Originally Posted by Uncle Bose
...how the Seminole upgrade works? I heard that a non-MEI basically need not spend a dime for the rating as long as he/she is a full time instructor.
When I left in May of '02, they were not giving out MEI's for free. You had to get it on your own. Now, if they used their brains, which at nearly 4 years later they just may be, they'd give you your 5 hours of PIC during the in-house standardization upgrade and sign you off for a DE ride on your dime. I would have no problems paying $300 to take an MEI ride and getting the 5 hours for free.
I never got my MEI when I worked there because the line to get into the Seminole was so long, I never planned to instruct in the multi from day one. I spent nearly 18 months there before leaving and if I had stayed literally another month, I would have been going to multi upgrade. After Sept 11th, lots of people who had the plugs pulled on their sim training with airlines were given their CFI jobs and seniority number back at Riddle and since most, if not all of them were multi upgraded, that put a big wrench in the works (since the rich got richer and single engine pukes continued to wait for their multi upgrade for who knows how much longer).
I wound up splitting 100 hours of multi time with a friend of mine, who was an MEI, and we flew around the southeast during our spare time. Took about 6 months to log 100 hours. Of course, this was before Sept 11th and I pretty much wasted $6,000 on multi time because the Air Force couldn't have cared less about 100 hours of light twin time when I applied.