I started the program with credit for private 2 months plus one week ago. Here is my summary of that time:
The pace of the program is super fast. During instrument I flew or did a sim almost every day. At first if I wasnt scheduled to fly or sim I would find a time a sim was free and practice on my own, including weekends (6-7 days a week). I got my instrument rating about 2 weeks ago, a little less than 2 months after my start date. I finished crew this past Friday, less than 2 weeks after getting my instrument rating. Commercial starts tomorrow and seems to last only 3 weeks then its CFI school. This is a mach 2 program
You must be a self-starter and take responsibility for your training. You will get some guidance from the CFI’s, but you must take responsibility for learning the bulk of book knowledge. This is not college with daily papers, weekly quizzes, mid-terms and someone making sure you are studying.
You must have a flexible schedule. The schedule changes frequently sometimes last minute. If you can’t deal with that, it will be a problem. I struggle with this as a divorced man with 50% custody of my daughter, but fortunately I have a productive, flexible relationship with my ex-wife and we are making it work. Just know that you must have very few blocks of time in your life where you are unavailable. You can take a day or weekend off once in a while for XYZ, but working a side job or having child custody with strictly fixed hours will be a real problem.
The CFI’s mostly work their asses off, are passionate, super helpful and dont seem to get paid much at all. Many of the CFI’s seem to be earning the lowest tier of $8.63 per hour because they cant get enough flight hours to earn the higher tiers. You probably shouldn’t do this program based on the guarantee of a CFI job at the end.
You seem to get a different experience at different locations. CRQ is quite busy, lively and when you go into the office, its loud with lots of chatter. I always learn something helpful through talking to others, but the noise does make it difficult to study. By contrast, I went to Riverside last week and their office was very quiet, the people there were studying or talking quietly. It was rather tranquil. Personally I prefer the energy of CRQ because I can study at home or a local coffee shop if I need to. Long Beach is a mix between the two.
If you treat this program as a full time job and put in 40 productive hours a week (with some of those hours being evenings and weekends), you will do fine. Be diligent and you will do fine. If you spend your days socializing in the office, working half days and doing the bare minimum, chances are nobody will call you to task and you will be able to slide by having a fun time. But you’ll pay the price.
Overall I’m completely satisfied that I made this major change in my career and that I chose ATP. I’m working hard and juggling the schedule, but I’m working hard flying (and learning about flying). So it doesnt really feel like work.
Andy, nice review. I’m curious about a point you made though. You stated that the CFIs at your location cannot get more than $8.63 or less than 60 hours a month. Why do you suppose that is? Are there too few students at your location, too many CFIs, or some other reason? I was really looking forward to teaching at ATP after my time as a student but bummed if I’ll have a hard time getting my hours. I thought I read someplace saying there are many people rushing to join flight schools due to the rising pay and benefits which means more students to teach and who would need flight time in the air.
Thanks for the update, Andy. Your experience and workload is pretty much what I’ve prepared my family for, so I’m glad it’s working out well.
I did my intro flight at Riverside and I agree it was extremely quiet. I thoroughly enjoyed my CFI and everyone I chatted with there though. I have yet to make the move to FL, so I haven’t been to DAB yet, but I’m expecting it to be like how you describe CRQ.
I have a question for you though. I built out a pretty decent sim about a year ago, but haven’t touched it since I decided to make the career change as I didn’t want to develop bad habits. Do you think I could use this to cut down going into the office about 1 day per week, or is sim time not beneficial without instructors around?
I’m not sure. My CFI works long hours but I think a lot of his time is spent on things other than flight hours with the clock running.
It could be an excess of CFIs to students or it could be a lot of work that is not flying, hence covered by the ground fixed compensation.
But for expectation purposes, it seems the norm is $8.63 an hour and the fight hours that correspond to that tier.
ATP recently started paying CFIs double time when they fly on weekends since that’s when planes are under-utilized. So CFIs sometimes like to schedule flights on weekends.
Personally I want to get my 1,500 hours:
1 in a short timeframe
2 while developing my piloting skills
The hourly rate isn’t my biggest concern. I’m still open to ATP but it seems there might be better options.
Ha - I was surprised to learn on day 1 that the ATP sims are powered by Xplane 9. I also have a setup at home powered by X-plane 10 (I have a control yoke, throttle and pedals). I went home and set it up, but immediately decided to never use it for these reasons:
1 flying the ATP sim is really different than flying the plane. The sim is really twitchy. You actually need more precise skills to fly the sim than the real plane.
2 my home setup is just a yoke, throttle and rudder pedals. No Garmin 430, no Nav instruments, no 6-pack.
3 my home sim setup flew very differently than the ATP setup - it was just a different experience than ATPs sim and different than flying an actual plane. I decided I didn’t want to have 3 different experiences and decided I would do all sim work at ATP. I never once used my home sim.
It is beneficial to fly the sim without an instructor present. But I would not recommend a home setup, I recommend using the ATP sims. The good thing is you are welcome and encouraged to use them if they are not in use - there is no charge.
Ha wow, X-Plane 9 looks archaic compared to 10. In my very limited time at the controls I also noticed the stick and rudder to be less challenging than a sim. Especially maintaining altitude. I also just could’ve not properly trimmed the simulated plane.
Home flight sims are relatively inexpensive compared to flight hours. If it were that easy to augment and get sharp on your own, do you not think every aspiring pilot would be doing it saving themselves thousands of dollars?
ATP does it’s best to keep an instructor to student ratio that’s benefits both. That said there’s only so much they can do at any given time. If you were an instructor and there was a lull should ATP kick you out and move you? Should they not let their students choose what location they train at so all the instructors are kept busy? Neither is a good solution. These things are dynamic and change often.
Fyi it’s the same at the airlines. There are obviously busy seasons and lulls as well. Maybe you need to make money one month and there’s a reduction in hours for that month so you get a low time line. Are you going to look for another base? Another airline?
I don’t know how long Andy’s instructor has been there but you really need to look at the averages.
Andy, thanks for you initial comments, being two weeks into instrument training (starting with credit for private), you are definitely spot on in many regards!
Consistent with Andy’s experience, I too, found myself having many days initially with both a sim and flight in the same day. It can definitely feel like drinking from a fire hose initially, but if you take it serious, and treat it like a full-time endeavor, you will be able to succeed.
As far as the home sims, I both agree and disagree with the previous comments. My experience thus far with the sims has not been that great. At least at my location, the sims are very unrealistic. Our sims are all steam gauge panels, and have a generic version of the Garmin 530 installed, yet at my location we have all Piper Archer’s with the G500 EFIS, and dual Garmin 430’s. This does not translate well between sim and actually flying the aircraft. The sim is also extremely touch and sensitive on the controls, and the flight dynamics leave a lot to be desired. That being said, on my home sim I had both Prepar3d (v. 4.5), and X-Plane 11, and found the flight dynamics on both of those to be much more realistic to the actual aircraft. If you’re home sim setup has either a Garmin 430/530 GPS and any sort of glass cockpit, I see absolutely no harm in practicing instrument approaches in such setup, it may actually help you out in the long run.
Running X Plane 11 on 3 screens with a 4th extra widescreen underneath that I can drag the G1000 PFD and MFD, or essentially any combination of steam gauges and avionics.
Kind of went nuts on it as I planned on making it a hobby to do around the house once my daughter was born.
I dont have a CFI date yet, but I made a call and sent and email today to try and nail it down. Good plan on using sims for flows, I found that very helpful in instrument.
I’m right around 90 days into the program and have logged 107.5 flight hours plus 48 hours in the sim. I’ve flown the sim a lot more than that, but we only log the hours when an instructor is giving an official lesson.