Nuzzo. In a nutshell, he is his own worst enemy. As PlayaSteelo mentioned above, I couldn't have put it any better myself. He constantly belittled me, and everyone else he had as students there. There are so many examples that I could give in this regard, but the one that finally enlightened and inspired me to walk away from there was when I was coming to the end of my Commercial cross-countries and he would only let me fly from KGTR - Tuscaloosa - Tupelo....no stopping if I needed to to use the restroom, or nothing. DO NOT STOP THAT ENGINE in the 172R. The total trip time was around 2.1 Hobbs. He expected me to do this for every cross-country for around 25 hours total. At this point, I took all my training folder and went to Kinkos and copied every single piece of paper that was generated as part of my training. I packed my stuff and left Carl a voice mail to give me a call. A call that has never came. I got in my truck and headed back to Texas. He never called me, never once. No email, no nothing.

I spent most of my dual flight time with Brandon. Brandon is one of the best instructors that I have ever come across. However, just as mentioned by PlayaSteelo, he had a problem going one inch of the extra mile. I think this is because he did work full-time on base and had other things going on with his family. But when I was learning from Brandon, I really was taught how to fly an airplane.

I came back to Texas and reverted over to part 61 to finish my Commercial ME and SE licenses. I had almost 50 hours to do, and I partnered with a really good guy and got another 40-50 hours in a Seminole as we did the safety pilot flying all around Texas in a Seminole.

I took the Commercial ME and SE tests on the same day in first week of November of '07. I nailed both of them that day. I then went on to American Flyers and did their one month CFII and CFI add-on Flight Academy. Great experience there. I did bust my initial CFII with the FAA/FSDO, first and only bust I had. But a week later, I nailed it.

In summary, if you are considering going to Accessible Aviation, send me a PM. I will give you the straight facts of what you will be getting into. Again, I am not trying to encourage or discourage anyone from going to Accessible Aviation to get ANY rating. I am only interested in letting anyone know what they will be getting into there.

RickyRhodes has vouched for this place several times in previous posts. Ricky is an outstanding person and one of the coolest controllers I have ever met. Solid guy. However, other than Ricky, I beg of anyone else that has done any PPL, Instrument, Commercial ME / SE training at Accessible to post one success story of this place. That is, anyone that 'tried' to do the full-time student thing and finished up ratings at Accessible and had dealings with Carl. PlayaSteelo's story along with several others we have heard are nothing less than negative experiences there. So...I am just asking for one success story. Please let me know how you did it. And always remember....if it sounds too good to be true....it always is.

Finally, I commend you PlayaSteelo for walking away from there when you did. You have no idea how smart of a decision you made by doing so. Learning to fly airplanes and the money it takes should be a very positive experience. If you, along with everyone else, paid their hard earned money to get this training, you deserve to be provided with a good service. If you are unhappy with the service you are getting from learning how to fly airplanes, let your money do the talking and take your business to a place that lives up to their promises.

Happy flying, everyone. Yoda...what are your thoughts?
 
Chewie, my man! There have been three positive experiences derived from my time at Accessible Aviation. I am more critical of everything ( I trust nothing for what it seems), I was able to fly with Brandon (AF MIL POLICE) and Jim (retired c-130 pilot, AF), third: Chewie and I became good friends from this experience.

Just as Carl said, I was the student with the family issues. My wife, an RN, BSN, had just seperated from the Army, my father in law was in the ICU (he later passed in November 2007) and my wife would have to travel from Columbia, SC to Tampa, FL. In order to substitute my income, I had taken $10,000 from the 40,000 Sallie Mae loan that I had taken out to help during the 90 days I would be gone from home. Ten thousand for 90 days. That equates to a little over 3,300 a month right? (I'll refer to this later on) This is what I told Carl and he said that he would give me the money once I arrived at GTR, which he did.

I am originally from Mississippi, so going back to my home state to conduct flight training was, at least I thought, going to be great. I could fly over my old hometown and so forth. I was very excited. I could finally realize my dream of becoming a pilot and be close enough to fly in and see family that I rarely see. It was a nice thought. For reference: you don't fly but to only those places where Carl tells you to. More background: I was a flying crew chief on HC-130Ps in the AF for 10 years. I have flown with some very good CSAR (combat search and rescue) pilots. I have flown on over 100 CSAR missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In my opinion, the best pilots are CSAR pilots. I say this so you know that I am not a stranger to aviation, aircraft or how a plane should be flown.

When Chewie and I went to Accessible, the apartments were still in the works. Carl had not received a contract for the apartments, but was trying to get them. Therefore, you could either stay at Carl's house or find your own place. Carl offered room and board for 25 or 30 bucks a day. I really can't remember which. This came with a bagged lunch, dinner, and laundry service provided by Carl's wife. I asked Carl, before I left for GTR, how much the apartments would be once he got them. He told me they would be around 700. I figured since I would have to pay for food, it would behoove me to stay at Carl's house for the 90 days. Once Carl got the apartments, he rented them out for 450 to students. This was of course at day 70 of my experience when he got the contract. When I questioned Carl about this, he told me that he had never told me 700 for the apartments. Just as Playa says, you don't argue with Carl...period.

When i began flight training at Accessible, i already had 30 something flight hours. I was pretty good, but not great and I will admit that. I was nervous about having a new instructor, at an actual flight school, not an fbo like i had received instruction at previously. When Carl and I went up for the first time, everything seemed normal. He sayed I flew well and that I had some polish up work to do. He said I should be ready in 2 weeks for the PPL written, oral and practical. I was ecstatic. He told me that everything was in place for me to finish up within 90 days and I wouldn't have problem. Okay, thank you Colonel!! The next flight was a different story.

The next flight was cross country. I was to fly dual w/Carl and hit the 3 airports that were his designation airports. GTR to Tupelo to Tuscaloosa to GTR. The trip started great, we were on course for Tupelo and everything was fine. I turned final, came in and bounced. Carl got very angry. He screamed, yes screamed at me to firewall the throttle and make a right turn out and head to Tuscaloosa. I was done for the rest of the flight. All I was worried about was if the guy was going to rip my head off and throw my body out of the plane at somepoint during the flight. That should've been my first clue: My first flight instructor always told me, if flying is not fun...you don't have the right instructor. I should've heeded his advice and left Accessible after that flight. Unfortunately, I didn't. When I told Chewie about it, he sayed "just wait, you haven't seen anything yet!" I didn't know how right he was.

There were many more situations to come. I can say that the one good flight that I had with Carl was the day before my PPL exam. By the way, this was after 4 weeks of flying with Carl. Remember the 2 weeks? Carl would always say, " You are doing good, you just have to do more soloes and practice some more." In my mind, I am being trained by an ex F-16 fighter pilot. Who am I to question the man's judgement, especially given his temper. This children is called stupidity on Yoda's part. Brandon would tell me I am doing fine and ready. Jim would tell me I am doing fine and ready. Carl would say more practice. Carl wanted more money.

Before I received my PPL, Carl and I took a flight around the pole. He was trying to tell me how much of a bad pilot Chewie was. I told Carl that Chewie was my friend and that I wasn't going to engage in a conversation that was verbally impaling Chewie. Carl was displeased with my response and I paid for it the rest of the flight. When I got back, I told Chewie about it. He decided that night that he was going to leave, but he would wait until after I had taken and passed my PPL. I passed, Chewie left and I was on my own. After that, Carl would bash Chewie openly. What a ing dip and many other expletives. Carl would always say what a horrible pilot Chewie would be in front of me and the ALPS students. Not a manner for an instructor to have. On one occassion, we were flying to Tupelo for an instrument/commercial joint training session( the one mentioned by Playa). He was trying to talk to me about Chewie and telling me how big of a loser Chewie would be as a pilot, again. I told Carl that Chewie had already received his CFI and was working on his CFII. I also stated that Chewie was a damn good pilot. I had flown with him many times. Once again, I paid for it the rest of the flight. That was the last time I flew with Carl. I only flew with Brandon or Jim after that.

Now the 70 days is not all of Carl's doing. As stated earlier, I did have some family issues going on. I left for 3 weekends (six days) to go and visit with my wife and kids in Columbia or to check on my very ill father in law in Tampa. Carl was sympathetic to this as, regrettably, he had just lost his mother a few months earlier to, I believe, a debilitating illness. Carl also had me change the oil on the two 172s and the seneca for him since I had some aircraft maintenance knowledge. He would repay me with a discount on the flight hours. I never performed heavy maintenance on his aircraft. That would take a few hours out of my day but this was not an everyday job as I am sure you can imagine.

Earlier I said I would bring up the 3300 a month thing again. Well two days before I left, I was talking with my wife. She informed me that money was running short and coming up quick to deadline for school completion. The next day, I talked to Carl about just getting my commercial and instrument with multi add on. I explained to him the situation with money thinking he would understand. Wrong. He said " Tell the b*tch your flying and to shut the f8ck up!" Ok, I never curse at my wife. Call me old fashioned, but I don't. Now for another man to say that, I was outraged. That night, I got a phone call from my wife, my father in law was not doing very well and he wanted to see me. I decided that given the financial, family and verbal situation, I would just leave. I did talk to Carl and I told him about the family situation, but I did not tell him that the reason I wasn't coming back was because of him. I went home and never went back to Accessible.

Carl, in my opinion, does have some good in him. I just don't know why he hides it so much.

As stated by Playa, there is no ground school. There are Jeppesson videos and that is it. Don't bring your own King videos to help you learn in school ( what a novel idea: learning in school ) or you will receive a tongue lashing.

Don't bring your bagged lunch into the classroom and leave it on the desk. I had my bagged lunch, made by his wife, on the desk in the classroom. I hadn't eaten anything out of it. It was there so it wouldn't sit in my truck in the heat or the refrigerator that smelled like a dead cat. He walked in, saw my bagged lunch, grabbed it and threw it out of the trailor ( I am sorry...classroom). I mean threw it, not gently set it down, not smiled and handed it to me, he threw it out about 20 feet and stormed back in. Yep, I am ready to learn now!!!

I have held this in for a year and a half. Carl I know you will read this. I don't care. I did get my PPL from your company, but I have sincerely regreted going to Accessible. Brandon is a good instructor, keep him and utilize him, but you should worry more about office management and less about flight instruction. You may have been able to use your rank in the AF and scare the hell outta your AF students, but in the civilian world rank is nothing. Focus on customer service. I bet ALL ATPs does. It is a business builder. Don't call me or PM me, I won't answer. Call me what you want. I have cleared my soul here.

To others who want to go to Accessible, I would do research and visit all the flight schools you have an opportunity to visit. Make an educated decision. If you find Accessible to be the right school for you, then best of luck to you and God speed.

Yoda
 
What is it going to take for someone to do something about flight school's that take advantage of student pilot's and the hard earned money it takes to go flight school?

For example it took 6 people to die in separate incidents, and numerous saftey violations before Kemper Aviation in Lantana, Florida was forced to shut down by the FAA.
 
Why is it still a sponsor? I don't think Carl is paying for sponsorship anymore, but I still imagine that Accessible would be moved to where some of the other flight schools are on the forums. I don't think it would be fair to completely remove it.

I thank some of the other guys for coming forward and sharing their stories. I don't know what went down in the past, since I started in early January '08. But I don't think it is fair to say that only negative things come out of Accessible. We do have people that are happy with the training they are getting. I mentioned a couple of them in the last post I made. Unfortunately not all the people post on Jet Careers. We also get a lot of ATP guys that come through, and they too don't even know about this website... (but they should since it is an awesome place!!!)

Again, I am not trying to discredit what anyone is saying, but I don't think it is fair to say that all is bad here.

Your thoughts?

Also, I am not being told what to say. I am an instructor here, as playa mentioned, but I do it of my own volition. Heck, I might even be out of a job soon, but I would still same the same thing. Playa makes some excellent points, and since he is one of my friends, it makes the situation harder. He is a good pilot and he worked hard to get his ratings. I know some other people that posted about the school did not do the same. You know who you are... Do not compare your situations with Playa's. One of the students for example cancelled all the time, never did any of his homework, and dragged his training out as long as possible. He too was complaining in the thread... so that is the point I am trying to make. Again, for Chewie and Yoda, I am not saying anything about you, since I was not there.
 
What is it going to take for someone to do something about flight school's that take advantage of student pilot's and the hard earned money it takes to go flight school?

For example it took 6 people to die in separate incidents, and numerous saftey violations before Kemper Aviation in Lantana, Florida was forced to shut down by the FAA.

I don't think the guys, at least that I knew, were ever saying that they were "screwed" out of their money. There are flight schools that do that, but I have never seen that happen. They pay a set rate and get those hours. I think, again with the people that I know, they were complaining about the time it took to finish and what ramifications that had. But again, it wasn't like they were charged extra money for the apartment, they got free rent as long as they were in the program.

As for the example you gave, I am not following you... except if you meant it to mean it takes a while for the FAA to move on things. But again, nothing illegal goes on here! The airplanes are pretty well maintained, and I fly them every day... sometimes down to IFR mins. I trust the maintenance. Does stuff break from time to time, sure. When you have airplanes getting used constantly, things break or wear out. I think the students that wrote negative comments about the school would agree... they are saying they were not happy with how long the maintenance took, not the quality of the work.
 
Again, for Chewie and Yoda, I am not saying anything about you, since I was not there.[/QUOTE]


It was difficult, but it is over now. I did get all my money back from Accessible. I don't know if I put that in the first post. I just know that, in my opinion, my money would have been better spent at ATP.
 
Re: Yoda's last post

It seems like most of the posts seem to indicate people do not fly enough while they are with us. I am looking at Yoda's Flight records and I tend to stand by his flight progress. He came to us and started flying on 8/13/07 and was ready for his PPL 0n 9/19. He had one .6 solo flight, in the pattern and was not reasonably current. As we were finishing him up Part 61, he needed 9.4 hours solo, maneuvers training, cross country training and checkride prep. He recieved 20.5 dual and 9.4 solo in about 30 days (calender days, not raining days). There was some delay waiting on the cross country solo flights for weather. The 20 hours dual is quite reasonable for someone that had not flown alot recently. So his total was about 60 hours total for a Part 61 PPL. That is under the national average and most of his time was 30 hours getting to his first solo with another school.

After that, from 26 Sept. till he withdrew on 12 Oct, Yoda recieved 29.3 flight hours towards the Instrument/Commercial Ratings and 4.4 hours in the FTD, not to mention 20 hours or so of academics. He had not entered the cross country phase where you could fly 3 hours solo and 2-3 dual MEL in a day. In short, I think 33.7 hours of flight/FTD in less than 3 weeks is pretty good.

We have not had a Part 141 US student go over 40 hours total training to take his checkride since we started. The USAF contract students were ready at 35 but since the USAF was paying for training, they usually flew several solo cross countries to get about 43 hours to allow for a retake at USAF expense to keep it under 50 hours.

We have just done several Part 61 foreign students in about 50 hours and 60 days. So, we do get it done.

Regarding the other comments, I've never been accused of screaming at a student in my life, and I have a wall full of plaques to show for it. We just had an older gentleman leave here and tip the instructors $100 each and the office manager $50. We can't be doing a bad job with results like that!

Students like Chung showed up with 195 hours, and no private. So, as long as he stays a student Daddy will keep paying for him. He no-showed, didn't prepare, and 6 months after leaving us, hasn't taken his COMMERCIAL SEL add-on! So, draw your own conclusions.

Chewy came as a finish up Part 61 also. He arrived 5/26 with only one pattern solo, and took his check with 17.3 dual and 9.8 solo on 6/13. Not bad considering we had to wait out some nasty thunderstorms to get the cross country solo. He withdrew on 9/17 with about 101 flight hours and 14 FTD with us. I think he took a trip or two home also. He had just entered the cross country time building when he ran out of money. BTW he did make trips to visit friends in Hattesburg another places. His story is he couldn't fly enough at home so he came here and asked his previous school for a refund of his SLM/VA money. They refused to give it to him so he was running on credit cards. Getting money slowed him down also. Also, he and Yoda wanted to fly together on the Part 141 Commercial cross countries and dual-log the time. The Jeppesen syllabus speciffically says "solo" so we could not allow that. I know other Part 61 schools may allow that but at the time we could not.

Yoda, about the "B-word". If I said that in a negative way, I apologize. As I remember you were torn between using your student loan money to get your ratings and fly for a living or using it to help your wife care for her dad. I remember telling you that you would never finish up if you did not do it with us. Your flying hours records shows you were on track to finish on budget in the 90 days with us. After a long night of Burbon and cigars I think you might have said words to the effect of "my wife is being a real B about it" Hence my comment. I have advised alot of people and based on our last conversation a few months ago, you still have not finished and it did not look promising. I deeply regret the way it worked out for you but I stand by my advice, the best thing you could have done for your family was finish up with us. I remember showing you a schedule how you could get your Instrument Rating in a little more than a week. We could have even worked out comming back at regular intervals to finish you up.

You two are the only guys I have had withdraw from the Instrument/Commercial without finishing. PlayoSteelo (Chris) finished all the ratings he paid for with us. I wish you would al least lay out the money issues. There are some blantant factual mis-reprensetations in all the previous post but I am not going to go in to it.

I want to dwell on our continued success stories. Very few of our students are "Jet Careers" kind of guys. Most are direct word of mouth referrals from our graduates. We do a diverse student group, including international students from Sub-Sahara Africa, Asia, and yes, even Texas. I judge our school by their referrals and success stories, our students actually finish in the Part 141 mins, and have an extremely high first time pass rate. I'll match our quality of training with any other school.
 
Students like Chung showed up with 195 hours, and no private. So, as long as he stays a student Daddy will keep paying for him. He no-showed, didn't prepare, and 6 months after leaving us, hasn't taken his COMMERCIAL SEL add-on! So, draw your own conclusions.


Indeed, i came to accessible with 175 hrs with my private and partial single engine cross country time plus some aerobatic training. i don't know, why you say 195 hrs without private? who are you referring to?

i would also like to say most of the career students who come out Accessible Aviation range from very few to no positive comments. i think it is very un-professional, that you indicate my name on the board. by the way my father was an ex military pilot, he has flown the F86 F100 and F104. he is also a ret. airline pilot who flew 737-200, 767, and 747-200 as chief pilot before his ret. so your USAF colonel title doesn't impress me at all. initially I thought getting a CMEL was enough for me, and I would land an airline job somewhere in Asia. however, as everybody has witnessed the economy went into global recession. there is no way i can land a job anywhere else even with the amount of connection i had. secondly, the reason i dont have my CSEL is because i am combining CFI and CSEL. I also h ad to stop couple times while i was conducting CFI ground school, due to a money issue. if i would have finished in 120 days at Accessible Aviation i would not be running in to this problem. I pay my own CFI training and i have not receive any money from my father. so thank to you carl, for making my financial issue public and if you don't know something then don't trash talk and plz keep it professional.

the reason there very little positive comments from the school, is that you treat everything in a very un-professional way. we are putting the stuff on the board, to tell other's our experiences with the school. so other's can learn from our mistake. isnt that all about aviation? learn from other's mistake? by the way, i notice you like to trash talk about all your pervious students, does it make you feel like a better instructor while none of the student come out excellent? as a CFI your job is to motivate student, and help them while they struggle throughout the course not treat them like garbage, even if a student has some flight issues. after all it is flight training you know.

 
I would just like to say regardless of a student's was motivation, or It is very unprofessional to bring up a students name, training record or ability, if they are criticizing your flight school i understand why you would want to defend your self, but an instructor shouldn't (in my opinion) ever use a students ability (or deficiency) on a public forum to make himself look better. Students trust us as flight instructors to not belittle them and use their abilities against them. I would not want to attend a school that used my record this way....
 
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