Par Avion - www.par-avion.co.uk

Like others who have made reviews I had one of their certificates for a taster session purchased by my wife as a present. As with others, after numerous failed attempts to book citing bad weather, often when the conditions were perfect, I was told that my certificate was out of time and I was refused further bookings or a refund. Unlike others, I did not rest the matter there. I took them to the Small Claims Court and obtained judgement by default against them. Still I received no refund and I had wasted the £25.00 court fee as well as the money already taken from us. This shows how little teeth the County Court system has. My only recourse is to throw even more good money after bad and employ bailiffs. Perhaps I should spend even more money in taking out a contract on this fraudster. It would at least give me some satisfaction.

Criminal complaints have been raised, the police are investigating. It needs more people to register their losses.

I would encourage anyone who has the distinct misfortune to come across Par Avion to stay well clear. They will gladly take your money and your bookings and then cancel on you repeatedly before the 6 month expiry in their small print comes to bite you. Then when you try to get another date, or, perish the thought, get your money back, they will ignore you and de-register you so you can't even make comments on their forum. I lost over £300 on them.

I booked an Elementary Pilot course with Par Avion and flew one day in over a year of attempting to fly mostly at weekends.I can understand and accept that training days are lost to the weather, however on several occasions I strongly felt their cancellation was due to them not wanting to teach for some reason and then giving the reason of 'its not safe to fly, this was a get out they used time and time again. On one weekend I consulted another school in the area who informed me that they were flying,enough said.

After taking money up front from their customers, their customer service didn't seem to be that great either from what I witnessed the people on the phone seemed to be treated as an annoyance.

They are now no longer registered with the governing body BHPA and I can't see them continuing for much longer.

In summary based on my own experience (and quite a few others it seems) I would avoid Par Avion.

They are no longer a BHPA school and the licences have been removed due to the numerous complaints about this fraudulent operation. They never go flying! Just take money off people. Do NOT use. I tried to get training from them and just got imcompetance and rudeness.

RIP OFF - Got voucher in March. Didn't realise it had a six month expiry and went to book two weeks after the closing date. Told that I only had myself to blame and that there was nothing he could do, so I couldn’t rebook and I have lost my £180, along with a number of other rude emails from Trevor.

For someone that owns the business, he was unprepared to make any allowances other than offering to charge me another £100 to rebook, or a refund if I was prepared to pay an additional £500 on the extended course.

He has not incurred any charge and yet seems to be making money of everyone for doing nothing. Now that’s how to run a business.

I would prefer to spend an additional £180 on another school than throw any more money at this company. I should have done the research before it was booked as the internet is littered with stories similar to mine.

Yup, sounds about right from that Trevor toss pot. At least you got some money back. I ended up losing £180 to him and got nothing in return but rudeness! I can't believe how they can keep running such a business. If anyone asks for all the money up front and they cannot guarantee they'll deliver what they promise, and if they don't do refunds... STAY AWAY!!

We simply had a terrible experience with these guys, having purchased an online voucher for a taster day, I found it simply impossible to send them the forms that were required to book on a course, I posted normal mail twice and recorded once. The normal post didn't get to them and they simply failed to collect the recorded delivery even though the post office say they left a card.

They were simply impossible to deal with on the phone telling me that it was my fault and to send it again. When I finally had enough and said I would like a refund they told me a refund was not possible.

After many angry conversations they told me that they were not willing to have me train in there school and sent a refund of half the original paid fee. Effectively failing to provide the service and charging me £90 for the privilege. Then they turned all the phones of and disappeared.

AVOID THESE CRIMINALS LIKE THE PLAGUE.