This Review Overall Rating
Western Air has more of a flying club feel to it oppose to a school. The airfield is half used for leisure flyers and the rest for new pilots. There's a real friendly feel to the school side and the instructors are very good at what they do. They all have a lot of flying background and hours - really does feel like you learn a lot from them. I completed my PPL with ease in terms of time taken, the aircraft were rarely fully booked which helped a lot. The instructors were fairly short at the time so I had to make sure I was booked in advance, which often messed things up a bit if the weather had taken a bad turn. But would find myself at the airfield most days and completed the PPL fairly quickly. All lessons came with ground instruction beforehand and the instructors were happy to spend extra time on the ground going through things.
The cost of the aircraft wasn't the cheapest when I went there, so found myself paying slightly more for my PPL. But I was quite happy to pay extra for the quality of training received. They just had Warriors available at the time but i believe they now have C172's as well.
Thruxton is located right next to Boscombe MATS (not active at weekends) so would often find yourself having to locate around it to get anywhere. But the location of the airfield is pretty decent, only a 20-30 minute flight down South to the coast. Also, Thruxton is doubled up as a race track which goes around the runways, so if flying during those times it makes a pretty cool approach.
I lived near by the airfield so accommodation was no problem - but if looking to train at Thruxton and not near by, it may be a struggle. There's a town not too far away that may offer accommodation but either way the airfield is remotely located so a car is necessary.
It's an all round great school for completing a PPL and moving onto another school for further commercial training. I keep going back for hour building and aerobatic hours, it's a good airfield to do it in!
Course(s) taken:
General
Aircraft
Practical Training
