AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020 - 36

PILOT BRIEFING

PERSPECTIVE

|

FlyThisSim customers complain of delivery delays
Ohio flying club asks attorney general for help
B Y D AV E H I R S C H M A N

AN OHIO FLYING CLUB has filed a police
report and asked the state attorney general
to investigate FlyThisSim, a company that
builds and sells flight simulators.
Northwest Flyers, a 70-member club in
Columbus, Ohio, is one of many FlyThisSim
customers who claim the company has fallen
many months behind its promised delivery
dates and has been largely unresponsive to
phone calls, emails, and letters. The club paid
$13,000 for a simulator in January 2019.
"We finally had to get the Ohio attorney general involved," said Demetri
Capetanopoulos, vice president of
Northwest Flyers. "The company has failed
to perform, it's strung us along for months
and months, and it needs to be exposed.
The company is taking orders and cashing
checks, and the aviation community should
be warned about it."
The Cirrus Owners and Pilots
Association (COPA) notified its members in
May that doing business with FlyThisSim
was risky after some COPA members said

36 | AOPA PILOT April 2020

the company hadn't delivered equipment
that had been bought and paid for.
Austin Meyer, founder of X-Plane,
claimed in his blog that FlyThisSim stiffed
him on an $18,000 software purchase.
Meyer posted a string of texts between an
X-Plane representative and FlyThisSim
CEO Roland Pinto in which Pinto promised time and again to pay, claimed he had
paid, and blamed his nonpayment on clerical errors before going silent.
Pinto didn't respond to inquiries from
AOPA. But Kristi Smith, a FlyThisSim
manager in San Luis Obispo, California,
said a lack of specialized parts had created lengthy production delays, and the
company is determined to catch up. "All of
our problems in the last year have been getting parts and equipment out the door," she
said. "We made mistakes, and we're working hard to earn trust back."
Tim Heron, a CFII at Capital City
Aviation, another flying club in Columbus,
Ohio, said he and other club members

became so alarmed by multiple delivery
delays on their $46,000 simulator purchase
that they flew to Leesburg, Virginia, last
spring for a face-to-face meeting with Pinto.
"He said the company was a victim of
its own success, and he personally promised delivery within three weeks of our
meeting," Heron said. "But then we didn't
hear from them at all, and our frustration
level increased as months went by."
Heron said the club's simulator finally
was delivered last July, and he described his
dealings with the company as "bittersweet."
"They're good people on the technical side," Heron said. "But the company
would do itself a big favor by answering
phone calls and being realistic with customers about when their units actually will
be delivered."
Smith of FlyThisSim said fulfilling its
contract with Northwest Flyers and repaying X-Plane are "top priorities."
EMAIL dave.hirschman@aopa.org
AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020

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