Spanish pilot training organisation FlyBySchool has taken delivery of a second Tecnam 2006T twin. “We already operate a mainly Rotax fleet, principally for quality and economic reasons such as fuel consumption,” explains CEO Alex Alvarez. “This is the second Tecnam 2006T that we will operate. We want to have a standardised fleet. The value for money that Tecnam provides right now is unbeatable. There is no other aircraft in the market that provides anything similar. The operational costs of any of the competitors are not comparable. They are more expensive to buy, and they are more expensive to operate, so right now there is no other player in the market that can come close to Tecnam, to be honest.

“Any time that I hear that somebody has bought a Diamond DA42, it’s great news for us because that means that they will never ever be able to compete with us! I even had this conversation with Diamond. It’s probably impossible to run a profitable school with those prices, unless you are one of the three largest schools in Europe: CAE, L3 and FTE Jerez.”

FlyBySchool trains integrated, commercial pilots, and has approximately 220 students coming from more than 40 different nationalities. “We use the Tecnam for the multi-engine phases of the training,” Alvarez continues. “The aircraft has a Garmin 1000 glass cockpit and Rotax engines, which are the main reasons why we use it. By having two of these aircraft, we are able to accommodate more students. Due to COVID we expect to grow 35 per cent this year, which is significantly slower than last year as we had been growing at 70 per cent year-on-year, but it is still massive growth.

“We needed to not only increase our capacity, as the amount of multi-engine hours you have to complete in integrated training is not that many. If it was about capacity, we could still operate with only one twin engine aircraft. The problem is, having one asset that is so key for the school is very risky from a business point of view. That’s another reason why we started to invest in this second twin engine. We don’t compromise on quality, we deliver the best training possible. This is why we decided to go for the Tecnam twin.”