Canadian Flight Trainers and NIZUS both help students pass their Transport Canada exams to earn licenses, but we have a lot of differences that separate us. Let’s compare and examine.
Online Ground School
Canadian Flight Trainers
CFT offers a Private Pilot Ground School, Commercial Pilot Ground School, PSTAR Preparation Course, and ROC-A exam services. Their course offerings are appropriate for most pilots in Canada simply wanting to learn the important ratings. CFT is an approved educational institution by ESDC and meet all Transport Canada ground school requirements, allowing them to issue letters of recommendation for each ground school course. This letter is a requirement to write your Transport Canada final exam.
NIZUS
They are not an online ground school provider.
Exam Preparation
Canadian Flight Trainers
Canadian Flight Trainers offers opportunities for learning using the same format Transport Canada uses for their exams. CFT obtains all of their question based on feedback from students and instructors who have written exams with Transport Canada. This ensures that the workbook exercises and final exams are as real as it gets.
NIZUS
NIZUS is an online, subscription based website that offers exam preparation by providing questions for the following exams; PSTAR, ROC-A, Recreational permit, Private pilot, Commercial pilot, IFR, Instructor, IATRA, ATPL exams, and a few more. They also offer helicopter practice exams and dispatch exams. This service will mock Transport Canada exams and help get you pre-pared for the TC exam but it does not meet the ground school requirement mandatory for the issue of a license. Unfortunately, I have received industry feedback that NIZUS overcomplicating the questions in an attempt to over prepare the student.
As we’ve written in some of our other blog posts, these methods do not serve well in encouraging deep learning for students.
Price
Canadian Flight Trainers
Canadian flight trainers are competitively priced with other full online ground school courses. CFT is a one stop shop to meet the TC ground school requirement and includes exam preparation. Learning with Canadian Flight Trainers means you do not need any extra exam workbooks or websites like Nizus.
NIZUS
NIZUS is subscription based and is priced $29-$39 for 1 month, $39-$49 for 3 months, $49-$59 for 6 months. It is important to note that this service does not meet the ground school requirement for TC so the subscription fee will be added onto your other ground school course fee.
Who should you select?
Canadian Flight Trainers
CFT is best suited for anyone wishing to purse a pilot license in Canada. This one stop shop will efficiently prepare you for any TC exam course offered at a reasonable cost. Even students who are currently signed up for a ground school course should try (for free) Canadian Flight Trainers and be blown away by the quality instruction and reenforced deep learning.
NIZUS
NIZUS is designed for people who just want to pass an exam. This product does not re-enforce the importance of the theory taught in a ground school, but instead gives you paid access to questions that you will find on your exam.
Sure, you can use it to pass the test, but 1 month later, all this important information will be forgotten. This will exponentially increase your risk as a pilot as you may lack basic knowledge of airmanship, meteorology, and navigation.
If you made the mistake of signing up for an average ground school that has not adequately prepared you for the exam, don’t set yourself up for future failure by cheating the exam with NIZUS.
Summary
In summary Canadian Flight Trainers offers a superior product that will fully educate and prepare you for the Transport Canada Exams. NIZUS offers a wide variety of questions in both English and French that can be used to supplement the average ground school you signed up for. Don’t be fooled, this type of learning will not be remembered and is not the standard of most Canadian pilots. Multiple choice questions, like what NIZUS offers, only encourage superficial learning behaviours and cannot reliably indicate any sort of competence as a pilot.