Ari Ben sucks
I did the Ari Ben Aviator time building program a while back. Here's my experience:
If you want to get quick multi time, then it's the place for you. Unfortunately that's where the good stuff ends!
My friend and I arrived at Ari Ben in August. I flew there from AZ and he drove from KY. Ari had told us to come down and they would get us into training right away. When we arrived, they acted as they had never heard from us before even though we had both sent in applications for the program and spoken to Ari many times on the phone. It took us over a week of sitting on the ground before we could get flying because Ari had lied to us and said they had many airplanes available. He had not even put us on the schedule when we arrived.
That means be prepared to pay for an additional week of hotel at about
$50/night with tax.
Once we got flying, we had to do the checkout. It was supposed to be a $300 checkout, but they snuck it onto our bill at a whopping $800.
Here is the quote pasted direct from their website:
"If you are not seeking an additional rating there is a $300.00 fee for a checkout with one of our highly qualified instructors. This checkout will include five hours of dual flight time and a minimum of five hours of ground instruction on the airplane's systems and procedures."
They also handed us two training manuals. They also tried to sneak those onto our bill without telling us for $42 each. We forced them to remove the charges since we could share the manuals.
The place is a total dump, and the airplanes are even worse. They claim the airplanes have Wx radar...Only one airplane had Wx radar installed and it was INOP. Almost every single airplane was illegal to fly because of faulty oil temp/ oil press gauges and all types of other maintenance problems that they refused to fix.
Also you almost always have to fly at night because they use the Duchesses for flight training during the day . You always have to return to their airport to refuel otherwise they won't pay for fuel, so that forces you to stay in Florida unless you want to shell out more money for fuel.
In the end, plan on spending about $1000 dollars more than they say on their website and be prepared to be flying some of the crappiest airplanes in the sky.