Originally Posted by
JamesNoBrakes
This is ridiculous and nearly as unethical as charging someone for something that didn't happen. The repercussions if this get ingrained into all who are involved and it ends up as shooting yourself in the foot, causing instructors to get paid less, working for free, expecting to not have to pay for things, and so on. I would never, ever, recommend this, just as I would never recommend charging someone for "lunch" when you fly out to someplace for it or charging for time without providing any benefit to the student. If you can't afford to be a pilot, don't be a pilot, or find some other way to do it, or take a longer time doing it. You need to have morals and stand for something. Offering "freebies" is not doing that.
I think it's unethical a flight school would want to charge $3000 for ground school for a private pilot license. You're more than likely going to be listening to someone bloviating and regurgitating the material you already read, but doing so without even the color commentary you can get from your average blog and youtube video. Now if you haven't read your stuff the CFI ought to send you home, which is good prep for your airline career because that's what they would do too.
BTW, a lot of my students are with me now at Delta, so, worked out well for all of us. 'Save your money for flight hours' is a good philosophy if you want a CFI/flight school more motivated in you flying than in your money.
To the OP, it probably ain't worth it if the rates you originally mentioned are your two choices. And btw, I think it was Boeing about 30 years ago that figured out there was only 3 hours of true instruction in an 8 hour school day in the airlines, so they went to the blended computer to all computer training for systems and even here at Delta all of your recurrent indoc is on CD.