Congratulations for your PPL !! Flying twice a week is amazing. It’s like a bad habit : very easy to get into, very difficult to quit :)
Back to the original question of bulk-buying hours in advance for a discount – I wouldn’t, not unless one could be very certain of the stability of the business. And of course, how much of a discount is it, and is it good value?
I was an exception to my own rule. I paid West London Aero Club up front (for a discount that was absolutely worth having) after doing a bit of due diligence and establishing that it had been there forever, wasn’t going anywhere, and that the same people owned the establishment as owned the airfield. I then did my PPL over the summer in a little under five months, minimum hours. Flying twice a week most weeks and it certainly helped.
For the average PPL training school operating 2 or 3 aeroplanes out of a couple of Portakabins then I wouldn’t give them any money up front. Many are operating on the very edge of financial viability and sometimes at the end of the month have to choose between paying staff and repairing aeroplanes. Many are owned and operated by ‘characters’ who, shall we say, have owned and operated many flying schools in their time – all with a slightly different limited company name and all bust.
Peter wrote:
hanging from PA38 to a C152 after some 20hrs caused me to waste 10-20hrs.
I think an awful lot of this depends on the stage you are in your PPL and quality of instructor/school.
I switched from a C172 (due to the -H2AD engine lunching itself – the spalled camshaft issue those engines so frequently have) to a 200hp Beech Musketeer and it took a 1 hour checkout to do it. But I had a very good primary instructor and this was just before doing my solo cross country flights.
Peter wrote:
here
Everywhere, no? Obviously these 5h courses sometimes seem really excessive.
Friend of mine had to do a “transition course” to transition from an SR22G5 to a G6, (both Perspective) which had to include a flight!
Sure, but here most schools will make you do conversion training from a C152 to a C172. Maybe an hour with an instructor. You can see their point… they are renting the plane out. Obviously much depends on whether they think the pilot will crash it 
what_next wrote:
Well, around here it was said that flying school interest was behind EASA FCL. Not being able to do any training without an FTO, bringing up the minimum requirement for a PPL from 35 to 45 hours, … you name it. EASA certainly did the flying schools some favor.
But there is certainly no requirement from EASA for differences training when transitioning from a C152 to a C172!
I also used to work for a flight school based at an airport where doing circuits would have been (slightly) expensive, hence we usually even flew 25-30 minutes to the nearest suitable places for circuit training. It was dreadful, and I was sorry for my students, since the time flying there was essentially “wasted”, but that’s how it was. Sure, one does learn “something” on these little x-countries, but not a lot, especially not at the very beginning. Also, these 25-30 minutes “drained” most of the students mentally, enough to make them struggle on the subsequent 6 or 7 circuits we did at those airfields away from base. Then, at the end, another one of those useless cross-countries to get back home, during which the student was then totally drained and didn’t pick up anything really. A dreadful waste if money and time. Most students needed north of 20 hours to go solo and more like 50-60 hours till the flight test (another factor was that at this flight school, the instructor-student pair changed every time, so that the student didn’t really make progress due to all the confusion). It astounds me the WN states that students at EDDS usually manage to do their
PPL within the minimum hours.
It is so valuable to train at an airport wher you can just go out and do a few circuits and little more, allowing the student to do those circuits when he is still totally "fresh. It also allows you to do something useful when the weather is foul, and not cancel the lesson compeletly. After all, landing is the biggest challenge for beginning students and is what is the most important to master in the first 15 hours.
So, if you are an aspiring PPL, please do train at an airport where circuits are possible / reasonable in terms of cost.
Jujupilote wrote:
Don’t take it personaly, but I wouldn’t like to learn in your school !
Don’t worry Anyway, it is not my flying school, I’m only instructing there in my free time. And I myself trained from the same base and really liked the daily mix of cross-country and pattern training. Fifteen hours to first solo may sound a lot, but then 16 hours to never fly with an instructor again is also something nice!
Peter wrote:
I bet that, like the UK, they get a significant number of 100hr students. OTOH French wx doesn’t get much better than the UK until you get down to roughly the latitude of La Rochelle… I wonder why this is? Do the students mess around, flying once every 2 weeks? Or are they in their 60s?
Well, that’s pretty much it. I knew some 100hrs+ students but they are not many.
The weather is an important factor too : FIs tend to be more and more cautious and Part NCO will increase this move. So more and more lessons get canceled. I did lessons in pretty marginal conditions (as we said : let’s take off to see closely what it looks like :)) it’s OK when you know the area really well.
Most students can only fly on weekends, which often means every other saturday (1 every 2 weeks). Due to personal reasons : flying is a hobby for the husband, the wife can only accept a certain amount of it. Plus house works, seeing friends, family, etc …. This also applies to the FI who is a volunteer : so months go fast during training.
Usually few people flies at lunch time so the most intense activity of any flying club is Saturday 10-12 am, 2-6 pm : that’s 6 hours per week !! Guess what happens if the week is sunny and the saturday gloomy 
??
An FI has at most 4 students each saturday, each takes 2 years, so the math is simple : 1 FI makes 2 PPLs per year
Look at the a/c booking site of any club on any weekday and you’ll see I am right. People need to work for a flying living
Student’s in their 60s have more free time and money usually, so training goes smoother and faster even if they need to work more on the theory part.
To me, this is one of the reasons people quit flying after the PPL : they spend so much time/effort/money/wife-tolerance during their training they can’t continue flying after their training : the PPL is the goal, it becomes the end. Once they got their ticket, they realize they need more flying to get confident, take friends on trips… And they drop.
Not so many people drop out during training though, mainly because clubs immediatly tell candidates how much blood and tears they will need. One day a guy came at my former club : the chief pilot told him upfront “it’s 2 years long, 12,000€ and I can’t take new students for the next 6 months” . I was shocked ! Guess why GA is declining !
I think most people think flying is an expensive and intellectual kind of yachting : you come, pay a few thousand €, study 1 or 2 weeks, and you are free to take your friends around the world. Flying is more difficult to plan and share with friends and family in my experience (than a road trip of a boat trip or an Easyjet weekend).
And then you read an article about a US entrepreneur who in 3 years goes from zero to buying his first jet, flying his team on weekdays and his family on weekends. He passed all his ratings training in the morning between 7 and 9 am. Life is not fair
Alexis wrote:
I see nothing wrong with a first solo after 15 hours, depending on talent etc. I did it with 9 hours but if a student needs 15, so what?
I agree with you Alexis, I meant : no student does his first solo before 12 hrs, most do 15 hrs
I had done dozens of hours with my dad (PPL) in the RHS and I soloed after 14 hrs.
what_next wrote:
Every single training sortie is also a navigation exercise because we have to fly to one of the training airfields around us, the nearest of which is 20 minutes away with a C152.
Don’t take it personaly, but I wouldn’t like to learn in your school !
Alexis wrote:
I see nothing wrong with a first solo after 15 hours, depending on talent etc.
It also very much depends on circumstances. Our students all take at least 15 hours to first solo. Simply because we are based at an international airport where we can’t do landing practice. Every single training sortie is also a navigation exercise because we have to fly to one of the training airfields around us, the nearest of which is 20 minutes away with a C152. The good thing about that setup is that the students are ready for solo cross-country flying shortly after their first solo patterns. And they are fully familiar with airport operations and proper R/T when they get their license.
