Originally Posted by
USMCFLYR
Any of the other common ways of building time that you see mentioned on nearly every thread on APC dealing with time building.
Personally - I think Aerial Surveying seems to be one of the best. I've seen them out and about during some of my work. That type of flying seems to deal with a variety of conditions like X/C, weather issues across a wide region (relative of course), working with ATC in Class B or C airspace (more than the regular coordination - work related tuff) at least until you can build some P135 mins and end up flying some feeder freight.
CFI'ing is good initial experience.
As I posted earlier - an example of what people are calling "cutting corners" would be NOT flight instructing, or any other type of time/experience building job, and going right into a regional.
Right now you think this is OK. Your opinion will likely change over time - especially if you are actually afforded the opportunity to biuld experience out of the P121 world. If you do end up going to ERAU and right into gorund school for some regioanl then you'll probably never know what you don't know
USMCFLYR
NO! I thought I mentioned this before - I plan on flight instructing a lot, actually! With the new ATP rule, it is impossible to not time-build in some way, since the ERAU curriculum itself only provides around 200-220 hours. It's up to the student to time build up to the ATP requirement. I thought that was established in previous posts?
I DON'T think it's okay to go right from flight training to a regional. And again, that ATP rule is eliminating that option anyway. When I say "go straight to a regional after graduation," I said that with the assumption that one flight instructed like crazy DURING college. I completely agree with people who say that "300 hours wonder pilots" shouldn't be in the cockpit of a regional aircraft. I've always been a believer that you don't really know something unless you can successfully teach it to somebody else.
If you're curious, I plan on actually becoming a CFI/II during the summer of my freshman year (ERAU has a summer program for that), flight instructing as an undergrad as a sophomore, summer of sophomore year, and junior year. Summer of junior year I plan on interning at a major.* I'll probably continue flight instructing during senior year. At the end of all that, I'll have well over 1,000 hours of flight time, and like you said, much more experience.
Did you think that the training process itself at ERAU prepared someone to jump over to a regional without ANY other kind of experience?!
*If my wildest dreams come true: if the internship at the major gives a guaranteed interview once minimums are achieved (like United), and the minimums are just ATP requirements (which I would have by the end of college anyway), there is a 0.000001% chance that would get me to a major and bypass the regionals.
I'll look into aerial surveying - I've never really heard of it before.