Originally Posted by
rswitz
My recommendation would be a small mom and pop FBO flight school with an older CFI who is retired IE not trying to build time to go to a regional. If you find the right place, the training will be 100x better than the big pilot mills and half the price.
I third this. Don't do it.
As someone who flies with A LOT of 141 factory pilots: on average, they are below the 61 guys and the pilots who did something else other than instruct at their 141 factory (cargo, bush, gliders, drone escort, etc.). The 141 schools are TOO structured. The pilots aren't allowed to think for themselves with their dispatch and ops dictating which airports they can fly to and when. The students don't develop any critical thinking skills, risk management, or flying skills outside of their limitations. When they show up at Indoc, they've flown a 172, a few hours in an Arrow, a few hours in a Seminole and they've touched down at maybe half a dozen different airports. That's it. They don't know what STOL is, never heard of Reno, have no idea what a taildragger is, and ****ed themselves during the half hour of spin training for their CFI.
And some of them have unbelievable arrogance because they come from the "famed" UND or Riddle with laughable degrees in Aeronautical "Science" yet they can't calculate the crosswind component using high school trig and calculator.
Save yourself a lot money; buy your kid a Champ, a tent, sleeping bag, and a bunch of sectional charts. Kick him out of the nest to learn about the real world with a couple of 2000 mile x-countries. Use the rest of the money for a real degree in accounting or software engineering. Or even art history so we can have an intelligent conversation at cruise.