One more thing about cross country time since I mentioned it above. This quote is from the Bold Method link I posted a few pages back. People keep telling us they are short on the cross country time requirement even though we ask them pretty specifically about this. They just don't realize that the 135 requirement for cross country is different and it has taken a few conversations to make it click for some people.
Originally Posted by
Alpine Pilot
7) Part 135 Pilot Qualifications
To act as PIC under FAR Part 135, pilots must have either 100 hours of cross country time for VFR flights or 500 hours of cross country time for IFR flights. These Part 135 requirements follow the FAA's basic definition of cross country flight as being "point to point."
FAR 135.243(b/c)
Any flight, no matter how short, if taken from one point of departure to a separate point of landing may be counted towards these requirements!
And where I told JLTD "I'll be at ATS from the 12th to the 26th of February, so if you want to come see the training center I could show you around.", that offer goes to anybody that happens to be in the area while I'm there.
Also, we have moved our indoc and 99 training to Denver as well. Until now all of the 99 flight training has been in the actual aircraft and mostly based out of Billings. To help reduce the strain on the line we've worked with ATS to convert a B200 sim into a BE99 configuration and will hopefully start utilizing it as an FTD soon. It's not going to be mounted on hydraulics for full motion like the 1900 sim, at least not yet, but this will let us reduce the time required to train in the actual aircraft. In the FTD we can improve IFR flying and teach emergencies, checklists, and flows before hitting the line to fly the aircraft.