Finding The Right Flight School, Flight Instructor and Aviation Mentor

by Rod
(Alharithy)

Finding The Right Flight School, Flight Instructor and Aviation Mentor

So you want to be a pilot.

Why?

That is a question I never heard from my previous flight school, or from any other flight school that I looked into.

That was, until I found Aviation Training Unlimited (ATU).

When I came to ATU, I had a total of twenty five flight hours, many negative experiences and practically no knowledge when it came to the basic fundamentals of flight.

I can only hope that my journey will help others avoid the same frustrating problems that I faced.

The waste of time, energy, and especially money!


In the winter of 2005 I started looking into different career choices, frankly I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, with the career choice I made, and I did not want to look back on my life, and say what if?

As corny as it may sound, I wanted something that I really felt passionate about.

Aviation always seemed to come to mind, it was always one of those childhood dream reasons, you often hear from other would be pilots.

What ever the reason, that was the career choice I was going to pursue. I did a little research, probably not near enough and decided that the route of a Corporate pilot seemed to be the most appealing.

After looking at many different schools around the country, I realized it was going to be much less of a financial burden, if I just started my training at a local FBO.

I decided on one in town and set up a time to discuss the details.

That very day they wanted to take me up for what they call a discovery flight, which by the way is a key tool that most FBO’s believe will convince the potential student to open up their wallet.

I now know that you shouldn’t even touch an aircraft, until you have covered four or five key fundamentals of flight.

Maybe that’s why 60% of all students who start their PPL, never even complete the training.

However, I had tunnel vision and was oblivious to any of the statistics, I was ready to become a pilot.

We sat down and discussed the bottom line, which according to their estimated figures, would roughly come out to $9500.00, which by the way, only covered the PPL.

It was probably really going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty to eighty thousand to get all of the ratings needed, and that didn’t even cover all of the additional hours needed for an ATP, or any additional pilot supplies.

But never the less, I was determined to become a pilot and frankly I was ignorant to the fact that there just might be a better way.

That old saying definitely applies in this case, I wish I knew then what I know today. I applied for a loan of ten thousand through Sallie Mae, and then I was ready to start my training.

We scheduled my first official lesson in the fall of 2006.

I showed up to the FBO, met the flight instructor who was suppose to make a pilot out of me, and received my King School CD ground training kit for home study.

We then went straight out to the aircraft, went over the preflight for the first lesson, and from that point on, I was asked to go out and preflight the aircraft while he waited in the warmth of the office.

He always said some garbage about paying your dues.

All of the material required for the ground portion was covered at home by myself, with the King CD set.

We never had quality time set aside for detailed pre or post flight briefing, because his schedule was so tight with other students.

I felt like we were moving so fast through each flight lesson, that I really never got a chance for any thing to sink in.

So basically each lesson was one blur after the next.

After ten to fifteen hours of training, my instructor mentioned the word solo!

Which of course, I thought he was out of his mind. At that point in my training, I had not even learned about attitudes or the relationship between pitch and power, so there was no way I was taking this thing up on my own.

Another five or so hours of training went by and I found out that my instructor was leaving for the regional airlines.

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