How to choose a flight school
The eight things that cost student pilots money, and the questions that have a checkable answer.
We are not going to tell you which flight school is good. Nobody can tell you that from the internet, and a site that ranks schools it has never flown at is selling you something — usually the ranking.
What is possible is to give you the questions that have a checkable answer, so you can judge for yourself in a way that does not depend on trusting anyone, us included.
The eight below are the things that quietly cost student pilots money. None of them is about whether the instructors are nice.
The eight
1. The advertised price is the legal minimum, not your price
Course prices are almost always built on the fewest hours the regulator allows. That figure assumes you never repeat a lesson, never have a bad week, and never lose currency waiting for weather. Real training is not like that, and the gap between the brochure and the invoice is where people run out of money.
Ask them: What did your last ten students actually finish on — hours and total spend? If nobody can tell you, that is the answer.
2. Never prepay more than you could afford to lose
Bulk-hour blocks come with a genuine discount, and schools are genuinely cheaper to run when students prepay. But flight schools do close, and when one does, money sitting on account is usually gone — ahead of you in the queue are the bank, the leasing company and the staff. Treat any prepayment as money at risk.
Ask them: Is prepaid money held separately from the school's working account, and what happens to my balance if the school stops trading? Get the answer in writing.
3. Aircraft per student decides how fast you finish
The number that governs your timeline is not the school's reputation, it is how many serviceable aircraft there are divided by how many active students want them. A busy school with a thin fleet means waiting weeks between lessons, and flying you have to re-learn because of the gap.
Ask them: How many students are active right now, how many aircraft are serviceable today, and how far ahead do I need to book?
4. Your instructor will probably leave
Most flight instructors are building hours towards their own next job, which means turnover is built into the industry rather than being a sign of a bad school. It still costs you: a new instructor will re-check what you have already covered before signing you off, and that is your money.
Ask them: How long has my instructor been here, and what happens to my training if they leave halfway through?
5. Weather will set your timeline more than you will
Two schools with identical syllabuses and identical prices can take very different lengths of time, purely because of where they are. Long gaps between lessons mean re-flying things you had already learned, and that is your money. Reliable flying weather is worth more than a discount.
Ask them: What proportion of lessons get cancelled here in your worst month, and how do you catch students back up afterwards?
6. You are buying a country's licence, not a school's certificate
Licences are issued by an aviation authority, not by a flight school. Train in one country and want to work in another, and you are looking at a conversion: paperwork, exams, a flight test, a new medical and an English proficiency check. That is entirely doable — it just needs to be a decision you made deliberately, not one you discover at the end.
Ask them: Which authority issues the licence I finish with, and what does it take to convert it to where I actually want to work?
7. Check the approval with the regulator, not the website
Training approvals have conditions, and they can lapse or be limited to certain courses. A school's own website is not evidence of any of that. Aviation authorities publish a register of who currently holds an approval and what it covers — the school's claim and the register are two different things.
Ask them: What is your approval number? Then go and look it up on the authority's own register yourself.
8. Get the extras in writing before you pay a deposit
The course price is often the flying and not much else. Landing fees, exam fees, test and examiner fees, headset, charts, medical, licence issue, insurance excess and re-tests add up to a meaningful share of the total, and they tend to appear one at a time.
Ask them: Send me a written list of everything I will pay that is not in the headline course price.
What to walk in with
Short enough to hold in your head, and every one has an answer the school either has to hand or does not:
- Can I see the syllabus and the full price list, in writing, today?
- How many aircraft are serviceable right now, and how many active students?
- What did your last ten students finish on, in hours and in total cost?
- Where is prepaid money held, and what happens to it if the school stops trading?
- What is your approval number with the authority?
- Can I talk to two current students you haven't picked for me?
- What proportion of lessons are cancelled in your worst weather month?
- Which authority issues my licence at the end, and what would converting it involve?
How a school answers is the answer
You are not really testing the facts. You are testing whether this is an organisation that keeps track of itself and tells you the truth when the truth is unflattering.
A school that says “our last ten finished between 220 and 280 hours, here is why the high ones were high” has told you something worth more than a discount. A school that cannot produce the number, or produces the brochure figure with a straight face, has also told you something.
The same goes for the awkward questions. Where prepaid money sits. What happens if you stop. What is not in the headline price. These are ordinary questions in any other purchase this size, and a school that treats them as rude is one you now know more about.
Fly with more than one
A trial lesson costs about an hour of flying. Two or three of them, at different schools, is the cheapest comparison you will ever make and the only one based on your own experience rather than somebody else's review.
Each school page in our finder shows how many other schools sit within 25, 50 and 100 km, precisely so you can see whether that is practical where you are.
Then go and look
We list 1,616 flight schools worldwide with contact details where we hold them, taken from OpenStreetMap and the schools' own public websites. We are not affiliated with any of them, nobody pays to be listed, and there is no ranking — because we have no honest basis for one.
Find a flight school near you, or browse by country. Before you book anything, the other two decisions worth making first are integrated or modular and getting your medical.
The other guides
- Integrated or modular?The first real decision in flight training, what each route actually commits you to, and how to tell which one suits you.
- Get your medical firstThe one requirement a flight school cannot fix, cannot refund, and has every reason not to mention early.
- Building hours after your licenceThe gap between a commercial licence and a job that will have you, and the honest trade-offs of each way across it.
- What an airline application asks forThe figures, documents and dates every pilot application wants, and the ones people get wrong under time pressure.
- Where to train if you want to fly somewhere elseThe licence you earn belongs to the country you train in. What that means if you plan to work elsewhere.