Great Service, Bad Flight School
With a couple schools scattered across Utah, Leading Edge Aviation is not a place I would consider pursuing flight training. With insane rates on aircraft ($210 per hour wet rate + Instruction on a carbureted 172!!!) you are better off looking elsewhere. They are able to charge these rates being the only Part 61 flight training FBO in a college town area. During my training a while ago, they only had 3 Cessna 172N models. ALL of them are different. Different avionics, one has more horsepower, one has no ADSB-In. They finally purchased another Cessna 172 recently instead of putting all money in their Cirrus aircraft trying to attract the wealthier folks of Logan.
With my flight training, planes were constantly down and had issues, lengthening training. Not to mention Logan, Utah is not known for great weather. Further, the airspace is grossly congested with USU being right next door. Plan on taking longer than expect to complete your rating. They finally purchased another Cessna 172 recently instead of putting all money in their Cirrus aircraft trying to attract the wealthier folks of Logan. Their cheapest option is the Cessna 152, of which they have 1 of. And if it goes down for maintenance? You aren't flying at all.
Milking naive students for money is the name of the game. This is not a cheap option to obtain ratings. An unclear syllabus leaves you unprepared for the harder-than-average mock checkride they give you. When the checkride day comes along, you would be shocked by how easy it is compared to what you're unreasonably grilled on. This part isn't against the business, but I also noticed students do not socialize with each other. Zero camaraderie. It is fly, debrief, go home. They do offer a ground school for $800 that is once a week and laughably unstructured and lax.
The CFIs are overall great and friendly, but many are noticeably exhausted, and rightfully so. They work constantly and are underpaid for what they put up with in the old raggedy FBO. Unfortunately, the scheduling system is also awful. You must book 2 weeks in advance, or you are not getting a plane or getting bad hours. You also must realize booking the time is just booking when you should be flying. You must arrive at least 30 minutes early every time to preflight (understandable) and do paper nav logs, which get super old and outdated.
The most egregious aspect of LE Aviation is their DPE wait times. I was initially told 2-3 weeks to secure a DPE, which ended up being 2 months with weather cancellations and DPE reschedules back when I trained here. Of course, the DPE system is rough in many parts of the U.S, but Utah in general and this flight school seem to suffer more. You must rely on your instructor to get into contact, which leaves you in the dark. You'll learn to get creative with how to reach out to DPEs yourself.
It is sad this flight school charges rates they do for a lack of structure, planes, half-decent FBO, tired-but-trying CFIs, etc. You're absolutely better off elsewhere where you will be provided better, cheaper instruction rather than the self-study/come to fly & leave method employed here. read more