Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Well, so does UPT. But this is the cost for aircraft time ALONE:
370k for T-6, 469k for T-1, 1.2M for T-38 per the latest RAND study. Not to mention it is a full time job for a year. And ~15% of each graduating class is sent on to instructor school to be instructors for the next three years classes.
No way in hell is the LIFT academy anything near the equivalent.
The 750-hour requirement for military is also just an arbitrary line, and kind of ridiculous, considering the real-world ops they normally do. Military pilots do more complicated missions, fly less often, do most of their own mission planning, and do the equivalent of 121 flag operations with less than 300 hours total time, often with aircraft commanders who may not even qualify for an r-ATP.