A few words on my experiance gaining my PPL with Anglo American Aviation in San Diego:

Why Anglo-American aviation?
Going to Anglo American Aviation (AAA) instead of one of the other five companies I found in US offering the same service (in my case: a JAA PPL(A)) was mainly based on that I’ve been to the east coast on previous visits to the US but never to the west coast. AAA where also fairly quick an accurate in answering my mails so they looked like a good choice. It didn’t hurt that they were considerable cheaper. For pupils aiming at flying the Cessna 150/152 there is almost no difference in the offerings from all the flying schools. But if you (like me at well over 6” and 200lbs) in reality is forced to use a 172 or a Piper and then there was huge differences. OBA, as an example, had a price 1000-2000 dollar higher price then AAA if I wanted to train on the 172.

The actual experience
My final decision to go there was a rather late one, I suddenly had a month free in my schedule and made a few quick calls and was of two weeks later.

Arrived an hour late (00.30), expecting to find the promised pick up but found no one. So no one there and neither airport information nor the airline had any messages for me. Since there were no messages I assumed they were late (I only had a daytime office phone number to Anglo American Aviation so I didn’t have anyone to call in the middle of the night and I didn’t know were they intended to let me sleep either so I didn’t know where to go) so I waited close to an hour before trying to find a cab to go to a hotel witch turned out to be a major headache since no cabs were there that late. Also finding a hotel with empty beds required several calls before finding one with a empty room. Upon calling Anglo the next morning they promised to send my FI over at once. According to him he had gone to the airport the day before but he didn’t feel like waiting for my late plane so he just decided to leave me there ‘to dry’ (He claimed he did it after checking with Anglo if it was ok). Given with what ease they could have arranged for cab to pick me up or at least leave a message that was not a very nice thing to do. And what was the big problem in waiting an hour btw?

The Anglo American School

The study room

Arriving the next morning they didn’t have a available room to offer as I was promised so the plan was to put me into a hotel for a night or two until one was available. Later on the same day they suddenly realized that a room was actually empty so I was put in one of their apartments after all. In short the room apartment could have used a good cleaning (OK, I know I am a guy but even I appreciate bathrooms were I don’t wonder what decade it last saw some cleaning agents) and it would have been nice if there had been enough cups, plates and stuff. But apart from that it was a really nice apartment with pool and washers within the area. With one of the bikes supplied by Anglo it took me something like twenty minutes to get to the school.

Apartment area

Back at school my flight instructor Pete first told me how bored he was with flight instructing and that he already was hired by an airline so he would be off as soon as they would give him his first assignment. A pretty standard FI in other words
In reality he turned up to be a pretty good one, I realize that this is very much a matter of personal opinion, especially since my roomie (who initially also got assigned to Pete) requested a new one after a few lessons (He did get a new one quickly and with no fuzz). But I liked Pete and his no nonsense style.

Do not count on getting any theory lessons. The thought is that the FI’s should teach you this but according to them they get no payment for this from Anglo so in reality they are only interested in getting flight time. So you are placed on your own in their study rooms with oxfords computer education series or the PPL confuser. I had no problem with this but since they charge you 45$ for each single re-test I would have appreciated someone telling me what to study…

At the time of my visit Anglo had a fleet of four Piper 151/161, one Piper 200, two Cessna 172(M/P), two Cessna 152 and a Beech duchess for multi training.
Hours on the aircraft was usually somewhere between 3000-6000 hours and they were all in well used, acceptable but far from perfect shape.

Anglo is situated parallel to the main runways at Gillespie airfield. It’s a nice airport with a few interesting aircrafts locally and on visit. During my time there pretty much every common GA and experimental aircraft passed at least once. On top of that jets is becoming more and more common and a lot historic/military aircrafts were there during weekends like B17, P51, Harvards, L39 etc

Lancair propjet visiting…

Greg’s L39, he was somewhat pissed when I took this photo. Someone tried to take the L39 on an joyride the night before… Luckaly the were not able to work out the engine start up procedure, but the joyriders got very close.

Acroduster, the stardusters smaller cousin.

The Boeing B-17 was visiting for a few days. Some of the pupils at the school even got a free ride!

Gillespie is a perfect airfield training in. It is busy so you get a lot of training in handling traffic both in the pattern and on the ground but on the same time it was never so busy that any substantial time was spent cueing. Spending a lot of time “holding short” was a common complaint among student at other local airports such as Montgomery. The training area is just a few minutes away and with a lot of controlled airspace nearby you do not spend much time doing anything but effective training.

Not a very happy guy… Not a pupil at Anglo this PPL student applied to much brakes when the aircraft started to turn to much. A typical tailwheel accident. Happened right before my first tail wheel class so I got kind of nervous!

There is not much to say about the actual flying. California is a extremely nice place to fly in with very varied landscape. On your long solo you start at the coast, go over the mountains (I was at 11.000feet on the third leg), fly over the rocky desert and end up over large cultivated areas. And that’s just on the first of three legs!

Taken on my long cross country. It is Palm springs (Thermal)

I got my hours done and even if they charge you by the hour with no 45 hour guaranteed pass they did no attempt of raising my hours etc. Also there were no hidden charges anywhere so AAA are 100% fair and square in this area.
I did a total of 51 hours to get my PPL incl nightrating but 6 hours of that was explicitly towards my tail wheel conversion. The exam was included in the price and was a really long (2,5hours!) learning experience. Really good since Victor, the examiner, spent a lot of time in hammering in the differences between American and European rules just to make sure we were up to speed when we got back to Europe.

Victor, despite the expression in his face I actually passed.

A few mixed tips and tricks:
I arrived mid March so the weather is close to what we get in northern Europe during early summer but with less rain. In reality I think that from a San Diego weather/PPL point of view only Jan/Feb should be avoided since they tend to get ‘a lot’ of rain. I would think a second time before going there during late summer since it gets really hot, spending a lot of time in an aircraft as hot as a Finnish sauna trying to stay focused can be really hard. Thermal activety should be interesting then as well, already in March I experienced over 2500 feet per minute lifts and sinks (the Piper VSI doesn’t go higher then that!) several times and it should get worse during summers. For those of you who haven’t experienced it it feels like sitting in a gigantic rollercoaster. Personally I did expect that the wings would come of the first few times.

Anglo offers to pick one up at San Diego int for free or at LAX for roughly 110 dollar extra (and you have to pay for a carfare from LAX to a local GA airport). I opted to go to SAN for economical reasons (LAX ticket was cheaper but not 110$ cheaper), that might not be the best choice since you get picked by your FI and the transport from LAX can count as flight time towards your license. Jetblue has since started a $99 route to JFK (New York) so please check with your travel agent if they have any cheap tickets to New York as well and just arrange the JFK-SAN leg yourself with Jetblue, that could end up the cheapest option of them all.

If you can, you should really at least glance at some educational material before getting there. It makes the first lessons so much better and understandable. Also, any time spent studying at home means you get more time of in the sun.. Just don’t spend any time with the communications book. Radio communication is simpler to learn after you got the hang of flying.

Four weeks is a minimum. I know OBA and Anglo (somewhat) offers three week courses. Even if this is possible it requires you to be a 24h/day student and most likely you would have to learn the major part of the theory before. I did JAA PPL(A), Night rating and tail wheel endorsement in four weeks but that did not leave much room for relaxation.

Compare prices, Anglo does not include some things other companies offer (books/extra exams if needed) so make shore you compare apples to apples before making a decision based on costs. Part from that I spent on training and airfare I spent less then 20$ a day on everything else. I ate my breakfast and dinner at the apartment and lunch at the airport cafe/resturant locaded in the same building as Anglo. But do remember I am an extremely boring guy so if you are an partyanimal you should bring a lot more cash, there is a $50 cab fare to be paid after a night out in San Diego…

Visit the San Diego airplane museum. It is located in Balboa park (worth a visit on it own) together with the major part of San Diego’s other museums it is a nice museum well worth a visit, especially if you have family with you since they tried to do the exhibition understandable for everyone.

Final thoughts
Would I go there again? In short: Yes. There is a list as long as my childhood wish list to Santa on things to improve. Most of the things on the list is a consequence of that Anglo is pretty much gives the impression of a big boys club where everyone gets to do what they love, but no one does what they don’t like. Things like organisation, paperwork, cleaning and all that boring stuff.

But that also makes this a very pleasant, relaxed place to stay with a huge feel good potential. And they do care about you becoming a good pilot, not only if you pass the final test or not.

Links:
Anglo.American Aviation
Article on the owners of Anglo

A final note: Remember: I am from Sweden, probably one of the most organized countries in the world, so my references are a bit screwed up… Also: AAA reimbursed my initial extra hotel night without me even having to ask.

Update 2006:
As you might have seen in other parts of this website I went back to Anglo in 2006 to get my commercial, flightinstructor etc. Anglo changed quite a bit: Prices are among the highest of the JAA schools but they still lack resources to keep enough airplanes flying for their students. So I got only five hours of flying done in two weeks with one cancelled lesson almost every day…
A more serious note is that I got recommended to go elsewhere by the chief flight instructor since they were not gonna be able to meet the promises made by Chris (one of the owners). So far so good (kind of) but the real turnoff was the discussion I had with Andy a few weeks later after completing my training elsewhere: He stated that he was very upset with the chief flight instructor and that I had done wrong going elsewhere. I asked him why since the transfer had been approved by him before I did it (so one way of seeing it was that I only did what I was asked to do by Anglo) and he said that “because of this they lost a lot of income”. I had a long discussion with him and Chris on the subject but the what I see as the important conclussion is this:
Anglo (Ie Chris and Andy) realize that they did not and could not live up to their promises and they also agree on that I had nothing to do with this (such as me being a bad student etc). But basically they did not care. The correct action from their point of view in this case was that I should have remained at Anglo for a unknown period of time to complete my studies. That my schedule did not allow for this was of no interest.
The important leasson here for me is that it was very clear during this discussion that they had no interest in keeping whatever they promised or how Anglo american aviation performed. The only interest was the money. So for me that changes my perception of them to a large extent. Basically: Stay away.