Indiana State University Flight Academy

★☆☆☆☆ 1 out of 5 3 months ago

Destroying the serenity of country living. Circling my house early AM—11PM+. I track on FlightAware. THE FAA CALLED ME and TOLD ME "According to FAA data, the majority of their maneuvers have been conducted directly over your house for the past year." Not speculation—FAA data. Clouds of mechanical mosquitoes crop-dusting 100LL lead fuel, the toxic lead banned from car gas decades ago. Used by small piston aircraft, flight schools & old planes. In this area are enough people with cognitive/neuro harm to make Erin Brockovich look like a short story. The blue dot is my house. See pics. Multiples often stacked atop each other. Pics within minutes of each other. Dogfighting or bad flying? I'll be unsurprised if there's a crash. The contrail pics? My yard. Flight Aware shows flights. This 70's guy below thinks the contrails are from a commercial jet 2000 feet above my house. There is no big jet service! Sometimes jets practice landing/takeoffs but you KNOW. Why choose the same tight pattern over my house? My guess: save fuel, maintenance and instructor hours. AI analyzed the VFR chart and its designated practice area. Showed a roughly circular, 6-nautical-mile radius—about 150 sq. miles and even another practice area connected to the S with less restrictions. A lot of airspace... other than right over my house. It doesn’t even seem safe, it's nonstop forest. If something goes wrong, where are these "same straight line/R turn pilots" landing? What maneuver are they even practicing over my house—Circle the Flagpole? The planes seem to spend more time above my house than they do over the airport and you can't build a house at an airport—its unsafe. So why is this OK? Some of these flights look like they're dogfighting with each other and with commercial jets. Some ding-a-ling "pro" already flew into the perimeter fence during an airshow. These flight schools aren’t even exploring varied terrain or practicing in varied conditions. Drivers Ed seems more variety. Just looping the same small, right turn radius. All that $$ to fly in a circle over my house?! A fool and their $$ is soon parted. I'd enroll in flight school thinking to train in a wide range of conditions, terrains, and locations, not short flights to log the hours, turn R, repeatedly for a check list. A checklist jockey with a headset. Like calling yourself an Olympic equestrian because you rode Muffin, an old nag, akin to a Merry-Go-Round. The typical loop is: take off, fly four nautical miles, circle my house like a hawk, then back. Rinse and repeat. I'd want more for my $. A future in aviation seems about as solid as running the flight simulator at Chuck E. Cheese. Training for a pilot career in the age of self-flying planes, competing with ret. military, seasoned pilots and Purdue grads, what are the odds of a career? The smell of fuel in the air is inescapable. Some days its so heavy I wonder if that’s what’s killing my several-hundred-year-old trees. These trees have withstood storms, droughts, and harsh Indiana weather for centuries—but suddenly they’re all dying? There’s an initiative to get the lead (TEL) out because it's environmentally harmful/toxic to humans/wildlife and this flight school is circling burning 100LL — over my house almost nonstop. The constant confusion has driven off ducks from the nearby conservation areas. When your flight school is disturbing wildlife, it’s beyond a "training inconvenience", it’s eco damage. A handyman working here for months said, “All they do is fly in circles over your house.” When I contacted the school, the response wasn’t just dismissive, it was an immediate retaliatory onslaught of traffic. Coincidence? The school is so arrogant. The other school? Flying the same circles with old, old planes. To be a Formula One driver, you don’t practice with Dad’s 70's pickup in the cornfield and you don’t become "Maverick" flying circles over my flagpole. I grew up here. My parents lived here 50 years. I went to ISU because I goofed off in high school, I know ISU and its not considered a school for high achievers.

N A

★★★★☆ 4 out of 5 a year ago

This is more of a response to the recent review by "NA" than it is a review of the current ISU flight training program. (I am an ISU Aviation Technology graduate from the 1970s. At that time most training was done at Brown Flying School at Sky King Airport,) First, NA shows photos of contrails in the sky. Those contrails have nothing to do with flights out of Terre Haute. They are from high altitude jets going distant places. Second, the screen captures from Flight Aware show flight tracks in two areas: 1. Circling the airport--those are training flights likely doing touch-and-goes. Student pilots need to do those to get proficient at takeoffs and landings. It's a fact of life living near an airport. 2. A racetrack pattern of flights a couple of miles northeast of the airport. Those pilots are practicing instrument approaches and holding patterns for the Terre Haute Airport, and they are done there because the electronic navigational aid (VORTAC) they use is located there. You can see it driving north on Tabortown St., if you look east before reaching E. Railroad Avenue. See the attached photo. Having planes circling above you is a fact of life living near a VORTAC. I assume "NA" lives near the VORTAC and may be aware of its existence. As for the current flight school, from what I have seen online, it's a much more professional arrangement than 50 years ago, and they even have a flight team that competes nationally. One of my former classmates still teaches there, and another recently retired as VP of Flight Operations at FedEx.

Carl Silverman

★★★★★ 5 out of 5 a year ago

Great place

Andreye

★★★★★ 5 out of 5 a year ago

I don’t have any direct connection to the flight school, but I live nearby and have watched their training operations for quite a while now. What stands out the most is how consistent, professional, and organized everything seems to be. The students are in the air day in and day out, flying with clear purpose and discipline. It’s actually been pretty fascinating to observe. You start to notice how structured the patterns are, how methodical the training looks—it’s not just random flying. It’s clear that safety and skill-building are top priorities. As someone who didn’t know much about aviation before, I’ve come to really appreciate how involved the learning process is. From a community standpoint, I think it’s easy to overlook the value of having a program like this in the area. It brings in motivated students, future pilots, and instructors who take their work seriously. There’s a level of focus and energy that’s hard to miss. And while not everyone understands the demands of flight training, seeing it up close has definitely given me a new respect for the field. Overall, I’ve been impressed. This program clearly means business, and it shows.

Cameron Carpenter

★★★★★ 5 out of 5 a year ago

Eric Ramig