Kenny Keller (YouTube) criticizes helicopter flight schools that deliberately prolong training and inflate costs, sharing multiple anecdotes where students were threatened with losing work if they trained elsewhere. He contrasts these practices with his "Final Approach" accelerated CFI course (started three years prior) that finishes qualified students in about a week rather than months, arguing many quoted timelines (e.g., three months, $25,000, 15–20 flight hours) are unnecessary for recently current commercial pilots. Keller frames the issue as poor business practices that harm students and the industry.
Questions this video answers
25 years
Three years ago (from the video date)
Three months and $25,000
About 15 hours
Until the end of February into March (given it's mid-December)
Chapters
Epidemic of helicopter flight schools. Heather just made this comment a little bit ago. I just wanted to shoot a quick video to tell you the kind of horse manure that goes on out there. Here's one example. Not going to mention any names, doesn't matter. But we had a gentleman who wanted to come here and do accelerated cfi. It's our final approach course where we finish people up in a week. Young guy got his commercial recently, wanted to finish up his cfi, take about a week. We do a zoom with him today, and he's like, well, I gotta be honest, I don't know if I want to come now because the flight school that I did my ratings at, I'm doing some commercial work for him. But they flat out told me, well, if you go see Kenny for the cfi, then you can't come back here, you can't work for us anymore. And. And that's it. And I'm like, did they even give you a reason? And he flat out said they told him, well, it's. That's revenue that we're going to lose like 15 hours. So if you go there, we're done. And I'm like, you know what, man? That's fine if you want to finish up over there. But here's the ridiculous part of it. It's going to take him. This is December. We're about mid December. We're going to. He wanted to finish this month, and I was trying to work him in with our examiner to get him done before the end of December. If he stays there, it's going to take him until the end of probably March or end of February into March before he's going to get done. And he's got to fly 15 hours. When our program, for someone like him who's a commercial, recent commercial. So if there's. If their skills are still good, knowledge is still there. We've got to prep and there's some studying to do and there's things to do to get ready for the CFI, but it doesn't need to take three months, it doesn't need to take 15 hours. That's ridiculous. And it's all cool. I said with him, hey, make up your mind. Say what you want to do. If you want to fly with them, that's great. And he doesn't really want to drag it out, but he knows he's going to cut off his. Kind of cut his nose off because they give him a little bit of commercial work where he can build time. So I giggle and go, it's Ridiculous. I'm not even in competition with him. He's still going to be able to work there, bring students in. He's done two readings there already. It's a measly three hours of prep we're going to do for him and an hour checkride and be done. But their butt hurt because they're going to lose 15 hours and this kind of thing goes on. We just, we have another one, we have a see if I coming in next month, same situation. He said, well the last flight school I called, they wanted, they said it would take three months in $25,000. And he came down here, I did a half day evaluation with him because he was within driving distance. And I'm like, man, your knowledge is really good. We've got a little bit of work to do and some things to brush up on and things to go over. But he is now scheduled and he's coming down next month. And he said, he goes, dude, I can't, he's, I can't believe the difference in these quotes I get in what you do for us. And I go, it's because you don't need three months and you don't need $25,000. You don't need 15 hours of flying for a freaking CFI. That's ridiculous. If you are current commercial pilot and I'm not saying you got a commercial 20 years ago and you haven't flown, I'm saying you just recently did your commercial test in the last month or two, last couple months, your flying should be at a commercial standard. The CFI is flying to a commercial standard. And talking 15 to 20 hours for CFI is just most of the time ridiculous. Maybe if your skills aren't very good, sure, that's fine, but not for somebody who's qualified in the aircraft and current and has a good knowledge. So again, on the facs we require you to have required to have all the written tests done. So you can't have that straggling. And you've been working on the ground, been working through the fois, so you have a good knowledge on fois. You can do that at home, you study that on your own use hogs. However, you've done that part of it. So the ground has to be there, but it doesn't take three months. That's just ridiculous. So this is just another one in the long list of things that we see and hear about all the time. If you feel like your flight school is giving you the run around and it's dragging out for months, it is we will go back to the. I've been teaching 25 years. But when we started the final approach course, what we call final approach course, was three years ago. Our first young man that we helped had 160 hours at a flight school in Florida, and he couldn't get done. It was always, well, we got to get you one more stage check or you got to go fly with this person. He's not available. This week drags it out to 160 hours for a private pilot. And we get on a zoom with him. His knowledge is good. And I'm like, man, when you get up here, as long as your flying's good, we'll be able to finish up in a week. And we did that. But before it happened, he got his mom on the zoom with us, and she was upset. And I get why she's upset. She's like, but I've spent all this money at this flight school. I can't believe what I've spent already. And I'm like, well, you know what? That's on that flight school. That's on them for dragging that training out. There's no relevance on what I'm doing. I'm going to finish him up. And they said, well, they threatened that if he came here to finish the private, he couldn't come back and work on the instrument. I said, that's on the flight school, too. Find another flight school. When you go back to Florida, a legitimate business should offer you their services.
This is what it cost. Would you like to work with us? Either it works or it doesn't. For the business to threaten you. Oh, well, if you go do that, then you can't come back here. That's not good business where who thinks that that's a good idea? Even our examiner said that one flight school I'm talking about three people came in a row, all from the same flight school, all with 150, 160 hours, didn't have their private. We did all three of them in a week. And my examiner even said that flight school should work with you. They should be happy that you're helping their people finish up. Because I'm not a time builder. I'm not trying to rack up a bunch of hours on my aircraft. Our specialty is get you in polish, get it done, send you home, go back and work on your next rating. And I thought it was cool that the examiner even said that. Here's this flight school getting pissed off and butt hurt because they can't finish their student. They come here and finish up right away. They say, well, if you go to him that don't come back here. That's bad business. That's bad business. And you wonder why flight schools go out of business every week, every month, and they can't make it. Lots of reasons. So if you want to finish up a rating, you're tired of all the horse manure that goes along with trying to finish 5, 7, 4, 7, 6, 7, 179 7. We'll help you get finished up. Peace out.
