BEWARE OF THIS FLIGHT SCHOOL. Nashville Flight Training fosters a very unsafe culture where students and instructors have fear of retatliation for voicing safety concerns. Read below:
Over the last year of receiving my private pilots license and spending a lot of money (they are the most expensive in the area) with NFT I have run into some very concerning matinetance issues with the planes. While the flight instructors have been great, the owner Chris Erlanson has been negligent and malicious in repairing his old planes. This has been to the detriment of the students and instructers flying the planes. On several occasions after taking time off work and showing up for a flight lesson I would be told the plane is down for maintenance issues and it would have to be rescheduled. This would happen over and over again. Other times, they would say the plane is airworthy becuase it was some "small" vaccum issue, they would continue to fly the plane until it had a complete failure or instructors and students complained enough and only then fix it. Small issues lead to larger mechanial issues and they refused to correct underlying problems. After expressing my concern with management and the owner, I very much felt like I was brushed off. NFT planes are old. Vaccum's, voltage, parts go bad constantly and planes sit at the school for days because they wont/can't fix them. So scheduling is a pain.
In march on my checkride, I lost voltage and complete power inbound to Nashville International (BNA). I had to land with no comms, gps, or flaps. Of course I shared this with management but they were very dismissive and I never heard from anyone regarding the incident. I can only assume they evetually fixed the issues becuase they flew the plane again a couple days later.
My most recent experience I was scheduled to fly in the evening. After specifically asking the previous day if the plane was airworthy, I was told yes. I showed up with my freind and as we began our pre-flight inspection we noticed they used a pair of vice grips for the door handle in 7880G, but more importantly the taxi and landing lights did not work. Therefore it was not night airworthy. Although they knew my flight time from the schedule they still told me it was airworthy to fly so I should take it out. I told them the point was for me to fly where I didn't have to rush or stress flying back because the lights (all of sudden) didn't work. The owner (Chris Erlanson) got defensive and said that his school wasn't the right shcool for me to rent planes because he couldn't help it if students f***ed up his planes. I was schocked.
Today (7/18/19) he sent me this unprovoked email:
"I wanted to follow up from our conversation last week regarding our
working relationship. It has come to my attention that in addition to
our heated chat, on numerous occasions you have voiced displeasure
with our services at NFT. After reviewing our long term goals, we
regret to inform you that as of today, we won't be able to continue
accommodating your aircraft needs. This is never an easy conversation
to have. Our goal is to provide our customers with consistent, safe
training. However we understand that we have not met your
expectations."
Of course, the "conversation" he is referring to is the one where I expressed safety and airworthy concerns the day of the night flight and he told me to find another home.
In conclusion NFT fosters a culture where voicing safety or airworthy concerns is met with repudication and retaliation. This in an industry that must be held to a higher standard. As a pilot, we put our lives on the line when we rent planes form companies that are responsible for repairing, maintaining and documenting their airplane maintenance.
Would you put your life in Nashville Flight Training's hands? read more