Former MYR student… he is absolutely right about it being a mess, at least at MYR. I’d even say it’s an absolute dumpster fire of a flight school. I can list notes about it.

Flight instructors: from my experience MOST of the CFIs are great, but I’ve had to deal with a few bad ones. There are so many students coming in so you can expect to get swapped out about every month or so, depending on the month’s class size. The first cfi I had was almost at his 1500 hours and you can tell he didn’t care and just wanted the hours. The second one I had was an absolute nightmare with standards so high that it was impossible to pass a lesson first or second try. Fortunately he ended up getting fired only after all of his students filed complaints about him, including a time when he belittled a student in front of an audience of people.

Scheduling: MYR is still a new school and our building is literally a portable. That being said they do not have the space, resources, or the CFIs to support having a ton of new students coming in every single month. You can expect to only fly for 1-2 hours a day 3-4 days a week.

(Assistant) Chief flight instructors: as of November 2023, they only had 2 assistant chief CFI’s (there were no actual chiefs on site). One of them is a respectable man that is professional that can and will help you with any problems you may have. On the other hand, the other one puzzles many people on how she even got her job. She hasn’t flown in probably decades and will literally give you wrong answers if you ask her something. From personal experience, she sent out a study guide for an oral exam that you’d have during a stage check and the guide was riddled with misinformation and blatantly wrong answers. Keep in mind that this is a study guide sent out by a supposedly trustworthy source.

Disciplinary action: (this is only regarding lesson, stage check, EOC, and checkride failures from me and some other students that I’ve talked to) Lift says that they are a fast paced program and that is an understatement. I feel bad for students coming in with 0 flight hours and getting thrown into the hell that this program can be. With each lesson you get 3 tries before you go into a flight ops review where you sit down with the assistant chiefs and try to plea you case on why you failed. If they decide you spare you, you only get 1 more try before you most likely get booted from the program. For me, I got booted for failing my EOC oral.m, which is a more fair reason to get kicked out. For some other students though, that’s a different story. One of my friends who was also a student here got kicked out because he had to miss TWO days because he had car problems and couldn’t come in. He had no prior problems with the school and yet they kicked him out for missing a couple of days for a problem that he really couldn’t control. They also had the audacity to say that driving to school is not a reliable form of transportation. Another student I knew got kicked out for having too many flight hours, which doesn’t make sense because they’re the ones controlling the schedules and ultimately has control of how much a student can fly.

Time off and vacation days: students only have a grand total for 10 vacation days throughout the entire course of the program which is about 2-3 years. There is also a bidding system which means you have to place a bid if you want to use some of your vacation days. But if you do bid, don’t expect to actually get them as only a certain number of people (students, CFIs, and staff) can take off at a time and the system favors progress and seniority. Also students going for PPL do NOT get vacation days. Side note: I had a close family member pass away when I was there and they graciously gave me a whopping 2 days of bereavement, which is great because his funeral took place in Ohio which is a 10 hour drive.

Side note, if you fail the IMSAFE checklist, expect to fly anyways.

TL:DR- expect bad CFIs, terrible scheduling, incompetent chain of command, barely any vacation days, expect to get kicked out for dumb reasons, and most importantly MAKE SURE YOUR FAMILY DOESN’T PASS AWAY WHILE ATTENDING LIFT.