No more private flight schools in Norway

[LonArcvarden]

First of January was a sad day for aviation in Norway. Pilot Flight Academy situated at Torp (ENTO) announced bankruptcy 160 students got their dreams shattered and lost a whole bunch of money. 40 instructors and other personnel lost their jobs.

My son thought of applying to that school, but chose OSM instead. OSM works directly with Norse, Norwegian and Widerøe. The owner of Norse is also the owner of OSM smiley When my son’s class went to Florida this fall, they flew Norse of course. The captain promptly upgraded everyone to business smiley

However. OSM is situated at Arendal (ENGK) and just recently also at Fort Lauderdale in Florida (KFXE). There’s also some activity in Sweden, but don’t know where exactly. The reason to go to Florida was mainly weather related as I understood, but there would still be one class in Norway and one class in Florida. I talked to my son about the bankrupt Pilot Flight Academy, and then he could tell that OSM would move “all” flying to Florida. That is all flying including CPL multi. The reason for that was the county of Arendal had issued restrictions at ENGK due to noise (stupid people, how much noise does C-172 and DA-42 create?). There will still be activity at Arendal, but only ATPL courses with 737 simulator, UPR, crew management and those things. All basic flying will be done in Florida. Nothing in Sweden as I understood.

In short this means as of today there are zero private flight schools left in Norway. The only one left is the University of Tromsø, which is a 3 year bachelor program including flight instructions up to ATPL. They fly at Bardufoss (ENDU). I don’t know how many they take each year, but it’s very few, perhaps only 10-20 or something. I mean if ENGK is bad weather vise, then ENDU is an order of magnitude worse. Sun 24/7 in the summer, but still smiley

This is really bad and sad. Who would have guessed only 6 months ago ? Everything just gone, just like that from one moment to the next.

Anyway. The way they do it is to do FAA PPL, CPL, IR and multi. Then go to Arendal for EASA ATPL. Converions and stuff included. What is not included is EASA SEP smiley I think 4 hours or something is needed to get EASA SEP even when you have EASA ATPL and FAA PPL/CPL SEP.

Thinking more practical and forward. We will now have an influx of new commercial pilots with FAA CPL, and who has learned to fly in perhaps one of the busiest places aviation vise on the globe. I am thinking this can only be good. There’s lots of experience, attitude, way to do stuff in a practical manner that will trickle down and out to the entire aviation community. Eventually also up. To get people that have experienced something else than EASA loaded with quasi theoretical stuff can only be a good thing.

[MichaelSavan]

OSM used to have a training base at Västerås (ESOW) airport, but it appears they’ve shut it down. At least even their Swedish web site only mentions Arendal and Fort Lauderdale.

[princemeraj]

I’ve run into the same trouble finding local options, so I kept my skills sharp by mixing in ifr pilot training, which gave me more confidence on longer trips and in changing weather. Even if Norway’s choices shrink, having that extra capability made me less dependent on one specific school, and it opened a few alternative training paths that were easier to fit around limited availability.