FAA Investigates American Flyers

AF in Ft lauderdale is where I had my experiences too. I could 'smell' the
setup as you described it after spending 30 mins in the lobby. Plenty of
fine CFIs there but AF has little to do with that.

Anyone who asks me gets a "go somewhere else"
"tscottme" wrote in message
...

I was an employee of AF in Ft Lauderdale. I also trained their, on
their dime, for my IFR. I found the training was good, but you had to
insist on working with a bare minimum of instructors. Otherwise you
would never see the same face twice. Their flight record keeping was
thorough. But I was there long enough to see how they handled refunds
to students. This was especially clear in the case of what was called
"academy students". That was a program where students would pay for
training in a class, as opposed to individual training. The student
would get a break on the hourly cost of ground instruction and maybe
some fees. If a refund was required, they would go back and bill the
student at the individual rate and take every opportunity to tack on
fees of every description. Then they would point out that it would take
time to get a refund. It took as much time as the student allowed. If
you refused to take any answer about your refund but "cut a check
today", that's what happened. If you played along with their excuses,
your delay would take as long as it took for the student to reach "cut a
check today."

I left after a "Director", fancy name for salesman, told me that I had
to administer a computerized knowledge to a student when the student had
improper authorization for that test. As I recall, the foreign student
required an FAA knowledge test specifically for foreign students, while
his CFII has signed him off for a plain old IFR written. When the
Director told me I should just administer the test and let him worry
about it. I objected. He told me "you're just an intern, that's not
your decision. I left, and was fired.

I graduated Embry-Riddle just before starting at Flyers, and Flyers was
the only place I had seen that charged a higher hourly rate for a 172
than Riddle. The AF 172s were almost all high-time leasebacks. The
CFIs were paid under $10 per hour of work (mid 1990s) and a bit more for
flight hours, maybe $12. But they would use CFIs to paint halls, run
errands, wash the boss' car, shuttle students, and then lecture new CFIs
about maintaining a professional image and attitude.

I knew some really top notch people in that company, most were
short-term employees. I believe I went to company orientation with Dave
Huser, mentioned in the story.

--

Scott
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"So far, fewer troops have been killed by hostile fire since the end of
major combat in Iraq than civilians were murdered in Washington, D.C.,
last year (239 deaths in Iraq compared to 262 murders in D.C.). How many
years has it been since we declared the end of major U.S. combat
operations against Marion Barry's regime? How long before we just give
up and pull out of that hellish quagmire known as Washington, D.C.?" Ann
Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/110503.htm