Originally Posted by Paul Plano

I've been lurking on this thread for a while now, but figured I'd nose in here at this point. Been with Ameriflight since late last year.

My personal experience with Ameriflight's [Metro] training department has been positive. Their instructors are very competent, passionate, and expect everyone to be able to succeed in the training. But there is a standard, and if you are unwilling or unable to study after class, identify your weak areas yourself, you won't hold up when it comes time for the checkride. In my class, we had one guy quit the day before his checkride and we had another guy require some extra training and eventually get reassigned off the metro.

Frankly, I see these moves as positive. They expect you to know your sh*t. If you don't, sooner or later it becomes obvious.

Are their planes old? Yup. Do they break sometimes? Yup. You will be expected to know them well enough to handle an engine fire, run the appropriate checklists, talk to approach control while bringing her around in low vis conditions to circle to land on a different runway (on the centerline). ALL while solo. You will do exactly this in training... and more.

I'll say Ameriflight isn't a good fit for everyone. Not everyone is cut out to fly solo at night 'up the back side of thunderstorms' as you put it. I'd rather they weed those guys out in training than on the line. Those that are able to make it through the training can enjoy a better than average salary (as you mention) and maybe someday a flow thru to UPS, who knows.

But do they ridicule you in training or demean you in any way? I've never heard of that happening, and frankly, quite the opposite. They want you to succeed. I've seen them bend over backwards to get a pilot more training. Just my experience.