What makes a good flight school?

[Strega]

The aircraft?

The Instructors?

The airport?

The weather?


Thoughts?

[Wacko]

Instructors. You can generally deal with the rest but if you have inexperienced or time hungry instructors it quickly wares on students. IMHO

[DanWEC]

Which comes from the cfi, and hopefully under a positive mandate from the owner. Shitty cfi trickles down hard....

[Boreas]

It depends.

When I starter, it was the location the mattered most.

All things being equal, pick the one that has the best instructor(s) for you - also a very dependent proposition.

[PilotDAR]

I like grey haired instructors, those pilots who don't need to log any time for themselves. When I did my helicopter training, the two instructors I flew with were both high time pilots, and it was evident to me that their interest was my training advancement, rather than their time building.

Obviously, a well maintained aircraft is an important element of successful flight training too!

[digits_]

Being honest to your students and sticking to your promises. As a student I could take a lot, but once a school starts lying (eg claiming they cancelled a ground school because the instructor was sick, while they just screwed up and forgot to actually call an instructor) they are done.

[7ECA]

Motivated instructors (and even though most are time building looking for a regional job, there are many out there who genuinely care about the quality of the instruction given).

Then I'd say quality maintenance. There is nothing worse than a school that is cheap about maintaining aircraft, or decides to skip an item here or there because it isn't an airworthiness issue, or well we don't need an XX anyway.

And then transparent and honest management/owners. Nothing worse than when someone high-up in the company decides to run the place in their own image, or tries to screw you around.

[mike123]

1. Airport location: flying at a quiet small airport would translate into hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars saved at the end of the training.

2. Management that promotes honesty and ethical treatment of students as opposed to viewing students as cash cows.

3. Whether school has experienced instructors working full time and readily available.

4. Quality of maintenance.

[PropToFeather]

1. Management. Namely, does the management have a cohesive plan for the FTU (and the resources to enact it).
2. Fleet Quality/Maintenance. Does the fleet match the FTU's requirements? How much of it is in maintenance at any time? How well can the maintenance department turn planes from US to dispatch-able (in both time and quality)?
3. Flight Line Quality. I think this one's been beaten to death above, instructor quality matters
4. Location. A moderately busy airport, located within a reasonable distance to lodging, would be my personal pick.
5. Weather. It's Canada, good luck finding an FTU that doesn't have its share of weather issues

Or, do what a lot of people (seem to) do, and just go with the cheapest option around!