Dear Diary "The day the nuke was dropped"

[nkoenig]

Why is this school still a sponsor on JC? Looks to be a horrible place.

[bbjpilot]

What is it going to take for someone to do something about flight school's that take advantage of student pilot's and the hard earned money it takes to go flight school?

For example it took 6 people to die in separate incidents, and numerous saftey violations before Kemper Aviation in Lantana, Florida was forced to shut down by the FAA.

[Callador]

Why is it still a sponsor? I don't think Carl is paying for sponsorship anymore, but I still imagine that Accessible would be moved to where some of the other flight schools are on the forums. I don't think it would be fair to completely remove it.

I thank some of the other guys for coming forward and sharing their stories. I don't know what went down in the past, since I started in early January '08. But I don't think it is fair to say that only negative things come out of Accessible. We do have people that are happy with the training they are getting. I mentioned a couple of them in the last post I made. Unfortunately not all the people post on Jet Careers. We also get a lot of ATP guys that come through, and they too don't even know about this website... (but they should since it is an awesome place!!!)

Again, I am not trying to discredit what anyone is saying, but I don't think it is fair to say that all is bad here.

Your thoughts?

Also, I am not being told what to say. I am an instructor here, as playa mentioned, but I do it of my own volition. Heck, I might even be out of a job soon, but I would still same the same thing. Playa makes some excellent points, and since he is one of my friends, it makes the situation harder. He is a good pilot and he worked hard to get his ratings. I know some other people that posted about the school did not do the same. You know who you are... Do not compare your situations with Playa's. One of the students for example cancelled all the time, never did any of his homework, and dragged his training out as long as possible. He too was complaining in the thread... so that is the point I am trying to make. Again, for Chewie and Yoda, I am not saying anything about you, since I was not there.

[Callador]

Originally Posted by bbjpilot

What is it going to take for someone to do something about flight school's that take advantage of student pilot's and the hard earned money it takes to go flight school?

For example it took 6 people to die in separate incidents, and numerous saftey violations before Kemper Aviation in Lantana, Florida was forced to shut down by the FAA.

I don't think the guys, at least that I knew, were ever saying that they were "screwed" out of their money. There are flight schools that do that, but I have never seen that happen. They pay a set rate and get those hours. I think, again with the people that I know, they were complaining about the time it took to finish and what ramifications that had. But again, it wasn't like they were charged extra money for the apartment, they got free rent as long as they were in the program.

As for the example you gave, I am not following you... except if you meant it to mean it takes a while for the FAA to move on things. But again, nothing illegal goes on here! The airplanes are pretty well maintained, and I fly them every day... sometimes down to IFR mins. I trust the maintenance. Does stuff break from time to time, sure. When you have airplanes getting used constantly, things break or wear out. I think the students that wrote negative comments about the school would agree... they are saying they were not happy with how long the maintenance took, not the quality of the work.

[yoda]

Again, for Chewie and Yoda, I am not saying anything about you, since I was not there.[/QUOTE]


It was difficult, but it is over now. I did get all my money back from Accessible. I don't know if I put that in the first post. I just know that, in my opinion, my money would have been better spent at ATP.

[FightingFalconInstructor]

It seems like most of the posts seem to indicate people do not fly enough while they are with us. I am looking at Yoda's Flight records and I tend to stand by his flight progress. He came to us and started flying on 8/13/07 and was ready for his PPL 0n 9/19. He had one .6 solo flight, in the pattern and was not reasonably current. As we were finishing him up Part 61, he needed 9.4 hours solo, maneuvers training, cross country training and checkride prep. He recieved 20.5 dual and 9.4 solo in about 30 days (calender days, not raining days). There was some delay waiting on the cross country solo flights for weather. The 20 hours dual is quite reasonable for someone that had not flown alot recently. So his total was about 60 hours total for a Part 61 PPL. That is under the national average and most of his time was 30 hours getting to his first solo with another school.

After that, from 26 Sept. till he withdrew on 12 Oct, Yoda recieved 29.3 flight hours towards the Instrument/Commercial Ratings and 4.4 hours in the FTD, not to mention 20 hours or so of academics. He had not entered the cross country phase where you could fly 3 hours solo and 2-3 dual MEL in a day. In short, I think 33.7 hours of flight/FTD in less than 3 weeks is pretty good.

We have not had a Part 141 US student go over 40 hours total training to take his checkride since we started. The USAF contract students were ready at 35 but since the USAF was paying for training, they usually flew several solo cross countries to get about 43 hours to allow for a retake at USAF expense to keep it under 50 hours.

We have just done several Part 61 foreign students in about 50 hours and 60 days. So, we do get it done.

Regarding the other comments, I've never been accused of screaming at a student in my life, and I have a wall full of plaques to show for it. We just had an older gentleman leave here and tip the instructors $100 each and the office manager $50. We can't be doing a bad job with results like that!

Students like Chung showed up with 195 hours, and no private. So, as long as he stays a student Daddy will keep paying for him. He no-showed, didn't prepare, and 6 months after leaving us, hasn't taken his COMMERCIAL SEL add-on! So, draw your own conclusions.

Chewy came as a finish up Part 61 also. He arrived 5/26 with only one pattern solo, and took his check with 17.3 dual and 9.8 solo on 6/13. Not bad considering we had to wait out some nasty thunderstorms to get the cross country solo. He withdrew on 9/17 with about 101 flight hours and 14 FTD with us. I think he took a trip or two home also. He had just entered the cross country time building when he ran out of money. BTW he did make trips to visit friends in Hattesburg another places. His story is he couldn't fly enough at home so he came here and asked his previous school for a refund of his SLM/VA money. They refused to give it to him so he was running on credit cards. Getting money slowed him down also. Also, he and Yoda wanted to fly together on the Part 141 Commercial cross countries and dual-log the time. The Jeppesen syllabus speciffically says "solo" so we could not allow that. I know other Part 61 schools may allow that but at the time we could not.

Yoda, about the "B-word". If I said that in a negative way, I apologize. As I remember you were torn between using your student loan money to get your ratings and fly for a living or using it to help your wife care for her dad. I remember telling you that you would never finish up if you did not do it with us. Your flying hours records shows you were on track to finish on budget in the 90 days with us. After a long night of Burbon and cigars I think you might have said words to the effect of "my wife is being a real B about it" Hence my comment. I have advised alot of people and based on our last conversation a few months ago, you still have not finished and it did not look promising. I deeply regret the way it worked out for you but I stand by my advice, the best thing you could have done for your family was finish up with us. I remember showing you a schedule how you could get your Instrument Rating in a little more than a week. We could have even worked out comming back at regular intervals to finish you up.

You two are the only guys I have had withdraw from the Instrument/Commercial without finishing. PlayoSteelo (Chris) finished all the ratings he paid for with us. I wish you would al least lay out the money issues. There are some blantant factual mis-reprensetations in all the previous post but I am not going to go in to it.

I want to dwell on our continued success stories. Very few of our students are "Jet Careers" kind of guys. Most are direct word of mouth referrals from our graduates. We do a diverse student group, including international students from Sub-Sahara Africa, Asia, and yes, even Texas. I judge our school by their referrals and success stories, our students actually finish in the Part 141 mins, and have an extremely high first time pass rate. I'll match our quality of training with any other school.

[kaoyu]

Originally Posted by FightingFalconInstructor

Students like Chung showed up with 195 hours, and no private. So, as long as he stays a student Daddy will keep paying for him. He no-showed, didn't prepare, and 6 months after leaving us, hasn't taken his COMMERCIAL SEL add-on! So, draw your own conclusions.

Indeed, i came to accessible with 175 hrs with my private and partial single engine cross country time plus some aerobatic training. i don't know, why you say 195 hrs without private? who are you referring to?

i would also like to say most of the career students who come out Accessible Aviation range from very few to no positive comments. i think it is very un-professional, that you indicate my name on the board. by the way my father was an ex military pilot, he has flown the F86 F100 and F104. he is also a ret. airline pilot who flew 737-200, 767, and 747-200 as chief pilot before his ret. so your USAF colonel title doesn't impress me at all. initially I thought getting a CMEL was enough for me, and I would land an airline job somewhere in Asia. however, as everybody has witnessed the economy went into global recession. there is no way i can land a job anywhere else even with the amount of connection i had. secondly, the reason i dont have my CSEL is because i am combining CFI and CSEL. I also h ad to stop couple times while i was conducting CFI ground school, due to a money issue. if i would have finished in 120 days at Accessible Aviation i would not be running in to this problem. I pay my own CFI training and i have not receive any money from my father. so thank to you carl, for making my financial issue public and if you don't know something then don't trash talk and plz keep it professional.

the reason there very little positive comments from the school, is that you treat everything in a very un-professional way. we are putting the stuff on the board, to tell other's our experiences with the school. so other's can learn from our mistake. isnt that all about aviation? learn from other's mistake? by the way, i notice you like to trash talk about all your pervious students, does it make you feel like a better instructor while none of the student come out excellent? as a CFI your job is to motivate student, and help them while they struggle throughout the course not treat them like garbage, even if a student has some flight issues. after all it is flight training you know.

[saragousa75]

I would just like to say regardless of a student's was motivation, or It is very unprofessional to bring up a students name, training record or ability, if they are criticizing your flight school i understand why you would want to defend your self, but an instructor shouldn't (in my opinion) ever use a students ability (or deficiency) on a public forum to make himself look better. Students trust us as flight instructors to not belittle them and use their abilities against them. I would not want to attend a school that used my record this way....