★☆☆☆☆
1 out of 5
a month ago
EIGHT MONTHS AND $32,393. That’s how much time and money I spent just to get my private pilot’s license even though I was trying to train FULL TIME. If only I could give this place zero stars for the amount of suffering I have had to get this license. I had high hopes of this place because it is part 141 and they told me they get DPEs the fastest in the valley to schedule checkrides which who knows is true and doesn’t even matter when they had no interest in progressing me through my license and was just interested in taking my money.
Brandon was my first CFI who I thought was a great instructor until the true colors started to show after two months. We were having regular classes until suddenly after New Year’s he drastically slowed down my training in favor of taking new students. This really angered me as I wanted to train full time. Next problem I saw was he wasn’t preparing me at all for the stage checks. There was so much discrepancy what the examiner wanted and what my CFI was teaching me, and they made it worse by blaming it on me while I was literally being set up for failure. Retraining for the stage checks really added to the total cost, especially when one of them was a cross country for no reason, and this happened multiple times that I had to switch my CFI to Daniel before I lost all sanity. This switch cost more than usual because I had to get reindorsed during the cross-country stage. But I still couldn't pass the second stage check because the examiners, even the whole school is against me and just want my money.
There was even a time when I had to sit for about EIGHT WEEKS of no progress whatsoever. This was the school’s idea of punishing me because I got a pilot deviation during my solo cross country instead of taking some of the blame and realizing their curriculum is setting us up for failure. I got the deviation because they don’t think it is important for students to learn how to use a GPS to cross-check when the dead reckoning calculations were wrong. What made it worse is my CFI looked at my wrong calculations and endorsed it, making me have no reason to think it could be wrong later. This really made me depressed especially when all my friends and family are not in Arizona and I didn’t have a good way to pass the time as I planned on training full time.
I had such an unpleasant experience in the stage checks themselves. Chris did most of my exams and he is just an unfriendly person to be around. Forget about failing the actual stage check because he will insult you and make you worthless in the debriefing. I bet the military doesn’t disrespect you this much. I just wanted a simple discussion with him, but he thought I was arguing and didn’t even want to talk to me because he had some 15,000 hours of experience while I was worthless not having any license. I requested Nick to do my stage check as if that was going to be different. I did everything what was required at the time almost perfectly, but he just made up a reason to not pass me.
At this point I was done with the school because I saw they had no intention of letting me finish my license and just wanted to take my money quietly. I had to finish my training at another school and waste even more money showing my new CFI what I knew. I learned more in one month there compared to seven months at AFTC. I also learned half the things AFTC taught me were just completely wrong, so I had to waste more money unlearning those habits. My checkride examiner almost failed me because I was referencing Jeppesen during the oral portion which is apparently not FAA-certified.
How AFTC became part 141, let alone a flight school, with all these bad practices is anyone's guess. All the five-star reviews are from bribery. If you value your time, money, and sanity, stay far away from this school. It is anything but family.
Sir Cat
