This Review Overall Rating
ground school: 6 mo Coventry
4 month stand down
SE VFR: 6 mo New Zealand
6 month stand down
ME IFR+CPL: 4 mo New Zealand
MEIR: 4 mo Skyborne Gloucester
5 month stand down due Covid
AQC: 3 weeks London training centre
As my title summarises, L3 has the backing and the capability to be the best training organisation out there. The facilities during my training were all outstanding, with aircraft, sims, and instructors generally of a great quality and available. This had changed now though, as they have closed their New Zealand base which was by far and away their most successful base.
Where L3 fails itself and it’s trainees is from the management side. The communication is frankly, non existent. And when it does come, it has normally already been through the rumour mill for months, and their message doesn’t clear up any confusion. Emails will constantly go unanswered, phones ringing out, and genuine concerns pushed aside without a care in the world.
L3 has become far too much of a ‘pilot sausage machine’, where you come in and you are just a number on a course, and you only exist on their spreadsheets. There is no thought as to how the numerous delays and training changes will affect you. Where you will live, how you will support yourself, if you can get a job etc etc. Their delay payments start pitifully, at £35 a week which isn’t enough to even feed yourself, let alone if you didn’t have a support network able to take you in at short notice.
I feel sorry for the employees of L3, because there has been a palpable turn from the cadets. I have seen it over almost 3 years there, that the paradigm has shifted from “it’s probably just a mistake, or there’s a good reason for our delay/ this problem”, to “L3 really don’t give a ****”.
my final review is this;
The quality of training is excellent, when you get it. However, I would not currently recommend L3 due to the training delays and management failures that plague this company.
Course(s) taken:
General
Aircraft
Simulators
Theoretical Training
Practical Training
