Originally Posted by AgonzAPC
Are you an Engineer? I am getting a BSME/AE. I will be done by the end of the year. I need some help picking a good flight school that is not going to tear my wallet. I want good trainning and any way to save money...
Alex
Yes, I graduated with my bachelors in Aerospace Engineering. It's good to hear that you have an engineering degree. It obviously teaches you a lot, and it is a great backup to have incase you are furloughed from an airline job.
There are two types of flight schools. There are local FBO's, and then there are flight academies. I highly recommend an FBO over a big flight academy. A local FBO would be any school at your local airport where you can get any licenses and ratings from private to ATP. A flight academy are the huge schools (Flight Safety, Delta Connection, PanAm, ATP, Regional Airline Academy) that COST A LOT, but definately do good training, and train LOTS of pilots.
My recommendation would be to do your licenses and ratings at an FBO. It will save you at least $20,000 for the same training. At academies, you will pay $55 an hour for instruction. At an FBO you will pay about $35 an hour for instruction. The flip side, when you want to instruct to timebuild, academies will only pay you $14 an hour. The FBO will pay you $25-35 an hour. BIG DIFFERENCE! At academies, you will pay like $105 for an old cessna, while at an FBO you will pay $80-90 for an old cessna. At academies you will pay over $200 an hour for a multi, while those cost about $150 at an FBO. As crazy as these prices are, the place where these academies make their money is ground school. If you take the hours of ground school divided by the total cost, it works out to like $20 an hour for a class of 10-20 people. That's too much! American Flyers charges $80 an hour for classroom instruction, and they are proud of it. That is more than classes cost at Stanford or Yale!!!
That is why I recommend an FBO over an airline academy. It is much cheaper, you will make more money, and the training can be accomplished in the SAME amount of time.
Go visit a local airport and go into and talk to ALL the flight schools in your local area. If you need some more advice from there, feel free to post a thread, or PM me, and I will be happy to help.
Good Luck