Lanier Flight Center PDK

"Absolutely avoid this flight school. If they cannot schedule accurately, how are they supposed to teach you to operate an aircraft? Taking flight and earning my PPL is a dream of mine. Today was supposed to be the first step. Lanier Flight School absolutely ruined this experience for me and I will definitely never consider them for any of their services. I had a discovery flight training scheduled for over a month out of PDK. I called a week prior to confirm the reservation and reiterated that I would be flying out of PDK. I show up and say my name is Joey Grasso and I have a 1130 flight. The instructor? employee? asks if I'm Max. I am clearly not. Dumb question. No attention to detail. They then tell me that my flight was scheduled to fly out of GVL. Then after it all, they said due to weather my flight would have been grounded anyway. So, I guess even if they got the scheduling right, I would have paid to look at a Cessna and go home."

"Started out great for about the first year I was in training here. CFIs are awesome, aircraft was only down for maintenance maybe once or twice? Aircraft availability has become a substantial issue due to increased demand over the last month and I’m beginning to get concerned about proficiency loss. Been told new aircraft are coming but nervous given how much money I’ve already invested into this…"

"This flight school offers no consistency when it comes to flight scheduling and training whatsoever, plus I have had to fly with 5 different instructors, when you should ideally only fly with upmost 2 CFI’s during your training. They have also stayed out of date and kept me confused with my flight progress and don’t teach too much during each lesson. Don’t ever do flight training here."

"I will start by saying I started with Lanier flight school 5 years ago. My flying career was cut short after I realized that I was being taken advantage of. After flying with the school for more than 40 hours, I had achieved nothing. The FAA often allows student pilots to become licensed within that same time frame. Not with these people. Within that time I should have performed several takeoffs and landings, completed a solo, perhaps a night flight or two, a cross country with and without an instructor, and learned how to be a safe pilot during my training. Not with these people. I flew with this school for over 40 hours and never did any of those things. Even though I was flying between 1 and 3 days every week (only weather kept me from flying everyday). When I began to questioned the CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) about why we had not advanced beyond slow flight and turning maneuvers he only talked in circles. I never saw or met the owner but as far as I’m concerned he was equally as responsible as the CFI. These people collected money from me without fail but did nothing to earn it. One of the tricks they used was to fly to a long way to a distant practice area. This allowed them to charge more money for the airplane and not training. It made no sense that we did none of the practice at closer airports within 10 or 15 minutes flight of our departure airport. What I did learn from them was a lot of slow flight maneuvers. That worked out for them because the more time I spent in the airplane the more money they made. As a lay person new to the environment I was not aware of this kind of deed but learned about it after reading about what to watch out for by other flight professionals. I literally gave up flying after being discouraged by this school. It took me four years to realize I should give it a second shot with another flight school. Before doing so, I reached out to the owner of Lanier Flight School and explained to him my concerns hoping he'd offer some discounted concession. Nope, he said I should have told him while it was happening (even though he was never around). As though it was my fault he failed to know anything about his clients training and safety progress. He did offer to allow me to come back to his flight school and start again. The good news is I did start again. I got my Private Pilots License but I DID NOT do it with Lanier Flight School. I would not allow these people and their poor business management to cost me another lost opportunity."

"Very good service and friendly experience"