Hi. I got my choice down to those two school's professional pilot program. I am looking for current students in those two programs who can help me with some info.

Both programs are very expensive. I am more inclined towards FlightSafety.

For FlightSaftety Academy, my main concern
1) I heard there are only ~80 instructors handling 400 students, I am not sure if it is rumor or not but are students have difficulty scheduling?
2) Their total hours after graduation is terrible.. Multi 68hs and Single 122.4hs, 16.5hs on FRASCA, 10hs on PCATD

For Aerosim,
1) Compare to FlightSfaety, they do not have PPL MEL and their instrument rating is done on a single engine aircraft.
2) They do seem to have more instructors ~120 for roughly the same amount of students
3) Their hour is Multi 41.8hs Single 153.9hs and AATD: 5hs, FTD: 26.1hs, MFTD: 8.2hs
4) They only offer refunds if your progress is <40% complete

I guess my main concern is still whether it is true that students in FlightSafety find it hard to find instructors to schedule. Could some current or recently graduated students give me some hint?

Also how much on top of the program cost should I put my budget? I was recommended at 20%. But apparently FlightSafety's PPL only has 35hs included. How much are graduated students of both school actually spent to go through this program on average?

Thank you!

 

The programs are all basically billed by the hour. I wouldn't plan on graduating any of them with less than about 210 hours of actual flight - so add on another 10-20 hours of SEL time to get a better cost estimated.

If you want, I'd be happy to send you a quote for US Aviation in Texas. We are a professional training center with large fleet but have competitive prices.

 

I'd go with AEROSIM, the airplanes are at least modern glass vs old round dial junk with FS. Both schools train almost exclusively Chinese students so if you're not from the land of the Dragon you'll be a minority. If I where you, however, I'd go with my local FBO and forgo the madness of a big box school.

 

I would pass on both.. get as many rating at your local FBO with a good instructor. The big box schools are over priced and over rated. In the end I don't think it really matters where you got your private or other ratings. You need those ratings to get a job to build time that makes you employable for the better jobs

 

What he said. At least get your PPL at a local FBO. Then if you still feel the need, go to a big box school. Can't go wrong with either one. Visit both, talk to some students and CFIs and decide based on that.

 

Thanks for the advice on HBO. I would love to do so but I am from China and local HBOs are very expensive. In fact, they are generally more expensive than those 2 schools. I would love to go to a good HBO and a good instructor in U.S. to get my PPL first but so far I have no luck getting consistent recommendations. I guess by definition FBO don't receive a lot of attention and it's hard to see many people recommending on a specific FBO.

 

I'm an active CFI in Michigan and I'm sure there is hundreds of places in the USA you could go to and get the local FBO pilot training. We just completed PPL for a WMU zero time guy from Turkey who did an outstanding job even with the language issue. We are instructing other students that the big schools send us because they can't handle the volume of flying and we(local FBO) can do the training in most cases faster(less flight time) and at an hourly rate(plane and instructor) that is substantially less money. Yes there is some lead time with the TSA requirements but you will have that at any training site. When you start looking for employment flying an Airbus they won't care where you received your PPL, IFR and other ratings.