I recommend that before attending any flight school you ask the school and it’s current and former students the following questions. It is best to print this list and write down the answers of every school so comparisons can easily be made.
Questions for the school:
- Do you have set pricing?
- Do you have a set time frame?
- How long does your training take?
- How much multi time is gauranteed in the program?
- Is that multi time received as a student, or received later down the road when working as a Instructor?
- How many students does each location have?
- How many instructors does each location have?
- What is the student to instructor ratio?
- How many aircraft do you have? Are backups availble?
- what is the average age of the fleet?
- Is the fleet standardized?
- Do you rent airplanes? (competing for resources)
- Do you own your aircraft or are they on lease back?
- Are your mechanics company employees?
- Do you offer jet training? Is it in-house our outsourced?
- Do you require payment for the entire cost of training up front?
- What financing options are available to me?
- What if I decide to quit during my training, how much will I get back? (What is your refund policy?)
- What resources are available to me to assist with career planning and placement?
About Housing:
- How much will housing cost me?
- Must I sign a lease?
- If I leave before the end of the program, am I released from my lease?
Questions to ask the prospective flight school’s current and previous students:
- Did you pay the price you were quoted?
- Will they give you an exact quote on pricing, or will they only quote a ballpark price?
- Did you finish in the time frame you were quoted?
- What was the quality of the instruction you received?
- What was the quality of the aircraft, were they often broken?
- Did you have to wait for aircraft to be fixed for longer time frames?
- Where did you fly to on your cross countries?