That was the deep, considered process, then. I've learned a fair bit since, mostly about everything I should have asked before I walked in. This is a review of Flight Training London, because they're the school I know best by a mile. But a lot of what they taught me applies to any flight school, because flying's like that. We take what we learn and apply it to our own experience and come out richer for it. Unless you're a pilot, in which case we come out a good deal poorer. Have you seen the price of 100LL lately?
Why I really chose them
The sign got me through the door, but I wasn't completely daft about it. I had done my research and Denham and High Wycombe on the list too. What tipped it in the favour was the drive. or the lack of it. Both of the others meant a trek through country lanes, and the truth nobody tells you is that the school you can get to easily is the school you'll actually fly from. An hour to the airfield is two hours on every single flight, and that time mounts up fast, until the commute is more of your day than the flying is. The super dupa brilliant school an hour down twisty roads is the one you'll talk yourself out of on a marginal morning. Elstree was close. Close keeps you flying. So choose wisely, my Padawan.
Location, Location and Location
The other thing, and it matters more than it sounds, is that Elstree has a hard runway. Denham does too, so that wasn't what knocked it out, but High Wycombe is grass, and grass turns to a bog over a British winter. A hard runway means the school keeps running all year. It's not something I'd ever have thought to weigh up beforehand, yet it turns out to be critical to flying and training right through the year. And it isn't just about getting more lessons in. Plenty of people learn through a glorious summer, pass in the sunshine, and then can't cope the first time the weather does what British weather does. Train all year and you become a rounded pilot, because you learn in the conditions you'll actually be flying in once you're loose and on your own.
The place itself
When I started, FTL was a set of prefabs next to a gravel car park. Some of the pre-flights and debriefs happened on picnic tables in the sunshine, or crammed into the classroom when the rain came in, because it's British weather and there is no in-between. Not pretty. But the place was buzzing, aircraft coming and going, students milling about, instructors actually instructing. That, I've since worked out, is the thing to look for. A busy prefab beats a quiet palace every time. By the time I qualified they'd moved into a smart new building, and I knew exactly where my fees had gone. FTL is the largest school at Elstree, and there's a reason for that.
The instructors, which is the bit that really matters
Here's the single most useful thing I can tell you, and it's the thing I'd never have thought to check. "A good instructor" and "the right instructor for you" are two different questions.
I got to fly with a few of them, and they were all interesting. But good doesn't mean identical. Some teaching styles gelled with me and some didn't, and that's not a criticism of anyone, it's just how learning works. I'm laid back about it. I'm not racing to the airlines, I'm in it because I love it, and a school big enough to have a proper spread of instructors let me find the ones who suited that. A two-instructor outfit looks cosy right up until both are booked solid and you're sitting three weeks between lessons, going cold and paying for it.
Wayne with FTL Chief Flying Instructor IvanThen there's the infamous Jack, who's turned up in a fair few of my videos by now. Jack did my trial lesson, though as a LAPL instructor he couldn't take me through a PPL, so that was never going to be him long term. Worth knowing, by the way, that the person who flies your trial isn't necessarily the one who trains you.
My main instructor became James, ex-Flybe, and I was actually his first ever student. The two of us learning our trades together, him learning to teach while I learned to fly. He's since moved on, but I'll always have been his first. Ivan, who owns the place with Tamsyn and is the Chief Flying Instructor and an examiner, took the big stuff. And then there's Jeffrey. Everyone knows Jeffrey. Lovely chap, been flying over forty years, and you half expect him to regale you with war stories about teaching on the Lysander, though he's nowhere near that old.
That mix is the point. A school that trains its own instructors will always have some who are building hours on the way to an airline, sharp and current and fresh out of their own exams, and some who've been there for decades because they simply love it. Neither is better. You just want to know which kind suits how you learn, and a busy school gives you both.
I'll give you one honest gap, though it comes with an update. Back in my day, ground school was down to the instructors, and most instructors would far rather be flying than sat in a classroom. Like most students, if we're honest. The fun bit is the flying. The theory is, well, the theory. So I felt a little under-supported on it, and I took myself off to Linda Wheeler's dedicated ground school over at Denham, which helped enormously. Funny, that, Denham losing my shortlist on the drive and then getting my custom anyway.
The radio course, the FRTOL, I actually sat with another school on the field altogether, which is common enough. But here's the update, and it's a fair one: FTL now have that shiny new building with proper classrooms, so the ground school side may well have moved on. They've even squeezed in a decent Microsoft Flight Sim rig and a professional-spec Diamond DA42 Twin Star simulator, which I duly crashed. On video, naturally.
The IRR or is it the IMC - I give up!!
And then there's the IR(R). Or the IMC rating, as it's called again, because it started life as the IMC, became the IR(R), and the CAA changed it back to IMC in October 2025, so we've gone round in a full circle. Whatever we're calling it this week, I started mine with Chris, who's larger than life, ex-business-jet, teaches purely for the love of it, and tells some genuinely dodgy jokes. But he'd push his students to progress at a rate that just wasn't for me. I felt, somewhere around the point an approach plate first landed in my lap and my brain quietly exploded, like a bit of a failure for not keeping pace. I never actually had that conversation with him. Yes maybe I should have. But I didn't and in the end I stopped. Not gave up, despite what I called the video, stopped. Because I'd stopped enjoying it, and if you're not enjoying something you're doing for fun, why are you doing it? That's not a mark against Chris or the school. It's the clearest proof I've got of the thing I keep banging on about. The right instructor for one person is the wrong fit for another, and that's nobody's fault. I'll go back to it one day, when I'm ready. I just need to fly more first.
The aeroplanes
They're school aircraft, so let's not pretend they're glass-cockpit showpieces. Some are shinier than others, but don't be deceived by looks. The bits that mattered worked, and who needs an autopilot anyway? I never did get into the C152, the flying lawnmower, on account of being a little larger than your average student, but the fact they had something to suit proves they can accommodate just about everyone. I had a real soft spot for G-JANA, a PA28 that always seemed to be waiting for me when I started. Last time I flew her she'd even sprouted a pair of G5s, which is the school putting money back into the fleet, though I'll admit I still prefer the steam gauges. I knew where I stood with her. Usually a bit lower than I wanted, mind, because the last student had dropped the seat.
The flying you don't expect
This is where a school earns its keep beyond the licence. Too many students think flying is just the hours you need to pass the test, the magic forty-five. It isn't. Flying is about experience, and experience is the thing that makes you a better, safer pilot. The only way you get it is to go flying. Flyouts are perfect for exactly that. There's a destination, so there's a point to it, but there's far less pressure than a lesson, no particular skill you're being marked on, just real flying in real conditions with the time to take it in. My first proper club flyout was to Sandown on the Isle of Wight, with James and another student along, bright blue sky the whole way. After that came the trips abroad, Le Touquet, Ostend, my first tastes of leaving the country in a small aeroplane. Nobody books a trial lesson asking whether the school will take them to Belgium. They should.
The Milestones
My first solo was Ivan's call, after eight or so circuits with him. Funny thing, I was more nervous flying the check ride with the CFI than I was about going up alone. I'd also lost my wallet the night before and spent the morning cancelling cards, then went and flew solo anyway. I found the wallet later, for what it's worth. The school films the solos, not every flight, just the milestones, and they make a proper thing of them, with a good push on social media too. Good on them. They're rightly proud of their students' progress.
The skills test I'll remember as brutal. Three hours, and I came away with a partial. Now, is that a partial fail or a partial pass? We'll never know. It rather depends whether you're a glass half full or glass half empty sort. I was gutted, if I'm honest, but I was also being realistic. I'd passed the navigation and come unstuck on the skills, undone by my steep turns and a practice forced landing where I cheerfully put us down with a tailwind. I also managed to get shot, figuratively speaking, by Ivan, when I published the details of his favourite nav route on the video. Sorry about that. He soon found a more interesting one for future students. I came back for round two with a broom to defrost the aeroplane, spent forty-five minutes scrubbing frost before I'd even started, then had to fly the whole skills section again rather than just the two I'd fluffed. Cracked the steep turns on nose position in the end. Get that right and it's like flying on rails. Fourteen months after I started, I was a pilot. Or as they say, I'd earned my licence to learn.
The qualifying cross-country took me Elstree to Leicester to Duxford and home, after a small mountain of cancellations for weather, aircraft and, on one memorable occasion, the airfield running out of fuel. The Duxford team took me up the tower for a look and then drove me down the line in a truck to pay my landing fee. It was the Leicester solo, though, that finished me off, because there was a barbecue that evening and I very nearly fell asleep in it. The barbecue, I should say, not the solo.
That barbecue is the bit you can't fake. Spend enough hours at a school and the people become a sort of family. And it's a proper family, not just blokes with expensive wristwatches in a shed. Partners and kids get pulled in too, Easter egg hunts, cookie decorating, the lot, and Caz has the bunny-biscuit trophy to prove it. For an older learner juggling a household, a club that makes room for the people you'd otherwise be leaving at home matters more than you'd think.
There's weather dancing on the runway when the cloud won't lift, there's Tamsyn quietly running the socials so the flyouts actually happen, and there's a coffee machine that's harder to operate than an RNAV approach and that you will absolutely break. Good thing I don't drink the stuff. Best of all, there was the Halloween night that Ivan, the Chief Flying Instructor, the examiner who signs off your test, stood there in a blond wig and a cheerleader outfit and told me I couldn't go home because I'd miss the mummy wrapping. That, more than anything, tells you what the place is like. The man who is strict when your licence is on the line is the same man in the pom-poms. The second is what makes you trust the first.
The money, honestly
Safety comes first, always, and there's a kind of safety people forget about. Everybody gets told not to pay a big lump up front, and then a discount or a package deal comes along and they do it anyway. FTL never made me. On the PPL it's pay after each flight, and that matters, because schools have gone under holding students' prepaid thousands and those students lost the lot. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and definitely not in aviation, where the cheapest burger on the field still costs you a hundred quid once you've factored in the flying to get to it. I can only speak to the PPL side, mind. I never went commercial, so I won't pretend to know how that part works.
Yes, it costs. It's London, so of course it costs, and the prices keep climbing, because everything does. There's a membership too, £195 at the time of writing, but it is well worth it, and I'd rather tell you that straight than have you find it later. It covers the social side, the community, all the belonging. Looked at that way it isn't a hidden charge, it's the price of the family, and I reckon it's fair.
The verdict
It wouldn't be fair to score them like a piece of kit, so I won't. A headset gets four stars out of five. A flight school is people, and you can't put a number on people. What I can tell you is that I'd recommend FTL without hesitation. And if you're looking for a school closer to your own home, then I hope the things I've mentioned help you make the right decision for yourself, because that's what this was ever really about. Just remember the two things that matter. Enjoy it. And fly more.
So, should you?
This is the part where I was going to drop something profound from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Then I remembered I've never actually read it. All I know is it's about a gull who flies for the love of flying and getting better at it, rather than just squabbling over the next meal. Which is the whole point, isn't it. So forget the borrowed wisdom.
Just go flying.
