Coastal Pacific aviation

[SWJ]

Hello. I would like to begin my flight training later this year to pursue licenses of PPL, CPL with Multi IFR and Instructor rating in Canada.

I have done research on the internet about Flight Training Unit in Canada. However, there are only a few reviews of Coastal Pacific Aviation in recent years. ( The latest one is 7 years ago)

If anyone has any information about Coastal Pacific Aviation about instructors, weather, or the quality of training?
I would be very appreciated for your sharing, thank you very much.

[Bulawrench]

Hello Future Pilot,
Coastal Pacific has been around for a long time and with that legacy there has been many students over the years that have gone on to be very successful in the industry. Instructors at Coastal are ever changing as the industry is snapping them up quickly once they reach a certain ability.
Be rest assured that the maintenance on their aircraft is above average as the maintenance department has very experienced engineers. Others not so much and with the advent of foreign ownership of most schools in the lower mainland, Coastal's owner allows maintenance to carry out their duties without financial restrain. Most schools are struggling to change a bald tire, just saying.

I hope this helps. Feel free to visit and see each school and see how they are before commiting to any one.
Cheers

[npage34]

Coastal answered all my questions as I was looking to do CPL and Multi-IFR down there once I return from abroad. I had a very very long list, and some questions that weren't easily answered. They were patient and answered everything fully - in fact they were down right friendly! It was a very nice change from some schools which won't return emails, or calls, and in person can be downright rude if you don't drive a Bentley. I'd recommend giving them a call and setting up an intro flight. Abbotsford also a nice airport from what I've seen!

[Shinden]

Hi SWJ,

I used to study at CPA a couple years ago. I think the airport location and facilities are great as you'll be flying from an international airport close very close to the practice areas. The aircraft are maintained well and the programs are very well structured.

The reason I quit CPA is because the new management team there decided to stop charging as you go to charging tuition (including flight hours!) up-front each month, basically you were expected to pay a few thousand dollars every month irrespective of how many hours you fly. This was a very big No-No to me so I went to another local school.

Not sure if they still have the same payment system, but other than that it's a great school!

Cheers

[DFO@CoastalPacific]

Lessons have been learned. For the last year, the CPA policy now requires that students maintain a minimum account balance of $1000. Flexibility is built into the system whereby waivers are given as required for special student circumstances.

Cheers,
David Parry,
Director of Flight Operations.
DFO@coastalpacific.com

[mike132.7]

Coastal is not the flight school the indutry had been knowing since like 2 years ago. Training standards have been lowered because all of the execellent, wonderful senior instructors left for Chinook Aviation. If you search for their CADORS, you will be surprised. Students are suffering a lot from irresponsible creepy instructors, delays happen frequently, the young instructors, most of them, seem do not care about students at all.

Before I enrolled, the staff kept pushing me to put 20,000 dollars in my account for PPL. But why? Then I argued, they still want me to put as much as better and a minimum of 1,000 in the account. I heard they always had such issues since 2017, they wanted students to put 2,000 every month regardless of students' actual bookings.

The manager was telling me that the school care about students before my enrolment. However, after you paid money, you became nothing in their eyes. All of my friends who are UFV students are having trouble with credits transfer to the university, but no one is helping them out.

The most disappointed thing for me was instructor would always postpone your bookings and flight test. And the way they show hierarchy in front of students. Wanted to change instructor for better training, but CFI was doing nothing other than protecting instructor's interests.

The pricing seem to be cheap and reasonable from what they listed, but in the end you waste more money because of endless ground briefings and extra flights. Do not use google reviews as your reference, most of the 5 stars are written by the people working there.

I ended up going to Chinook to finish my commercial training. All the past Coastal instructors are there and I feel comfortable there.

[Flytothesky]

Dear Mike (Jason),

I went over your review for Coastal Pacific Aviation, and unfortunately none of your statements are correct. CPA has many senior instructors including 4 class 1s, and 3 Class 2s. This is two times the number of senior instructors at Chinook. CPA also has over 20 instructors and 20 aircrafts, which is also two times the size of Chinook.
Coastal Pacific Aviation has 7000 hrs of flying hours and hundreds of students obtaining their licenses and ratings this year so far. These numbers are also a lot higher than Chinook. CPA has all these great numbers while it received less CADORS than Chinook this year.
CPA cost of training is fraction of Chinook. CPA cares about the students and this is why there are hundreds of students attending the school and working on their flight training. CPA students finish their PPL and CPL training in less than a year. You can see the success of school at CPA facebook page with the pictures of all the graduates.
CPA has about 50 years of great history vs Chinook 3 years of history, and has a great reputation around the world. CPA alumni are flying for major airlines including Westjet, Air Canada and etc.

[Turboprops]

I flew with one person from CPA.
He would use flaps 10 on a Cessna for EVERY takeoff, even normal takeoff, out of 5000 ft runways.
Reasoning was "it's how we were taught in CPA, every takeoff would be flaps 10"
and he also blew my mind when he said "flaps 10 gives you more lift so you climb better".
There are many other things that makes him a bad pilot I'm just hoping he's an outlier and not the norm.

Edit: flaps 10 not full flaps

[frog]

Wait a second ! Is he using full flaps or flaps 10 ?

With full flaps he might need the 5000' to take off !!!

[Turboprops]

Wait a second ! Is he using full flaps or flaps 10 ?

With full flaps he might need the 5000' to take off !!!

LMAO good catch, I meant to say flaps 10

[the-minister31]

I flew with one person from CPA.
He would use flaps 10 on a Cessna for EVERY takeoff, even normal takeoff, out of 5000 ft runways.
Reasoning was "it's how we were taught in CPA, every takeoff would be flaps 10"
and he also blew my mind when he said "flaps 10 gives you more lift so you climb better".
There are many other things that makes him a bad pilot I'm just hoping he's an outlier and not the norm.

Edit: flaps 10 not full flaps

could also be that the guy doesn't even remember what he was being taught and blames it on the training.

[shamrock104]

Go and visit a couple of schools and make your choice after that. Narrow it down to your first couple of choices and maybe even take a flight at each one and go from there. Do not put money on account and let the school know that you will pay after each flight, if you have to argue about this my advice is to move on.

[mike132.7]

Dear Mike (Jason),

I went over your review for Coastal Pacific Aviation, and unfortunately none of your statements are correct. CPA has many senior instructors including 4 class 1s, and 3 Class 2s. This is two times the number of senior instructors at Chinook. CPA also has over 20 instructors and 20 aircrafts, which is also two times the size of Chinook.
Coastal Pacific Aviation has 7000 hrs of flying hours and hundreds of students obtaining their licenses and ratings this year so far. These numbers are also a lot higher than Chinook. CPA has all these great numbers while it received less CADORS than Chinook this year.
CPA cost of training is fraction of Chinook. CPA cares about the students and this is why there are hundreds of students attending the school and working on their flight training. CPA students finish their PPL and CPL training in less than a year. You can see the success of school at CPA facebook page with the pictures of all the graduates.
CPA has about 50 years of great history vs Chinook 3 years of history, and has a great reputation around the world. CPA alumni are flying for major airlines including Westjet, Air Canada and etc.

Dear Flytothesky (Reza),

Such a good advertisement!

Students are able to tell the truth. And students know how to check CADORS. I was one of the people who was deceived by your good talkings, and I have to say you are really good at this!

Wish you all well.

Thanks,
Mike

[Flytothesky]

Dear Jason,

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate that you didn’t object anything else that was written except the Cadors.
I agree with you that students know how to check Cadors. But you should understand that they also know how to use math. CPA ratio of flight hours to Cadors is lower than Chinook, since CPA has several time more flying hours than Chinook.
As you know, Reza started his leadership at CPA in 2020. You enrolled at CPA before Reza’s leadership, and you never went to UFV as a student. You were an international student from China who was helping CPA’s owner with translation. So more false statements from you.
Reza truly cares about students and their progress. This is why CPA had hundreds of students obtaining their licenses and ratings. You should know that under Reza’s leadership in 2020, CPA broke records for flying hours and for number of students obtaining their licenses and ratings, in CPA’s 50 years history. This was all achieved during COVID time which caused the schools to be shut down for two months.
I am sorry that it didn’t work out for you to continue working at CPA. But this shouldn’t make you try defaming the school. I heard that after finishing your instructors rating at Chinook, you were not hired there, so you ended up going to work at Pittmeadows. I hope that you are not defaming Chinook now to take their students to the school that you are currently working at, since this not ethical. You should also understand that this is a small industry and attitude is the most important characteristic of a pilot.

I am going to stop the conversation here since there is no point to continue spending time on this discussion. Best of luck with your future career.

Dear Mike (Jason),

I went over your review for Coastal Pacific Aviation, and unfortunately none of your statements are correct. CPA has many senior instructors including 4 class 1s, and 3 Class 2s. This is two times the number of senior instructors at Chinook. CPA also has over 20 instructors and 20 aircrafts, which is also two times the size of Chinook.
Coastal Pacific Aviation has 7000 hrs of flying hours and hundreds of students obtaining their licenses and ratings this year so far. These numbers are also a lot higher than Chinook. CPA has all these great numbers while it received less CADORS than Chinook this year.
CPA cost of training is fraction of Chinook. CPA cares about the students and this is why there are hundreds of students attending the school and working on their flight training. CPA students finish their PPL and CPL training in less than a year. You can see the success of school at CPA facebook page with the pictures of all the graduates.
CPA has about 50 years of great history vs Chinook 3 years of history, and has a great reputation around the world. CPA alumni are flying for major airlines including Westjet, Air Canada and etc.

Dear Flytothesky (Reza),

Such a good advertisement!

Students are able to tell the truth. And students know how to check CADORS. I was one of the people who was deceived by your good talkings, and I have to say you are really good at this!

Wish you all well.

Thanks,
Mike

[Bede]

Lessons have been learned. For the last year, the CPA policy now requires that students maintain a minimum account balance of $1000. Flexibility is built into the system whereby waivers are given as required for special student circumstances.

Cheers,
David Parry,
Director of Flight Operations.
DFO@coastalpacific.com

That should be a red flag.

The industry standard is pay as you go. If a school is asking for money up front, it could be that they are using forward payments to float the operation. Not saying that what's going on this case but, there are many that have.

[Flytothesky]

Dear Bebe,

Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately there have been some instances that the customer flew and did not make payment afterward and disappeared. Many schools set up this policy to make sure customers pay for their flights. I understand that some schools use this to float their operation but this is not the case at CPA
As David mentioned, flexibility is built into the system.

[Bede]

That’s an unfortunate risk of being in business- customers taking off without paying.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-ne ... -shut-down

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/business/05loan.html

[rookiepilot]

Students: (Or customers of any kind).

Free advice from someone with a lot of business background.

Don't EVER lend a business money, prepaying up front, hoping to receive services. Ever.

The way I do it: You deliver the service. Then I pay.

That is all.

To flight schools:

You choose to run a business. You accept the credit risks in that.

My $.02.

[digits_]

There is also a difference between pre paying the estimated cost for the flight to prevent non paying customers, and having a 1000 dollar balance at all times.

[Flytothesky]

Dear Rookiepilot and DIgits,

Thanks for your comments. Currently flexibility is built into the system for customers who have problems with maintaining the minimum deposit. At CPA we do our best to keep our customers happy and to make them feel valued.

[eaglepilot123]

Ripping off or bad business practice is charging customers $300 for one hour solo flight. This is what Chinook does. This is almost double the price of other schools.

[AngelsSang]

My cousin did her training at Coastal in 2019. In talking with her about the experience, she had a few small complaints, but overall was happy with it.

[AngelsSang]

Ripping off or bad business practice is charging customers $300 for one hour solo flight. This is what Chinook does. This is almost double the price of other schools.

Cessna 421 ?

[ahramin]

Ripping off or bad business practice is charging customers $300 for one hour solo flight. This is what Chinook does. This is almost double the price of other schools.

A couple years ago a friend of mine decided to finish his ppl after a 10 year break. He went back to his old school and all the other schools around, 6 month wait list minimum. He went to Chinook and they had him finished in a couple months. He was much happier paying for the service he received than not paying for no service.

[digits_]

To offset the negative news, I was very happy with my brief time at Coastal Pacific about 8 years ago. They do work with you regarding the balance thing, although the policy was different at the time. I was on a tight timeframe and they did what they said they would.

D.N. is a great instructor there. If he's still around, definitely worth checking out the school!