Originally Posted by
85Vette
I started flying with LIFT Academy August of 2019 and was withdrawn late January of 2020. At first everything was okay, but then I started realizing all the flaws this school has. After 1 month, the school changed my instructors and I was now assigned to a guy who was not even an instructor yet. While he was in the process of becoming certified (it took a month), I was in limbo with 4 different instructors who all had different ideas of right vs. wrong, different minimums, and mainly all were there simply to gain hours rather than actually teach. With the weather not being great during the winter months, I wasn't able to fly regularly. With all the different instructors, I failed tests and needed retraining sessions. I was in a cycle of failure and retrain only adding hours to my log book and getting nowhere. I failed tests and was grounded (not able to fly until meeting with administrator). November I flew 3 times and September I flew 5 times. At one point I didn't fly for over a month. This was not just me though, fellow students were going through the same thing I later realized. The school was bringing in classes of 30-40 students a month with only 29 instructors and I'm guessing maybe 30 planes with room for no more. The instructors are there only to be pushed through the course as fast as possible and onto Republic. None of which seemed to want to actually teach anything, but rather just sit there and gain flight hours while I fly the plane (cross countries are their favorite). I have 76 hours and no private pilots license. I soloed in a traffic pattern once, but no cross country solo. Keep in mind, since I wasn't able to fly regularly, this called for retraining sessions (more flight hours = more $ you spend). I was set up for failure and so are other students. I'm now roughly $10k in debt and still... once again... have no private pilot license. I don't recommend going here.
No offense here bud, but have you considered maybe flying isn’t for you? I have noticed that there are some students who are fresh out of high school looking to hit it big that really don’t seem to have the mental capacity to fly. Not everyone can do it.
I will say that I haven’t been there long enough to give a full review and I’ve had my shares of winter weather grounding, but haven’t had any of these issues. I’ve flown with several different instructors with minimal issues. All teach a standard lesson but with different styles. If you don’t mesh well then you have to speak up. If you know your stuff and have put in the prep time, and I mean lots and lots of chair flying, memorization, etc, then you shouldn’t have many issues. SOPs are all there to learn. It just takes a bigger time commitment than most want to put in. Nothing great comes easy. I hope things work out for you because flying is great. Good luck.