AeroGuard Flight Training Center - Phoenix, Arizona

Taleah Williams

Only lasted here for two months and the only positive I have to say is I had a great instructor. Scheduling is horrible and is given the evening before so it makes it very hard to plan accordingly if you have other things to tend to. I was warned by other students to be careful around management as they are power and ego driven. They lost their ground instructors when I started so class either got pushed back multiple times or it was taught by one of their leads who was not great at teaching or explaining things, and rushed through just about every class. I unfortunately needed retrains on a lot of the material which eventually would have came back to bite me as I was told I was estimated to be $10k over the $120k that I was quoted and approved for to go to this school. The people who do stage checks also have a huge ego and talked badly about other workers at this school in front of me before my stage check which I thought was very unprofessional and not necessary. If you are considering this school please read and consider the reviews. This school is not for everyone especially if you are a slow learner. I have been told by multiple people who use to go here how bad it is And I now believe them. Please consider other school's this program isn’t for everyone and you can get better instruction for less $ elsewhere.

David Clark

Aeroguard is a school you want to avoid at all costs. There are so many things wrong with the school that it's too long to list them all. Some of the major issues include the scheduling system, and that it gives you notice for a flight (if you even get a flight) the evening before, which makes it virtually impossible to have a work/social life. If you are extremely lucky to even get a flight scheduled, there is a 90% chance that the flight will not go ahead, whether it be due to too many students and not enough planes (one of the most common reason for cancellation), the planes are broken, the student before you has come back late or there is a scheduling error. Additionally, the simulators at aeroguard are such bad quality and dated, that the computers running the simulators still have floppy disc access, the AIRAC database has not been updated for almost a decade, meaning airports are not modelled, there are out of date instrument approaches which can’t be flown, students are not even allowed to be in the simulators by themselves to practise on their free time.

Management at Aeroguard is horrendous, the managers are driven by power and ego, the hierarchy between students and management is extremely steep that students are scared to approach their managers when they have an issue, that is if the managers are even in the office (which is an extremely rare occasion) and the managers do not reply to emails either. You can email a training manager 4-5 times in 2 days and they will not reply to a single email. Training managers and employees will sit in dispatch and say horrible things about students and the school in front of the students. Managers lie through their teeth to students, saying whatever they need to in order to have the student leave them alone, hence why so many students resent Aeroguard and the managers.

Aeroguard states 7 ratings in 10-14 months, 2-2.5yrs to the airlines, yet being there for over a year myself, I have yet to meet someone who has come remotely close to this timeline. There is not a single student at Aerogaurd who I have talked to (100+ students) that are happy with the product Aeroguard is providing them, but due to financial troubles with loans etc… they are unable to leave. Every student I talk to does not have a single positive thing to say about Aeroguard and the reviews reflect it. The management at Aeroguard has 0 trust in students. Students are not allowed to dry fly in the aircraft, they are not allowed to practise in the simulators on their own, they are not allowed to do touch and go or even practise landings on solo flights anymore.

A training environment should aim to teach how to mitigate and handle risk and threat, but aeroguard is approaching it with the mentality of trying to eliminate it all together and not even try to teach it, hence why when a student is faced with risk/threat, they don’t know how to handle it. It is a toxic training environment and if you take the time to read the reviews, you will see that a lot of people agree. Aeroguard will most likely respond to this email gaslighting it trying to disprove it or say “contact student services and reach out to us directly”, but despite that, if you continue to read all the reviews, each one focuses on the exact same points. If Aeroguard wants to provide a better service to the students, they need to understand that gaslighting reviews and telling people how they are wrong is not the way to go, and rather listen to the reviews and fix their company before they change their company name for a 3rd time.

Aditya Vaswani

Currently training here under Air India’s Cadet Programme. I must say, everything from the instructors to the aircraft to scheduling is well taken care of. It’s a pleasure to fly around the airspace / airport and to be a part of AeroGuard!

James Dakota

Came here for two months this year, it was by far one of the worst experiences of my life. First off they will tell you whatever it takes to get you in the door. Their website touts 7 ratings in 10-14months, 2-2.5yrs to the airlines... in reality it's taking them over 2 years to get students to 7 ratings, then you still have the 1500hrs to build after that. Out of the people they put me into their housing with; one individual was past the two year mark an barely working on his CFI and the other was at 7 months and barely up to his second stage check for PPL! Their focus is on their Cathay students, and they throw American students on the back burner. Cathay gets the best flight blocks and they will steal your plane if there's anything that breaks or needs maintenance on theirs, that way the Cathay students can get their flight hours.... Meanwhile you're stuck twiddling your thumbs. It's Phoenix and heat is to be expected, 95% percent of their planes do not have AC and rarely have functional blowers, greatly restricting the hours they can be operated in most months, and leaving you either sweating to death or not flying at all. They sell the program as having a lot of in person education in regard to the ground school. The reality is you'll have a ground school 4-6hrs a week and the rest of the education they offer will be home-study on a tablet, which they charge you over 1,800 dollars for the course work and is the equivalent of buying gold seal or sportys which you could get for $2-300 dollars. Flights are not scheduled until 6pm the day prior, so you have no room to plan ahead, (they literally require you to have no job or other school during your time as a student) then it's a crapshoot if you let actually able to fly or not, given factors I've mentioned prior. If you're lucky enough to get a flight block it's never more than 2 hours long, 1 hour of which will be eaten up doing preflight, taxi out and clearance. With that 1 hour you'll be lucky to get once or maybe twice a week they expect you to be wholly proficient and if you fall out of their "standards" they have no issue saying you have to retain/retake that lesson which will set you back an extra $6-700 dollars plus the time wasted trying to get the flight block. Their program is set up in away to be incentivized to fail you, which they will do often, then if you go to the admin asking for help they put you on a learning plan which is not set up to help the student but rather position them so that they can kick you out by saying it's all due to the students underperformance. Yep they will rake you over the coals, then say it's all because you didn't apply yourself. For a school with $120,000 dollar price tag they do not care about your success, they care about getting your money. They have no problem with the students not being scheduled for flights for weeks at a time, then expect you to show up and perform as though you've flown 6 times a week. Their housing is outrageous $700 a month for a shared room, which again is only to serve to line their pockets as you will be paying $700 and lucky to fly 5-6 times in the month. They shame you if you ask to swap an instructor, and blame you as though your just trying to be difficult and will set you back at least a week saying it's admin trying to swap your instructor. If you're paying over 100k for a school you should be able to try every available instructor until you jive with one, not be assigned one and shamed if you don't get along. If you take a loan and withdraw early they will drag their feet on getting the excess funds returned to the lender, it took them over 2 months after the time they quoted! They blamed it on Zuntafi, but when finally getting them to clarify the date the funds were sent back on they had not sent them as the claimed they had earlier! They told me the ACH takes weeks.. standard ACH is 3 business days... it was going round and round with them just to get the unused money sent back.…. Character limit reached full review on FB and Yelp. DO NOT COME TO THIS SCHOOL.

Zach Franey

I had intended to further my flight training with AeroGuard while studying at Arizona State University. I'm glad I left it behind before making deposits or beginning training. The school is a complete disgrace, so much so that Cathay Pacific cadet pilots cannot solo. I have overheard that CFIs have been forced to endorse student pilot solos long before said individuals are genuinely ready, causing damage to aircraft. Research has led me to believe this place is the epitome of pilot mill schools, where students are just a number, and the company wants their money. From my brief experience, the management was often aggressive or unapproachable, which speaks volumes to the negativity presented about their flight training and structure. Scheduling is also horrendous, unrealistic, last-minute, and rigid in the ability to change it. I highly recommend prospective students look elsewhere. It's places like these that degrade the safety of aviation, both on the general and commercial levels.

Elhim X Reynoso

I've done all of my training here. And although there is not such thing as a business that fits everyone's expectations, this place is everything I needed.
I'm glad I decided to be a part of it. They prioritize SAFETY like no other place.

Also, they don't mess around with pushing people to go fly... It is always left at Instructor-Student's discretion.

Finally, their aircraft maintenance program, according to DPE's that travel around the country, is the best and most reliable of any flights school they have flown with. And I am a witness of it.

Herbert Petty

The school located at Deer valley Airport does not provide a indoor comfortable atmosphere for teaching, due to lack of indoor air quality..." Little to no adequate air conditioning" They provide little to no concerns about helping students achieve their goals towards ratings.. " their focus seems to be on making money, money, money". Managers are rarely available to address individual questions or concerns... For the amount of money they charge for a career in aviation, I expected "high end quality" education. "I am not a student", I am a relative of a student attending the school, and provide the financial support for said person. My relative can get better education, attention and career ratings for less at local FBO... I am disappointed with AeroGuard Flight Training Center... I would not recommend attending their school... Since we are locked into a contact, I would loose money taking my family member out of AeroGuard.. I wish I read previous comments before providing financial support..

M “AmeliaAirFart”

Honestly I’m glad I left this school. Aeroguard claims they will fix all these issues, but judging by the reviews in here, it in fact looks like it’s gotten worse. I left because no one cares to fix the issues raised by students or employees or any of the comments voicing concern here. They simply could not be bothered to care when they are just raking in the money.
Leaving was the best choice I’ve ever made. This school sucked the joy and life out of everyone. Nothing is more depressing than seeing the students you care about get the life sucked out of them by this toxic toxic rundown school. Not one single person who runs this school could even care about a single complaint, because if they did, there would need to be some serious work to restructure the way that place is run.
This school seems to be run by incompetent people who operate on an agenda that borderlines illegal and shady.
Instructors are forced to teach the foreign programs against their will once having a certain amount of dual given and depriving domestic students of good instructors once they switch. Their Cathay Pacific program is CURRENTLY BANNED from doing solos because there have been so many incidents relating to the school forcing instructors to sign off students who ARE NOT READY.
And then to top it off the school sends out memos telling students not to talk to media. It’s a lil sketch ngl ‍♀️