Unfortunately, Kilo Charlie is a case of don't read a book by its cover. The logo, location, the social media, the marketing at air shows, and the sell to prospective students leads one to believe this place is ahead of the game and unbeatable. Thats what I certainly thought.
I was sold on many promises made by an individual we'll call G, and many of those promises reinforced by other management staff. "You'll train in the brand new twin Tecnams during commercial training to build cheaper multi-time!"/ "You'll get through the program in 8 months!!!" / "You'll do CRM training through commercial!" / "We're about to start a charter service with turbo props you could transition to once your training and CFI is done!"...... Yeah none of that existed at the time once I started and saw the truth and none of it came to fruition.
The biggest selling point they keep pushing forward "You could get done in 8 months!!!". NO YOU ARE NOT. It is common place that students don't get an instructor assigned for a month, and don't get scheduled even longer after to begin training. Most private students I've talked to have been around for 4-8 months, some a year, without getting through the first certificate. The fastest students are no-where close to 8 months either. What they say is that "there will be some set backs somewhere" which is true at any flight school, but a setback is a month or two, not a whole year.
Prospective students typically know nothing of the aviation world, and have no clue that KC isn't telling them about the examiner shortage, which greatly extends the time it takes to get just one certification. These students are taking out huge loans with insane interest rates, relying on information stating they'll be getting a job as a CFI after 8 months. A couple students have stated their expected completion date is now 1-1.5 years past the initial date they were told which is given to the loan company for the deferred payment period.
Before I mention the next thing, I'll back up the instructors. The instructors themselves are actually pretty solid individuals, and the training I felt was quality during my time there. The issue was not them, rather it was management.
NOW- Kilo Charlie has gained a bad name with many Examiners in the Kansas City area and Kansas as a whole. Examiners have commented on INOP stickers which show at least twice in most planes and that seam to never leave the cockpit, and the normalcy of certain inadequacies. On top of that, on one occasion, over 50% of the students who tested with one examiner in a week failed their checkrides. Much of this stemmed from students waiting for months after stage check, losing proficiency, which they can't keep due to not being able to fly more than what's designated in the syllabus.
Some students felt trapped similar to how I felt, being that there is a piece in the contract which states no refunds after a certain period of time. That makes sense if money was pulled out gradually, which we were told would be the case. In some cases however, all of the loan money was withdrawn by Kilo Charlie within the span of a month, when training had barely started. This Money is all accruing interest on the entire amount of the loan instantly; which in most cases is at a rate of 15-17%.
On the broad scale, I can tell from several sources including instructors, past instructors, and students that this used to be a nice place, but in the span of a year its taken a turn off a cliff. Communication from the bosses up top to everyone else seems to be non-existent. On one occasion, a new cirrus was purchased for the school, and no one knew it was actually meant for the fractional ownership side of the company until after it was delivered and several instructional flights had already taken place in it.
The focus of the bosses seems to be on how the company can expand be the next best thing, become a 141 (which is exactly the opposite of why everyone came to Kilo Charlie to begin with), and the other business ideas they want to expand on under Venture Aviation. All of that is fascinating, but it takes energy away from the flight school that is suffering from what I call lack of integrity.
They want to expand: Which failed once already.
They want to become a 141: No one asked for that and no one who attends wants that. It is a popular school for being a more organized 61 and being cheaper than places like ATP.
They tried to expand to have a charter branch under Venture, which is great except they are trying to run that, a flight school, and fractional share branch all at the same time.
They made a new contract with Tecnam for new trainer planes that are supposed to be cheaper to operate, except a big portion of that is because they use MO-GAS which they still haven't figured out how to source.
The drama here is also stupid
I could go on about several other factors about my personal experience but I'd rather not make it obvious who I am. read more
