Simviation Forums

Hi everybody
Doe's anyone know of any good flight schools in Australia that aren't too expensive.  I'm only 14 so I've got a few years yet.  I was hoping to get into one of those cadet programs that QANTAS sometimes offers.

Flight Schools that arnt too expensive he says -    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

just kidding, they are all pretty expensive but most do their best to keep costs as low as possible.

good luck in your search, you might browse the web for some good down under flight schools. that or just head to you local airport and see what is available.

I don't know much about Oz, but if your folks are OK with it, you could probably start lessons right now. Probably can't solo until you're 16 at least (don't know the Australian rules), but if you can scrape some money together, you could start taking those first steps (maybe Mum &Dad could give you a coupla years' worth of Xmas and B'day presents in advance in the form of cash?;)  ) . Most flight schools offer a slight discount for an "intro flight"- a real lesson that you can put in your logbook. Who knows? There might be a school that will let you do some work for them (cleaning planes, sweeping the hangar, etc) in exchange for time. I had to wait about 2 years after my first intro flight b/4 I started taking lessons (in my mid-30s), and at one point I was cleaning planes and doing carpentry work for the FBO in exchange for time.
If you want an airline career, an "ab initio" program would of course be a good idea; they like to hire people who've been learning things "the company way" from the beginning.
 So start hunting- obviously you have the Internet at your disposal...  fire up that search engine and good luck!!

I'm in exactly the same situation as you. BA were doing a sponsered pilot training sceme so i wrote to them and they sent a letter back saying they no longer run the sceme although nothing is said on their site! So don't go for that. I don't think cheap flight schools exist. I'm buying stuff from www.transair.co.uk and i'm studying from the books you can get from there, also you can go on the CAA website and download things like CAP 413 radiotelephony manual and learn how to use the correct phrasology for radiotelphony (if you don't know it anyway). Good Luck.

The BA sponsorship has not been offered for a few years now. I enquired in 2002 and they gave the same response. Its kind of dissapointing they havent updated their website yet.

Wow, 3 years, either they've got very bad webmasters or there doing it to impress some autority.