Originally Posted by
Fr8Thrust
Honestly that is a poor attitude to have. What you are essentially saying is you want to “skip” becoming a better pilot. No doctor wants to shortcut their experience and go right into performing surgery, so why should a pilot. It’s a once in a lifetime experience that opens many doors. I promise you that. You can move up the ranks at AMF rather quickly, faster than at any regional, and those application “checkmarks” are valued highly at the majors.
You’re defining better as flying single pilot freight. That doesn’t make you a better airline pilot. I’ve seen it. What makes you a better pilot? Fly challenging stuff as a hobby, and at work, challenge yourself. 50% of my landings in the Bus are with all automation off including auto thrust. Why? Because it keeps me sharp. I have seen AMF pilots get into a jet and a professional encorionment and struggle. The “hold my beer and watch this” mentality doesn’t work in the more professional jobs. The bottom feeder 135 charter jobs sure maybe...
This rhetoric is just sold to you by management that airlines love AMF pilots and that AMF makes the best pilots. My last two jobs, including the largest fractions jet job on the planet, had never heard of AMF. The more ingrained in single pilot turbo prop freight ops you are, the steeper the learning curve culturally and flying ability wise, really is.
The old DO and at one time, temporarily CEO of AMF couldn’t get hired as a pilot at SWA, he had to go there as a sim instructor.
Again AMF has its place and it is an option if that type of flying is appealing to you. But “better” is a subjective term. Does it make you better at flying in bad weather by yourself in old equipment? Absolutely, without a doubt it does that. Does it make you a better pilot in anything modern in a real multi crew environment? No, it doesn’t, period.