[Tiger815]

I just passed the CFI-I ride at the American Flyers CFI Academy, so I'm officially a flight instructor. Woo Hoo!!!!

I'm at day 32 of the 30 day academy and just finished the 1st rating. I can't blame Flyers for the delay, as coming out hoping to finish the commercial before the academy was a gamble on my part, and it didn't go my way. Once the weather broke and I got the commercial under my belt, progress has been good.

The statistics for the class were:

12 folks started.

7 finished both ratings and checkrides within the 30 days.

3 including me need to finish up the CFI-A and should finish this week.

1 went home at about day 30 with just the CFI-I rating completed. In my opinion, they were fortunate to get that accomplished, as they had severe self confidence issues.

1 made no effort and spent all their time playing some sort of computer game. Not surprisingly they accomplished nothing. Not even passing a written. This sort of lack of progress is not something that could be blamed on anyone but the individual.

The PROS:

The program is well honed and anyone with decent skills and the desire (burning), can come to the CFI Academy and leave in close to 30 days with the CFI-I and CFI-A ratings.

The instructors at Addison ranged from very good to excellent.

The instructors and office staff create a genuinely friendly climate that was not a bad place to spend over a month away from home.

The planes were in decent shape for trainers and there were no delays due to maintenence issues. When scheduling got tight, planes were brought in from other locations to cover.

American Flyers goes a long way to make the program a pleasant experience. They have a nice lounge area for the exclusive use of Academy attendees and they did group lunches every Friday to lighten things up a bit.

I can't say about what transpired with AF at other locations or in the past but I can say I have seen my class and the class ahead of me, completing the program including check rides in the advertised time frame. Going to 141 for the Initial CFI-I may have been AF's answer to delays getting folks checkrides done.

So theres the good.

The bad is, no one passed for the advertised price. I spoke with every member of the class and they generally felt they would have paid what it eventually cost them for the ratings. The consensus was they would recommend flyers to others with the caveat that you expect to pay AT LEAST 1/2 again the advertised price.

Its a shame to get slammed on deceptive pricing when your customers feel you deliver a good product at a price the customer is willing to pay. It's too bad Flyers seem to feel they have to lowball in order to get folks to commit, then spring the real cost on them leaving a bad taste. My advice to them would be to just advertise a realstic price up front and then deliver.

My class and I feel American Flyers did deliver, they just were not as up front as they could have been on costs.

That's about all I can say about the place other than attempting both of these ratings in 30 days is pretty aggressive, so it you can't handle an aggressive schedule, your local FBO is probably a better bet.

Also, everyone in my class had reasons to want to finish in a short time frame and therefore may have been more willing to accept the higher costs than someone who could afford to take their time.

That's it for what it's worth.