This Review Overall Rating
I completed a full Competency Based MEIR here in early 2023, overall I would highly recommend the school to anyone and it is certainly one of the best ATO's I have attended and also the most competatively priced in England. My only constructive point (which they are working on) is that at times it was overbooked. The school has a very friendly vibe in general, when I arrived the staff and other students are really friendly and I was shown round by an instructor. All the instructors seemed really nice and enthusiastic which makes a big difference. The facilities were very new, and there's tea/coffee/biscuits for everyone.
The first 20 hours were in their Alsim DA42 sim, this was in essentially brand new condition and really nice compared to some of the other sims I looked at.
After this, the remaining 15 and test were in G-ZOLA, their DA42NG, again this was in good condition and well looked after. Whilst the school is new to doing advanced training, my instructor Prashanth was experienced and excellent. I really gelled with his instructional style which is relaxed allowing you to learn from your own mistakes, whilst also having useful techniques and tricks for the various aspects of the IR (particularly his hold entry lesson).
The training is layered well so that your capacity is not overloaded. Most of the flying I completed with their CFI Ivan, as Prashanth was too busy (more on this later) - again I found the instruction excellent and I felt confident going into my test which I passed. There is a general difficulty with getting bookings for approaches, so I would recommend a pragmatic approach to this and just basically go where you can get a booking rather than holding out for Oxford/Cranfield - this is a disadvantage of an uncontrolled field but one faced by most schools in the country at the moment.
The one difficulty I had with FTL was getting bookings for training, admittedly my start date was delayed due to weather slowing down my CPL but I was told I could train full time. Unfortunately at one point I was left with 2-3 weeks without any bookings as they only have a few IR instructors and Prashanth was too busy. Fortunately, Ivan was able to cover them and I was able to complete the flying in this time, however it only happened after I complained. I really appreciate Ivan doing this, but I hope in future FTL can formalise their IR training in general so that people aren't competing for bookings which is what happened. Overall I had a great experience with FTL, which was made very enjoyable by the friendliness of all their staff, great aircraft and facilities, and lowest cost in the South of England. Thank you all so much, and I would recommend this to anyone looking to do an IR.
Course(s) taken:
General
Aircraft
Simulators
Practical Training
