EMB_Driver2002

All ATP's bought Higher Power to get at their 142 certificate and now they are running an ATP CTP program. $4995 including the written test and Shepard Air's written test prep. Not sure if they are offering some sort of combo with the practical too.

tunes

i'm a mil guy that got the ATP before punching from AD......

ImTumbleweed

My bad Tunes, sorry 'bout that.

Just Fly

For any who may be following this thread, here’s the follow up to my original post, broken down into “logical” segments based on my original post.

CTP - If you didn’t take your written prior to 1 Aug 14, then you need to take the CTP. Neither CATS nor Lasergrade will let you take the test with out the CTP certificate. Only about 6 companies are currently authorized by the FAA to administer this program, and several are proprietary to Universities (like Embry), so not a lot of options. Expect to pay $4-7K depending on who you go with.
I went with CAE, high $$$ end of the spectrum. Professional course, long days, meticulously meets the FAA requirements, but don’t expect to learn a lot if you’ve been around the block. Just reciting required FAA topics. It certainly won’t prepare you for the written. 1 full week long. No prep required, sim time is good to refresh the left hand-right hand skills.

Written - Went with Shepherd air. Worth the money, follow the recommended flow of study, get your 90%+ and move along. For me, studying during the night during the CTP, meant 72 hrs or so of final prep after the CTP, was enough to take the written.

ATP - Know what the company you’ve hired is giving you for your money. Does it include ground instruction, extra hours, other? Since the “big change” in ’14, Examiners are under a lot of pressure too. Expect tight availability, a rigorous ground eval (mine was 3.5 hrs) and a fair flight (my experience only).

I squeezed everything into 3 weeks (7 days CTP, 1 week to study for my written and test, plus get my class 1 med done, and 5 days for my 3 flights and a fourth day for my check ride). Def doable, but for mil folks, you need to be on leave in order to get everything done in this time frame.

If you have any questions or want additional details on how I went about this, PM me.

Of note, given an overseas to states plane tix, courses, hotels, rental car, examiner, etc…this is about a $20k approach to knocking this out…yes, that hurt…bad, very bad. Hope it’s worth it.

Brillo

Having a hard time finding an ATP CTP course that accepts GI Bill. Have one year of post 9-11 left and will have all of my ratings short of atp, so It would be cool to throw that last year of eligibility at the $5000 cost. It seems like it might be a VA thing that doesnt allow it to be used for the certificate course? Anybody actually used it for the atp ctp?

If not, would the smartest use be to pay the atp ctp out of pocket and use at last year for the practical, or am I overlooking something? Type rating/atp practical maybe?

Toonces

Flight training on the GI Bill is never the best use of the money. I would recommend paying for it out of pocket, or even putting it on a high interest credit card - you would still make money based on the dollar cost of what you could get a different institute of higher learning.
Smart assery aside...pay for it yourself.


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Brillo

Toonces,

That advice is sound. The only thing for me is that the year I have left is a bonus 9/11 fourth year (already used all my other benefit for my undergrad) and it is non-transferrable and I've already got my masters. Essentially, if I don't use it for this, it is going to go unused. I've looked a bit more and right now I don't think the VA will let you use it for the certificate (may one day, who knows) so I'll probably just use it for the practical. Still saves me $5000 out of pocket.

Hacker15e

Just as a corollary, I posted in another thread about paying for ATP and CTP out of pocket vs spending a few months at a regional airline and letting them pay for your CTP and ATP.

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/mi...onals-pay.html

In that thread, I encourage guys to do the long-term math between the options of paying for ATP/CTP yourself compared to a trip to get them on the regional airlines' dime.

IMHO, in your circumstance with the cost being $20,000, it might be worth it to let a regional pick up the cost, but that all hinges on what actually happens with respect to when you'd get hired at your "career destination". If it takes you 6 months post-separation to get hired, it probably wasn't worth it, but if you get a class date right away, then it probably was worth it.

BeatNavy

This was the case with the montgomery, but there are very smart ways to use the post 9/11 and maximize benefit. I enrolled in a yellow ribbon college with a professional aviation program. I had a BS already, but wanted to "pursue" another bachelors in the professional aviation program. Coincidentally, I wanted to take only flight labs in the semester I enrolled. I used 2 of my 36 months of GI bill, got around $50k in flight benefits, enough to get my commercial/inst/ASEL/AMEL add ons. I could have stayed longer and got a CFI, CFI-G, CFI-H, CFII, MEI, ASES, etc., using the money I still have left in my flight account and using no more GI Bill (maybe 1 month more), but I already had a job lined up at a regional and a kid on the way, so I had to ETS/PCS and go to my new home. Bottom line is I could have got damn near any rating I wanted and still have plenty of GI Bill for an MBA or law degree.

Cheesus Chrust

Is it really possible at this point to get onboard with the regionals with the 750TT R-ATP?