Privacy Policy
Plain English: what we collect, why, who else sees it, and how to opt out. You can read every cost page and the school directory without telling us anything about yourself.
Who we are
flightschoolcost.com is operated by Digital Signet Limited, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. Digital Signet Limited is the data controller for this site. Contact: privacy@digitalsignet.com.
What we collect
This site has no accounts, no logins and no sign-up forms. We are not a flight school, not a lender and not an enrolment funnel, so there is nothing to apply for here. The data we process comes from three sources.
Aggregate analytics. Google Analytics 4 records your visit (page viewed, referring page, device type, approximate location by country or region, and a pseudonymous identifier) so we can see which pages are useful. IP addresses are anonymised.
Advertising cookies. Once advertising is live, on pages that show an ad our advertising partners may set cookies or read advertising identifiers in order to select and measure those ads.
Questions you send us. The "ask us" links on this site open your own email program addressed to questions@flightschoolcost.com. Nothing is collected on the site itself. If you email us, we hold your message and address only for as long as it takes to answer and to keep a record of the correspondence. If we publish an answer, we do so anonymised, and only after checking with you.
The flight school directory
Our Part 141 school directory is built from the FAA's public air agency certificate records. For each certificated school it shows the business name, certificate details, address and, where the FAA record includes them, the agency phone number and email address. These are business contact details published by a US federal regulator about licensed training providers; we do not add personal data to them and we do not list private individuals. If you represent a school and believe a record is out of date, or you want a contact detail removed from our copy of the record, email questions@flightschoolcost.com and we will act within one month. The authoritative record remains the FAA's own.
How this site is funded, and your choices
This site is free to read. We are in the process of adding display advertising served by Journey by Mediavine (operated by Mediavine, Inc.) together with a network of authorised third-party advertising partners; until the first ad appears, no advertising cookies are set by this site. The current partner list is published at mediavine.com/ad-partners and mirrored in this site's ads.txt file. Those partners use cookies, mobile advertising identifiers and similar technologies to select, deliver and measure ads, including ads tailored to your interests based on your activity across different websites and apps ("interest-based advertising"). Ads never influence which schools we list or any figure on this site.
US visitors. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended (CCPA/CPRA), and under similar laws in Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and other states, interest-based advertising can count as a "sale" or "share" of personal information even though no money changes hands for your data. You can opt out using the "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" control in the cookie preferences banner, by turning on the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal in your browser, by opting out at optout.aboutads.info or optout.networkadvertising.org, or by emailing privacy@digitalsignet.com. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16.
UK and EU visitors. Our advertising partners rely on your consent, collected through Mediavine's Consent Management Platform (the banner shown on your first visit). You can change or withdraw consent at any time through that banner, or by clearing this site's cookies.
Cookies, providers and transfers
We use Google Analytics 4 to understand, in aggregate, which pages are useful. Advertising cookies and similar technologies are set through Journey by Mediavine and its authorised partners. We do not use cookies to build a profile of you ourselves.
A small number of providers process data on our behalf: Cloudflare (DNS, security and hosting), Google Analytics (aggregate site statistics), and Mediavine (advertising). We are a UK controller serving a largely US readership, so those providers may process data in the United States and other countries. Where UK or EU data protection law applies to a transfer, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as adequacy arrangements or standard contractual clauses.
Retention and your rights
We hold no personal data of our own beyond any email you choose to send us. Google Analytics data is retained for 14 months and then aggregated or deleted, per our GA4 configuration. Advertising cookies set by Mediavine's partners follow those partners' own retention schedules. The school directory is refreshed from the FAA's published records; superseded copies are not kept.
Depending on where you live, you have the right to ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold about you (access), correct it (rectification), delete it (erasure), limit what we do with it (restriction), stop processing it (objection), stop selling or sharing it for targeted advertising, or withdraw consent you previously gave.
Email privacy@digitalsignet.com and we will act within one month (45 days for CCPA requests). We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. If you are in the UK you can also complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk; if you are in the EU, to your local supervisory authority.
Children and changes
This site is written for adults weighing the cost of pilot training. It is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If we change this policy we will post the new version on this page with a new effective date.
See also the methodology for the editorial position and where the cost data comes from.