Complaint Review: Berichi Aviation

I joined Berichi Aviation as an international student. It was not a smooth process from the beginning. Berichi is owned by Charles Berichi who is in his mid 20's. The emails sent are trully not professional and he is not knowledgeable in most of the processes but acts and brags as if he is the Aviation King and knows it all (He is still doing his Commercial Pilot certificate). I had to buy it because my TSA got approved and it takes additional time and money to change school. Infact, I came in with my tourist visa as advised by Berichi, which later today I came to know from other school that I can be in trouble without a student visa. It was shocking for me on the first day to realise that Berichi Aviation has no office, no classrooms or any kind of facilities nor any materials to be classified as a school. The only 2 things they have are aircrafts and instructors (one full time and one part time).They use Waviation as base. I didn’t even see any other students while I was here though Berichi keep saying calendar is busy and was consistently bugging me to join early.

On the first day I paid upfront 5k as I didn’t want to keep the cash with me thou it was a pay as you fly concept. Ground schools were held in other banyan lounge, other airports and hangars. Invoices and billings are not proper without a proper head letter. I get charged extra for ground schools unnecessarily. There was one day, we had to abort take off as the door was inoperative and not closable. I was billed for the entire time we were fiddling the door trying to fix and for taxing back. The requirement for cross country according to FAA is only 3 hours but I have 11.7 hours of cross country out of total 27.4 hours in my log. On top of that I was scheduled to do another 3 cross country of which 2 was to KCGC from KFXE which was 215NM one way, for my private pilot certification. It was a complete ripoff and Berichi was adamant enough that we follow his non-sensical schedule. Also something they will never share is that the check ride is 215NM away and of course you are expected to rent the airplane and pay the fuel to get there by yourself just for the test. My schedules were crazy some from 7am till 7pm and Berichi expects us (me and instructor) to fly for the whole period to fill up his pockets. He changes the schedule as he like, change the instructor without prior discussion and just removes my off day without explanation. There was once I started at 1230 and we returned back after doing cross country around 1900 thou the schedule was till 2300. I could not focus anymore due to fatigue and hence both me n CFI decided we would return in mind of safety. Later I received an email from my school saying that I deviated the schedule without any authorization.

After 8 torturous days I decided I could not deal with Berichi anymore and I quit. I demanded my money back (2K) which I paid just a day before as a top up but he refused with his ugly tone of voice. He fail to give any reason why and ignoring my messages to give me a copy of the agreement I sign for.  Berichi is mainly a Dracula who sucks all your blood out. It also came to my knowledge from a reliable resource that I am not the first who got upset with Berichi and to leave half way. Flying is suppose to be fun and I came all the way to US to fulfill my dream with my hard earned money and it was crushed by Berichi The 2 instructors are super great but they both are equally trapped. I hope this saves someone from falling in Berichi trap again. Stay away from Berichi.