Good Afternoon, I am considering these two flight schools in the Dallas area. I plan to continue my training beginning with Instrument and continuing until CFII-MEI. Have any of y'all attended these schools or heard about them? I know 3 pilots who attended American Flyers in Tx but nobody from US Sport Aircraft. The main reason I am considering US Sport Aircraft is due to the costs. They advertise you can complete your ratings in a 2/3 of the traditional costs. Thank You!
I used American flyers addison for my instrument. I had no bad experiences with them, actually had a lot of good ones. But they are not cheap. I've never heard of the other one.
@David V -- There is a VERY active facebook page, North Texas Aviators, that might provide more insight to your question. If you PM me your email, I'll send you an invite to get you connected. There is at least one member who is an instructor for US Sport Aircraft, and several members who have utilized their services. Oh and welcome to PoA!
The owner of USSA has been around a long time on one of the popular Aviation podcasts and is a super guy. I’ve never done any business with Stu, but I’d definitely not hesitate to talk to him and see what he says. He runs a good ship as best as I can tell from here. I also know one of his former CFIs personally, who moved on to flying freight. Also a stand up guy.
What is the basis of the reduced cost? Are their hourly rates lower than the other place? Are they assuming a sport pilot certificate will take less time than a private (yes, but 33% seems optimistic)? Or, something else?
Part of it is probably aircraft costs. They’re the US distributor for what used to be known as the Piper Sport airplane. Whatever it’s called today. But those are all reasonable questions to ask Stu. I pinged him and his former instructor with this thread link through a communications medium I don’t know if Stu monitors heavily (it was the only contact info I had for him), so maybe he’ll stop by. Don’t know. Don’t think he’s a big “forums” person. Pretty busy with students last I heard. But anyway. I know it’s out of vogue, but pick up a phone and call places. The calls are free.
I did some training at American Flyers last year. They mentioned that a number of their CFI program grads were teaching at the US Sport and seemed proud of that.
They use SportCruisers (LSA) for majority of their training. Their hourly costs are about $20-30 cheaper than C172.
