There is ABSOLUTELY a major benefit associated with the airline academy concept...unfortunately that benefit is to the owners of the academies, not to the pilots. The reason there are so many of them out there is that most people new to professional flying don't know any better! That may be changing...today the internet is probably helping to educate a few folks that would have been suckered in the past.

This board is not anti-academy, it is simply a pilot board and academies are not good for pilots. If you want a web site that presents a positive view of pilot academies, check out the academy's own web sites...they will tell you everything you want to hear! Maybe there is a forum for flight school operators...

Of course somebody is going to mention the 747 captain who sent his daughter to XXX academy...well when I worked for one of the big flight schools, we had a UAL 777 captain come in with his daughter to enquire about training...what ended up happening was we gave her a 50% discount on the "career package" in exchange for using a picture of the two of them in our marketing literature!

BTW, Flight safety is a great operation, very reputable, which used by professional turbine pilots world-wide, including some smaller airlines. It is not to be mentioned in the same breath as all those other "academies". They mainly do turbine aircraft training, but I'm sure their ab initio program is just fine, but I'm also sure it is very expensive. If money is no object at all to you then that would be the place to look at.

ATP seems to have combination of large-organization structure, and a resonably priced al-carte menu of training programs. My experience there is limited though.