Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

Moderator: AndyR

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 25
User avatar
By editmonkey
#1845688
Possibly a silly question but is it possible to train at two schools?

As mentioned above I really like my FI and he’s done his damndest to get me quality flying XP in spots of clear air despite challenging weather over the past few weeks.

The school are really lovely too, but I don’t know if I can live with their availability issues. Only one a/c available and I’m having to wait a fortnight between lessons now because they’re so busy. Means if the weather becomes absolutely unflyable that could stretch to 3-4 weeks.

There’s another school up the road in Northumberland. It’s closer and their availability seems much better. Different a/c (Cessna 152 as opposed to Tomahawk) but I know how important the instructor relationship is...

Thinking is that I would fly one week with one school and next week with the other, doubling potential slot availability. Can imagine that there’d be issues with instruction style cutting across, as well as type differences and record sharing though.

It’s not that I’m trying to race through the course, just that I tend to lose momentum quite quickly and the weekly lessons feel optimum for my learning.

So train between two schools, move, or trade off increased time to do PPL against instructor quality/relationship?
User avatar
By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1845710
Ooh, difficult situation.

I am not saying don't change but I don't *think* you can be at 2 schools at the same time. Records, communication, differing techniques.... a minefield, nevermind the CAA rules. Far more knowledgeable and experienced folk than I will be able to give the technical answers but my two pennies worth -

Pick a school and stick with it, unless real issues with the training.
Pick an aircraft and stick with that. Bear in mind that there is much need to build up muscle memory in the early days (and indeed later days during training). The differences in cockpit, of the vital numbers, handling (eg, ground effect!) etc are another hurdle you could do without at this stage. Leaving aside the obvs room for error, it's just a capacity thing.

You get on with your instructor and like his style of teaching and he is getting the best out of you (vital) but, yes, you may find another instructor as good., you may well enjoy another ac, benefit from being closer and having more availability but, for me, Iogically (as I said, leaving aside the rules about ATOs etc), you need to choose and stick with it, at least for a good while..

Ask yourself few questions about why your current school have limited availability and whether this will improve. My school has quite a few students very close to qualifying, backlog due covid, which will free up instructor hours. Another school with limited ac but lots of hours available now will not look so good when the ac is/ are in for 50 hours check.

It is not an easy decision though, is it??
As you will have gathered I am extremely enthusiastic and want to crack on with my training but I secretly know that patience is a virtue AND more importantly even when not flying things have a way of working behind the scenes in your brain and you will improve before the next lesson.

In fact my very limited experience to date indicates that I should have 3.5 months off between lessons because I flew sooooo much better after the last lockdown than I had before it :lol: :lol: :lol:
editmonkey liked this
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1845730
editmonkey wrote:Possibly a silly question but is it possible to train at two schools?

You're paying for flight instruction, you can do whatever you like!

However...

You can't expect two separate flight schools to maintain a common set of records, so if you had lessons at two places, you'd inevitably end up with some duplication. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. If it all went well, your progress with one would mean quicker than average progress from the point of view of the other.

It would be important to be up front with both schools about what you were doing, and why, and hope that the two organisations, and in particular the two instructors, were relaxed about the possible conflicts of style, and ego-free enough not to have a problem with the other.

If you were unlucky, you could get two instructors teaching differently enough, for what you learned with one of them to be 'wrong' in the eyes of the other, and that could cause you quite a bit of confusion.

You'd probably want to do the exams and flight tests with just one of the schools. Presumably they would need to certify that you'd done all the prerequisite hours, so that might be tricky. Another reason for discussing it all with both schools ahead of time.

Obviously there's the scope for confusion with learning to fly two different types early on, so the chopping and changing might add additional challenge to the learning process.

So there are quite a few potential pitfalls to work around. But if you've got the money, and you can cope with the differences, getting twice as much flying in could be very beneficial. I can see it being a bit like growing up learning a different language from each parent. It might take longer to become fluent in both, but being bilingual is very useful.
editmonkey liked this
User avatar
By editmonkey
#1846105
Thanks both - yep that all makes sense. I'll speak to the school and see what they say, I'm sure they'd probably want to come up with a solution than lose a client.

And at the end of the day there's no hurry.
T6Harvard liked this
User avatar
By Rob P
#1846187
We are all different and I hear what you say about losing momentum.

What I used to do was fly one weekend, then leave the next two for the rest of my life. A question of balance.

But what I did was to always book two lessons on my flying weekend both Saturday and Sunday. Only rarely did both cancel.

Just a thought.

Rob P
editmonkey liked this
User avatar
By MattL
#1846194
You can’t fly at different schools - you complete the course under one organisation (DTO or ATO) who manages your training, records, progress and sign offs / recommendation for test when course complete.

In the early stages, once a fortnight is really the minimum you need to fly to keep decent continuity and avoid recovering exercises. All the best
Flyingkeyboard liked this
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1846205
MattL wrote:You can’t fly at different schools - you complete the course under one organisation (DTO or ATO) who manages your training, records, progress and sign offs / recommendation for test when course complete.

Are you explicitly saying, that even if a school was doing the above, if you bowled up at airfield Y, said to them, I'm learning at X, but would like a few lessons here for reasons A,B,C, they would have to either refuse, or somehow the dual time logged would not be valid in some way?

I get that airfield X might only sign off progress on hours flown with X, but is there no flexibility?

How does a student compare schools?

I'm sure I'm very out of date, but no one quibbled when I flew a few hours, some at Dundee and some at Perth when I first started.
editmonkey liked this
User avatar
By editmonkey
#1846229
MattL wrote:Yes any dual flown elsewhere would be invalid towards course hours


Thanks for the info Matt, very helpful. Guess that makes the decision straightforward.

Does that mean I'd be unable to transfer my dual flown at one school to another if I switched altogether?
User avatar
By Rob P
#1846232
@MattL

Out of interest, can you provide a link to a reference for that?

editmonkey wrote:
Does that mean I'd be unable to transfer my dual flown at one school to another if I switched altogether?


You definitely can, though sometimes people have struggled to get their records transferred, but those are rare cases.

Rob P
TopCat liked this
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1846234
MattL wrote:Yes any dual flown elsewhere would be invalid towards course hours

Wow. :shock:

I know I've been out of the loop for a long time, but I'm amazed there isn't more flexibility and mechanism for cooperation between schools.

Forgive my incredulity, but (as @editmonkey also asks), if you transfer schools, does the new school not get the training records? And if they do, do they ignore them completely, and it's another 45 hours from the beginning?

A massive gamble then, in other words, because a new student will need many hours probably, to decide that a particular school isn't right for them.

Wow. Just wow. :(
User avatar
By David Wood
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1846239
Matt's point (and I'm sure he's right) is that only one school can be responsible for your training at any one time. You can change schools; but you can't run your training through two or more schools at the same time.

There might conceivably be occasions when the ATO/DTO responsible for your training might agree to accept some training flights delivered by an FI outside that ATO/DTO but I suggest that it would only happen rarely.

When I was HoT I can't remember ever agreeing to do so. Because the bottom line is that at the end of your training the HoT of the ATO/DTO responsible for your training has to put his name to the form certifying to the CAA that you have received all of the necessary training to the necessary standard. If some of that was delivered to you outside of your HoT's oversight/control or whatever then he's going out on a limb.
Rob P, editmonkey liked this
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 25