Plane maintenance and instruction

[gringotuanis]

I am considering going to Ari-Ben, but I'm concerned about age of aircraft/ maintenance issues.
Mainly - they are cheaper so is maintenance as good? Do you run into lots of little problems in preflight?

Also, how professional is their flight instruction? Callouts, etc.?
Thanks for any info
-gringotuanis

[TripleSticks]

gringotuanis,

Take a long scan of a lot of the posts in the aviator forum and you will find that there are very few people displeased with the training you get here. The aviator is a good place to come if you are a self motivated person who wants a ton of multi time. And lets face it... the multi time is important.

Aviator is not like going to an academy though. You will not be in a lot of class rooms getting spoon fed. There are some mandatory ground classes for the 141 programs but most of your knowledge will be from self study and time studying with other students. That being the case. I would encourage you to stay in the student housing if there is an opening. The houses are very nice and there is always someone around studying and willing to help you.

Maintenance at the Aviator is good. But the planes are old and they fly all the time. By all the time I mean.... ALL THE TIME. Like I recently posted in another forum. The Duchesses will go in for their required 100 hour maintenance intervals about every 10 days. That's not including the things that break in between the 100 hours. Their training planes so things happen and they need to be fixed.

With that being said. You will miss flights occasionally. It happens. If there was an over abundance of planes like Pan Am had, then you wouldn't. But that's not the case here. Every plane is scheduled every day. So if it goes down. Ya miss a flight. We have quite a few planes now. I think there's over 10 Duchess. Maybe 12. I can't remember. If ya add it all up... that's 10 twins flying at least 10-12 hours a day each. Lots of hours.

There's also a lot of students. That equals a lot of flying as well.

I would definitely encourage you to visit the schools that you are thinking about going too. It costs a little money but it's definitely worth it. You'll be spending a lot of money. You should know who you're giving it too before you go.

j

[gringotuanis]

Can anyone else add anything further regarding maintenance?
past students? past instructors? I'd like to hear as much as possible.

[SmitteyB]

Planes are crappy, maintainence is good.

If you want nice airplanes with GPS get 10k more from KeyBank and ride down the road to ATP....oh and log less multi.

Bad spelling I know.

[Gonzorox]

I have to agree with everything john posted.

Those planes get flown A LOT in the course of one day. If they didn't get flown a lot there wouldn't be 12 of them, then all us students would be bitchin that there aren't enough planes on the line!!

The crew in maintenance definitely work hard to keep that fleet flying. They are there early in the morning and leave late at night.

Also remember, these planes fly about 100 checkrides a month. Some at the FSDO. In my year here I haven't heard any problems with the FAA's take on the planes.

Even w/ what smitty said about ATP, aren't the majority of those 65 Seminoles the same approximate age as the Duchess(late 70's). A 1979 Duchess will probably look in the same exact shape as a 1979 Seminole or as a 1979 Skyhawk or as a 1979 Bonanza etc. etc.