Originally Posted by
Fenderbean
Not sure how you accomplished this a lot of folks currently in the Army flying and about to transition doing the same. I haven't heard of anything better, unless you travel longer distances for an actual aviation college.
I could easily go to central texas college full time after I retire and do their program which is a two year program and spend that much. The vocational route cuts out all the crap classes I would have had to taken and it goes toward the commercial SE/ME
Despite already having a degree, I enrolled in an aviation university for a BS in professional aviation or something like that. But the only classes I enrolled in were flight labs—no real classes. A bunch of us at Riley did it at a nearby school while we were active duty a few years ago. They had full time GI bill students as well, but we just knocked out our add-on ratings real quick on weekends and at night and were done. I took 3 check rides (inst/comm single/multi) in a 2 month period. Guys with no prior FW time took a little longer, but were funded to get 250 airplane PIC hours (so almost 300 total). After some GI Bill/yellow ribbon abuse by a few schools (namely the helicopter training schools doing primary training in a 206), the VA clamped down a little on the programs (only allow flight hours that are within syllabus for example) but as far as I know, these programs are still alive and well at many places. One of my bro’s who did that with me and flew at my bottom feeder regional used another 8 months of his GI bill to attend school in San Fran one day a week, doing the rest online, for some BS classes, just to get San Fran BAH, which paid twice as much as his first year regional pay.
There’s good stuff out there. Some of the VA/GI bill counselors know about it, some don’t. I didn’t believe my bro’s when they told me what they were doing until I drove to the school and talked to the guy in charge of the flight program who was well versed in the GI Bill, as half his students were GI bill guys.