Mars2025

Avoid LIFT Academy at all costs! There is a facade of quality. A veneer that paints over an ugly truth. The lobby at LIFT Academy is tastefully decorated. Conde Naste and Fortune magazines sit neatly arranged for your reading pleasure. The LIFT logo is strikingly painted on the walls. The Diamond aircraft are parked in rows which you can see from the lobby. The halls are spotlessly clean. You think WOW this is it!

Nearly everything is surface level. No experience, no expertise, no quality. The place is disorganised, the training is very low quality. The environment is toxic. Everyone is cynical and disappointed. No quality control. No uniform standards. The instructional quality in general is awful. Many instructors barely understand what they are teaching. Many have no experience. You may be their first student. If you are so unlucky, they will blame you. They won’t do any pre-flight briefing. They will check what lesson and elements should be taught that flight on their cell phone in the air. They will be texting friends and girlfriends during your lesson. The instructors are not interested in teaching you. It’s all about them getting hours. They will often fly the majority of “your lesson” and if you complain they will tell other instructors and fail you. There is no management to control or ensure that this doesn’t happen. Management is completely missing in action.

The training advisors are supposed to be there to control the training process and address any issues, however they don’t know anything about aviation or being a pilot. They don’t understand the pedagogy of the learning process.

The “proprietary CBT ground school” that they talk about in press releases is fraud. It consists of a video of a guy reading verbatim from the FAR/AIM with visuals that are too low quality to read. He is referencing something but the video is so low quality you can’t read it and you can’t zoom in. Video will often skip and just end abruptly. Awful. Literally the worst and lowest quality computer based training I have ever encountered.

More than half the time you won’t fly because of weather. You will fly two times per week on average. Private will take 6 months at LIFt. Instrument will take 5-7 months at LIFT.

Approximately 30% of the hours you log will actually be taxiing time. Sometime you will wait as much as an hour just to take off. You are paying for that, and at a premium rate.

I wish I would had have seen a review like this before I took out non-transferable $70000 loan tied to LIFT.

This is your warning! DO NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR LIFT ACADEMY!

QRH Bingo

This is practically everywhere, sadly. It seems the bigger the school, the bigger the problem.


You cannot control weather. This is common in places that have varying types of weather. And something that EVERY pilot in training has to deal with.

This is common at large airports or those with a heavy training presence. Nothing new.

I have nothing to do with this academy or training program, but it sounds like the issues you have stated are not isolated to this program. The sad part is new student pilots who have no experience do not know these things until it's too late.
"You don't know what you don't know"

Mars2025

I will agree that there are certainly many things that I both; don’t know I don’t know, or I know that I don’t know. I am trying to make the best of a terrible decision to come to LIFT Academy. It was the wrong choice. I wish I could go back and make a different decision. In my limited experience I want to convey in the strongest terms that you should not do your training at LIFT Academy for many different specific reasons.

I understand many flight schools have issues. I know for sure LIFT Academy has these issues.

Let me add.

Indianapolis not a nice place to live. The crime rate is very high. It’s dirty. The water is not drinkable.

I’ve been told by CFIs who have done their training elsewhere (but work at LIFT) they say that they are glad they didn’t learn to fly at LIFT.

Just last week they fired (or he quit, no one knows, he simply disappeared) the head flight instructor at LIFT. He was in charge of the place. A police car has been outside the building ever since. They are just pretending it didn’t happen. No comment from anyone.

After you finish your ratings (which at LIFT Academy will take 18 months). You are expected to work as a CFI for (additional 18 months) for $20/hr until you hit 1500 hours. Then you start your 5 year commitment to Republic. If you fulfill that 5 year commitment plus the 3 years you spent at LIFT then they “forgive” $15,000 of your $85,000 training cost.

The biggest thing though is just the low quality instruction, and lack of quality control.

QRH Bingo

18 months to go from zero to CFI isn't that unreasonable. $85,000, that's about what I paid bouncing around from one part 61 school to another over a few years.
Another 18 months to build up 1,000hrs or so, again, isn't that unreasonable.
Then 5 years at a regional (in a previous market, not today's market) isn't that unreasonable.

I don't agree with any kind of "contract" or obligation, but that is how the company gets a return on their investment in YOU. It's a business transaction on their part to keep pilots and it's going to be the way of the future for airlines. I'm not trying to discount all your concerns you have voiced, just trying to offer a bit of perspective. You very well may be receiving poor training, but take this as a learning opportunity. Flying is flying on the day of the checkride: anyone can have a bad day and bust something. The oral portion is where you set the tone with the DPE for that day, and the one area where you have a lot of control. There are plenty of resources out there for self-study, you don't need a CFI to babysit you for this stuff.

Sounds like you're stuck with the decision you have made, so might as well commit and hit the books. Best of luck to you.

GSP848

I went and visited Lift and was extremely impressed with the quality of their facility and equipment, especially compared to the ATP campus in Indi. The planes were gorgeous, great looking facility with study rooms and simulators, just overall I really liked what I saw. However, with a wife and new baby the idea of selling or renting our home and moving to Indianapolis and not having a job for a year doesn't really work for us. We will just do my training at the local airport I think. Additionally the idea of being locked into Republic isn't GREAT....but I don't think it's HORRIBLE either, if you get picked up at a major before your contract is over, the cost to buy yourself out of that contract will be nothing compared to your immediate pay increase at the major, I would think.

coronaja

It really does sound good and fun but not realistic.

Republic Airways sounds pretty neat ESPECIALLY the “done in a year” kind of program.
There’s a long corridor in the hanger that looks out into the hanger and see planes worked on by the maintenance crews, and along the walls you see cool pictures painted on their walls with LIFT planes. They also have the expected timeline to get each rating/certificates.
Private Pilot License (PPL) is 2 months, Instrument Rating (IR) is 2 months, Commercial rating is about 6 months… there’s more for your Multi-engine add on and then CFI (certified flight instructor) course.
I started with my classmates January 2022. Excited, stoked and made my move to Indiana from Hawaii. Was familiar with the planes (DA40 and G-1000) and it seemed legit that a small regional would back this academy up.
I went in with a PPL under my belt, I was the only one in my class to have that, everyone was starting from little to no hours of experience.
Orientation was nothing out of the ordinary and introductions to staff members and schedulers.
There’s a TCO (pretty much a syllabus) that tells you what is expected of each lesson and you get to prepare for it, which was great.

— fast forward to July 2022

None of my classmates have a single rating. No PPL no IR. Nothing. In fact, be careful with cross country planning as one of their approved listed airports (Terre Haute KHUF) is not really 50NM it’s 49.6NM. This becomes an issue with FAA.
Once you’re about to finally checkride for your PPL, and AFTER passing your end of course exam with an “approved CFI or stage checker” you are notified such airport is not allowed anymore for cross country. “We have to have you cross country all over again and do the whole end of course exam again… how do you mess this up on an outlined course program.

Long story short, it’s been since January of 2022 and it’s now summer and no single rating has yet to be obtained.
Weather, yeah it’s Indiana and it gets rough. But scheduling. SCHEDULING. They’re always trying to fill up slots when thunderstorms are coming in the next couple days but can’t schedule a stage check for another five days. It then becomes 12-16 days without flying but you’re still expected to finish up lesson 17 successfully. Not like you haven’t flown in a while.
The schedulers are eager to leave at 3:30pm and weekends, no one is to be found. You can’t schedule anything on the weekends when it’s a 7-days a week kind of program. The director of the school has an automated message every Friday at noon saying they’ll be gone for the weekend and there’s this emergency number should anything arise and a manager on duty… who… cannot schedule any flights or stage checks or exams. Only the two ladies in the front can do that, but gotta time it right.
So so much time is wasted when a simple hiring someone over the weekend could help them out so much.
You’re expected to not have a job since this will take up a big part of your life but it’s like they don’t respect your time when mistakes are made or CFI’s are late coming in, or just the program itself is taking longer, it’s just it is what it is. Some people have families and can’t move to other areas or are attached to a loan. Which pulls $7-8k a month. Whether you fly or not

The idea is good, the execution is very weak unfortunately. Either try Part 61 or another school that’s been established with their roots down and actually has something going and rolling. These guys are still figuring it out.
Nice advisors, nice instructors (sometimes you’ll be their first student pilot) and nice planes.

So many more flaws and if you have any questions, hit me up!

Not bashing on this school as I made some friends, some of us transferred to another school to keep this momentum going. But it seems my timeline wasn’t being respected, yes you got to advocate for yourself sometimes but it’s also like you’re a student and shouldn’t have to be the one instructing the instructor what’s next or what to work on.