I was reading over on the AOPA blog about this incident where a potential flight student came to a top rated flight school lookingto get some flying lessons and was turned away.  The student claimed that he could only afford to fly once a week, but was told that he needed to fly twice a week in order to graduate from flight school.

The comments on the site, and on other sites, all seem to point that the student should not have been turned away because he could only afford to fly once per week. The people from the flight school say that it’s been their experience that people that only fly once per week take longer to complete their training, if they complete their training at all.

I’m not sure where I fall on this point.

When I learned to fly, I started off twice a week and then moved to once per week because of the cost. I can see the school’s point about having to review more material if you fly once per week, but I don’t see why that’s the school’s concern.

I feel they should’ve taken the kid up in the air and taught him to fly, as long as the student understood that they could possibly incur more tuition money because of having to review last week’s lesson before continuing with this week’s lesson.

Now, the student pilot will either not learn to fly at all, or take his money to a different flight school. What do you think about this situation?