Hello "Ryuzu",

I saw your posting and as the owner of one of the flight schools mentioned
needless to say it caught my attention. I tried to reply to you
personally rather than posting to the group but for some reason hotmail kept
rejecting the message. I don't like it when companies use the group for
commercial advertising; I just don't think it's appropriate to use a
newsgroup to peddle one's wares, so no sales pitch here.

I'm sorry you have had such poor responses to your emails. If
you had contacted us I believe we would have done much better. However, by
way of an explanation, if not an excuse for my fellow flight school owners I
will say that sometimes the volume of email can be overwhelming. Even the
largest helicopter flight school (and I think that means us) is in reality
a small business, with only one or two people tasked with responding to
mail. Sometimes we get 25-30 email requests for info in one day, as well as
all the other general business email traffic. Often the info requests
consist of long lists of questions drawn from an article someone has
published in an aviation magazine on how to pick a flight school. It's true
that word-processors have made it much easier to answer these types of
letters but even the cut and paste method takes time. The longest info
request I remember had 37 questions, and we answered them all. (He wrote
back and said we were the only schooll that did) For all we knew it could
have been from an eleven year old kid doing a school project, or a
competitor trying to find out more about how we do business. Since email
provides so little info about the sender we have no option but to treat them
all the same.

Also, the individuals who take care of the mail may be temporarily
unavailable. For example, next week our Marketing manager is getting
married and I'm away in Norway and England for Helitec. Sure, a fill-in
person can handle the routine "please send a brochure" type stuff, but often
the requests are very complex and require a great deal of expertise. A
flight school would be unwise to allow any member of staff to answer
questions on issues like foreign licenses or visas. For these types of
emails a slow answer is certainly preferable to a wrong answer. Like I
say - not an excuse, just an explanation!

Just to clarify one other issue - you should have no problem obtaining a
visa to attend an appropriately qualified training school. It will take a
couple of weeks longer to process than it did prior to 9/11 but that's not a
big deal. In the past year we have had only one applicant rejected and that
was because the embassy official suspected that he would overstay his visa,
probably because of something he said at the embassy. Let me put it this
way, we are having no problems obtaining visas for our Middle Eastern
students (two young men started training last week after a 3 week visa
processing period), so I don't think an Englishman has anything to be
concerned about.

If hotmail does not surrender to my constant bombardment you are welcome to
contact me by email or to give me a call (Toll-free from the UK
0800-1698647). Hope to meet you at Helitec also.

Patrick Corr
Helicopter Adventures, Inc.


"ryuzu" wrote in message
...
OK, so like many before me, I'm looking at a professional heli career.
Let's assume for now that the decision is made.

I'm a UK citizen looking for HPPL,HCPL,IR,CFI,CFII + 200hrs - CFI/I job.
I
want to study full time, have the funds available - around £40000 (about
$55000 US) and am looking to start in the next few months, probably before
christmas.

At the moment I'm favouring Hillsboro Aviation in the USA - but I still
have some reservations.

I've done a lot of research about Australia, USA, South Africa, New
Zealand
and a little on Panama (!) and so far I'm stuck as to which to choose.
Anyone care to comment on the following?


USA Schools - Decided I need a J-1 Visa school for this to work

Hillsboro - Looks good for J-1 training (course is 200hrs too) and
answered
my first email saying they'd get back with a detailed response. However,
they haven't responded (5 days now) to the 4 questions I sent them
regarding accomodation, instructor to pupil ratio and some other things.

Boatpix.com - guy accepted me for training with a 2 line response - for
$30000 I wanted more information. Asked about 13 questions visas,
work,
accomodation, costs etc. No response (6 days now).

Vortex - M-1 only... Responded to my first email. Asked some further
questions re total costs, instructor ratio, availability... No reponse (6
days now).

Helicopter Adventures - I've looked at this school but not contacted them
primarily because they are significantly more expensive than others for
the
ratings I'm talking about.


Australian Schools
PHS - emailed twice re costs, accomodation, add on ratings. No Response (8
days and 4 days).

And another Aus school (not Becker!!) - no reponse can't remember the name
right now (5 days).


South Africa
Lots of reponse from Learn-to-fly, but they're more expensive than US or
Aus - in fact probably not much different to UK...


New Zealand
Fairly cheap, but it's a small industry there and many of the schools
don't
seem set up for a proper CPL course.



So there you go, I'm talking about a large investement of cash and time,
and so far I'm struggling to get a second email from the schools in the US
and any response from Australia. I guess I'll make the phone calls next
and
get the answers direct...

Given that I've tried hard to follow the general advice about scoping out
schools and they're all failing the first test on customer service, can
anyone give me opinions of these places?

Thanks all.

r.