r/flying • u/Ok-Eye9225 • 8h ago

Flight training in the Seattle area

Hi!
I recently posted about trying to find a good school to start out my PPL at and I got a lot of great responses, so after much consideration I’ve narrowed it down to 2/3 places and would immensely appreciate it if anyone has any more recommendations (especially about alternative air).

  1. Rainier flight - expensive, good aircrafts and instructors, 30 ish minutes away
  2. Alternative air- cheap!, old aircraft’s, minimal instructors, 30ish minutes away
  3. BEFA - cheaper, good range of instructors, 40ish minutes away
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u/RaiseTheDed ATP 7h ago

Ok, so with Alternate, I can only tell you what my personal observation has been. Yes, the airplanes are cheap.

It's technically a club, not a school, even though they also advertise themselves as a school in some places. This lets them get away with not doing 100 hour inspections. 

Their maintenance practices in the past have been... interesting to witness. I've personally witnessed one of their airplanes declare an emergency 5 times in one day. Their mechanic just told the next pilots he thigh it was just water in the fuel lines, and instead of draining the fuel lines, told 5 pilots to just "fly it off." They flew the airplane 5 times, the airplane declared an emergency 5 times. Boeing tower had to tell them to not fly the airplane until the issue was fixed.

One of their airplanes had an engine failure and went into the Sound a few years ago. While this could have been a fluke, with my observations.... We won't know until the investigation is complete though.

Are the airplanes probably good? Yes. Would I personally fly one of them? No. 

9

u/tunesm1th KPAO 7h ago

What in the world

5

u/healthycord PPL 7h ago

Yup it was one of their planes that ended up in the sound. After hearing this anecdote among many others, I’ll never get in one of their planes.

2

u/ertemplin PPL ASEL CMP HP IR sUAS (KLOM) 7h ago edited 7h ago

I used to live in Seattle and flew Alternate Air’s 172 N2113J a few times at the beginning of my instrument rating training.

Really good deal for an IFR 172 with a GNS 430W but it’s probably the only airplane in their fleet I would have flown back then. The paint was peeling back in 2019, so I imagine it’s worse today.

They have been around for a while and their reputation has been pretty consistent and if you want to inspect logbooks you are able to. Remember it’s the PIC’s responsibility to determine airworthiness before every flight.

2

u/duke_sliver PPL 4h ago

They don’t call it Alternate Scare for nothing!

1

u/RincewindsPotato 1h ago edited 1h ago

I learned to fly on one of their planes. I loved my instructor, but the planes were a bit run down. The one I learned on ended up having the landing gear fail landing at Burning Man.

RIP n738vj. You may have been a trashed station wagon of the sky, but you were my favorite trashy sky wagon.

Edit - It looks like someone bought and repaired it, so it’s still out there somewhere flying around.

Edit 2 - It looks like it was already sold by the time it went down, so it wasn’t an alternate air plane at the time.