ATP Flight School?

[Michael Natale]

Be careful with thier multi-engine program. You will be riding as a safety pilot (PNF) monitoring the PIC as he or she flys simulated instrument time allowing you both to log the hours. It is a quick way to build your multi hours but not necessarily the best or the safest considering abilities. Times are tough though and you have to do what you have to do. Good luck and have fun...


Mike Natale
AAV1094

[Greg Gemelli]

I used ATP Schools to get my ATP written done does that count lol. It was a great 1 day program too. I passed and that's all I really cared about.

Richard as you are seeing from the different responses to your query, everyone's situation is different. So in my opinion the choice you make depends on where you want to end up. Given your acceptance of the significant costs I am assuming that your goal is getting a job working for an airline in Canada. Is this correct? If it is than I would find out what the base line requirements are of the airlines you are interested in. It's not cut and dry. Does ATP's syllabus meet or exceed your needs for the least amount of cost? If so then go, if not keep looking. In a perfect world I would advise you to search out the highest quality training program you could find but with the cost of training it's just not realistic in many cases.

At a school like ATP you won't get as much one on one instruction and the training will be based off their syllabus which is fairly generic. This isn't a problem in my opinion for someone looking to move on to the airlines. I've been employed at SkyWest since Aug of 2007. I honestly feel that they could care less where you got your training, they could care less how much actual IFR time you have and how diverse your training experience was. All they care about is that you meet or exceed their current total time requirements (1000hrs as of today/subject to change), multi-engine requirements (100hrs as of today/subject to change) and have a Commercial Multi-Engine certificate w/Instrument rating. That's all the job requires so as I see it there is no reason to spend any more than absolutely necessary to get your certificates. You don't get extra points for doing it the hard way; trust me they don't care. All they care about is if the hours add up to meet or exceed their current requirements as sad as this may sound.

I did my flight training at Hillsboro Aviation in Hillsboro, Oregon and was very happy with it. I feel as if I was extremely efficient. Took my PPL checkride at 38hrs (part 141), my Instrument at 87hrs, did a Multi add on at 120hrs, took my commercial checkride at 251hrs and my CFI the next day at 254hrs. I did my CFII and MEI together a few weeks later. My total cost was approx. $65,000USD. I was able to defer my payments for 2 yrs and was LUCKY to be hired at an airline before having to begin making my payments on my flight training loans. My first yr at SkyWest I made just over $18,000 and half of that went to paying for my training loans. Things got a bit better my second yr and only 40% of my take home pay went to paying for my loans. Currently I am finally over the financial hump and make enough to live and pay my loans by a slim margin. There are many variables that have effected my personal situation so each will have their own experience. I was hired in 2007 just before the economy went to hell and this was a primary factor in my specific situation. Now things are looking much better and airlines are seeing growth again. The key issue here is that airlines are very cyclical and you need to plan for a sustained period of financial struggle. Hopefully you won't have any issues but most do at some point and this is the biggest reason I say to keep your training costs as LOW as possible.

I understand the rational to seek out "high quality" training and again I support this but I feel training costs out weigh training quality for someone looking to get to an airline. Once you get to an airline they are going to train you and all that part 91 IFR stuff will be replaced with 121 IFR stuff. The type of multi engine aircraft you trained in doesn't matter because NONE of them are going to prepare you for flying a turbojet aircraft. Honestly you could supplement your training by continuing to use MSFS and that would do more in preparing you for flying a turbojet aircraft than spending extra money on multi-engine piston training.

I just finished a transition to the CRJ at my airline and all of the training was done in a simulator. They train you to fly the airplane the way they want it flown by their profiles. You do your FAA examination in the simulator and don't even fly the real plane until you have a type certificate. Once training begins in the real plane you are paired up with a company check airman and they take it from there. SkyWest has been taking brand new pilots with zero jet experience and training them to fly CRJ's for 10+yrs. The common denominator amongst these pilots is they meet or exceeded SkyWests hiring time requirements. No one cared where they did their training or how much actual IFR time they had.

Please don't get me wrong. Again, I understand the argument for quality vs. cost but you're going to be paying that bill for 10+yrs so don't make it any harder than it has to be.

Cheers