I’ve narrowed my area of search to Florida for family reasons. Of the ATP programs in Florida, do any current/former students have some thoughts on which is best? I’m thinking time sitting in ground traffic, high density air traffic and getting the most of your training time. I’m NOT concerned from a piloting complexity standpoint (complex is good experience), it’s just I’ve heard from students at another program, that at especially at KDAB for example, it’s not unusual to be in a taxi line for 30 minutes on a busy day…
I enjoyed my time at CRG. It’s located near HQ so easy to get in contact with them if you have questions and obviously a lot of management oversight. I also liked the idea of being sure that I would get to stay in one location for the duration of my training since they had a CFI school program set up there. As for the airport, it was a fantastic place to train. Towered but small and located right on the coast. Near larger airspaces and military airspace so you got plenty of training there, and if desired - a quick trip to larger airports to get even more experience. But as you’ve heard, ground time can add up if you are based at one of the larger fields. I can’t remember waiting more than 10 min to take off during the entirety of my training.
Yeah DAB can definitely get busy. You have ATP, Pheonix East, Air America, and Embry Riddle. Then you also have the jets from Signature that fly in and out of there as well. Military aircraft fly into DAB sometimes as well from F-18s to C-130s. We had a chinook fly in like 2 weeks ago. And finally you got the airliners that fly in there. Also since you are right next to the Daytona SpeedWay, TFR’s can also ruin your plans to go fly for a couple of days. Thankfully, I don’t train there primarily but I have flown to DAB many times shooting the ILS 07L because my airport only has GPS approaches.
I’m currently at KPIE, great location! It’s a fairly busy class Delta airport located under Tampa’s class Bravo. It’s busy enough to add to the learning experience, but not too busy that you become overwhelmed.
Great location, instructors, and fellow students. Also close to both downtown Tampa and St. Pete, and all that each has to offer, as well as several beaches.
We also have a decent amount of planes and great maintenance staff on-site who do their best to minimize downtime with aircraft.
I personally would not spend too much time focusing on this. ATP tries very hard to standardize their locations as much as possible. If one airport was encountering excessive ground times, they would move the location. I have seen this several times before in the past. I would pick the location that is most convenient for you and not give it much more thought.