Originally Posted by
fatman1683
If I were in your shoes, I would look at one of the R-ATP bachelor's degree programs. A lot of them will give you credit for your existing ratings, so it may not take you the full two years to finish.
Since everything is paid through the school it qualifies for federal student loans and aid, which come at a much better rate and terms than private loans for flight training.
With an approved bachelor's degree including 60 hours of coursework you can get your R-ATP at 1000 hours and save half a year of timebuilding.
Here's the list of approved degree programs that qualify for the R-ATP:
https://www.faa.gov/pilots/training/...ority_List.pdf
Actually, it's not quite that simple. They need to have an FAA letter of authorization for R-ATP eligibility, and that's what trips a lot of people up. At my university, for example, the flight training had to be done in our planes with our instructors at our airport, plus pursue the degree, plus complete at least 60 credit hours from a specific list of courses.
The devil is in the details, and many people have the misconception that they can simply get ratings, get a degree online or in person with a school that's 141, and then they get r-atp reductions. As an academic advisor, I had to have that uncomfortable conversation pretty often. Sometimes it was with a prospective student who was hoping to apply and eventually get r-atp, sometimes it was a graduate of our online degree who heard that rumor and would try to "see if they were eligible" (and sometimes try to argue with me until I had them pull up our LOA). Sadly I had the conversation with recent or soon-to-be graduates who were CFIs and close to their hours, and became quite irate because they had spent the last few years working away at this degree under the misconception they'd get a 500 hour reduction, when in reality they had never informed us of their intentions or asked about r-atp eligibility, until they sat down with a regional recruiter and they said "okay show me your documents for r-atp eligibility," and they had none. Because of these instances, we had to start making it abundantly clear from the first time we spoke with a prospective student that they
will not be eligible for r-atp if they were a distance student doing online.
So in short, you can attend a university and go for r-atp eligibility if you follow the letter of authorization carefully, or you can transfer into an aviation program with existing ratings and get transfer credits for those, but you won't get both. There are a handful of exceptions ut they're rare and not worth getting into detail.