I recently had a flight training experience at Rainer Flight Service and wanted to share my thoughts. While I appreciated the instructors' expertise and dedication, I found the billing practices concerning ground time to be a bit unfair. Charging students for 0.3-0.5 hours of ground time when no actual instruction occurs seems excessive. With all the recent negative feedback, it’s clear that something is wrong with the management of this flight school. This issue not only affects students’ experiences but also reflects poorly on the overall operation. I believe students deserve a transparent and fair billing process that accurately reflects the instruction provided. Adjusting this practice could enhance the overall experience for students and ensure that instructors are fairly compensated for their time. I hope to see improvements in this area, as Rainer Flight Service has great potential for providing excellent training.

Did my PPL at Rainier in Renton, really enjoyed it. The key drivers for me were maintenance and fleet quality/ newness and both of these are really good. Pricing of planes and instructors are transparent and good for the area, albeit I think some of the older planes could probably do with a $10 an hour discount vs the 2023 ones. Had 2 instructors during my time and both were great, both left for the airlines. Advice for people signing up - have the funds and a plan ready. Planes are booked up pretty solid 6 weeks ahead, so do the discovery flight, get signed up and then get booking - while you wait get on Sportys and do the written prep and get that done before you start. Also get the highest medical you'll need. Plan to book 3 flights a week and you'll maybe fly 1 or 2 with weather. That level should let you get there in 70 to 80 hours. I did a mix - sometimes twice a week, sometimes once a month, and it took about 100 or so hours and coming up on 2 years - so think through what you want to do. Would definitely do instrument at Rainier Renton, but their PAE location is closer. Thanks guys

I rarely give low ratings, but I feel compelled to do so this time. I’ve done airplane checkouts in several cities, but this was the worst experience I’ve had. I was charged over 2 hours of ground instruction for an airplane model I’ve flown for over 200 hours, which doesn’t make sense to me. If I could give zero stars, I would. They initially told me the checkout would involve 1 hour of ground instruction and 2 hours of flight time. The first instructor was pleasant and walked me through the quiz, policies, and local flight procedures, but he seemed unsure of the process and frequently referred back to the syllabus. By the time we finished, about 1.5 hours had passed. He informed me there wasn’t enough time for the flight portion, as he had another student lined up, and transferred me to a second instructor. Unfortunately, the second instructor was not helpful at all—providing less guidance than a DPE (no offense to DPEs). When the front desk asked me to handle insurance, they claimed the instructor would help me with it in five minutes. Instead, the second instructor just pointed me to a website and offered almost no assistance, leaving me to navigate it alone. Even when I struggled with uploading the document to the front desk, the front desk lady and the instructor and were casually chatting, offering no help. Due to all these delays, the weather deteriorated with stronger winds and approaching precipitation cells, forcing me to cancel the flight after completing the preflight. What even worse is that the second instructor who provided almost no instructions charged me 1-hour ground instruction, in addition to the 1.6-hour ground charged by the first instructor. After I disputed the charge, they knocked off 0.5 hours, but I still don’t think it's fair to be charged 2.1 hours for ground instruction on an airplane model I have 200 hours with. In all the checkouts I’ve done elsewhere, I’ve never been charged more than 1 hour for the ground portion. While I understand Seattle’s airspace is complex, the extended ground session here felt excessive. For comparison, during my checkout in New York, the ground portion covering the airplane, airspace, SFRA, and debriefing was just 0.6 hours. To top it off, if you want to fly their aircraft, they’ll charge you $12 for their checklist, which contains incorrect stall speeds. I’m just grateful I didn’t do my training with them.

Front desk workers are fantastic and friendly ramp workers. Upper management needs improvement. Talked to Jim, he’s nice at face value but is a two faced individual and quite frankly a POS. Good flight school, nice owners. Too many instructors for amount of avb aircraft and they tend to go down for maintenance a lot. I heard charging 80+ for instruction but only paying instructors approx 30? That is insane

Very good flight school and Training Center. Performed my biennial flight review with a highly professional instructor. Excellent customer service!