Flight school choices in CA or TX
 

Hey guys, I’m new to this forum and I have a few questions that I believe are case specific. I just turned 28, and I’m completely green to the aviation industry. I currently work in a completely different industry, but I’m looking for a change for my long term goals. I want to to go flight school and get it all knocked out as quickly as possible along with my 1500 flight hours. My long term goals would be to fly for a major internationally. I currently have some college credits, but I do not have an associates or bachelors degree. I have the funds to quit my current job and go back to school for let’s say about two years without working. I’m looking to go to a flight school in California or Texas as I have family in both and would have little to no rent, thus saving myself quite a bit of rent money. Would you guys recommend I get my associates? Bachelors? Then attend flight school? Or can I do flight school and my associates at the same time? For the schools in California and Texas I was looking at ATP in Riverside, CA; Coast fight training in San Diego, CA or US Aviation Academy in Denton, TX. I was also looking at the college programs like the one orange coast college has. I’m pretty flexible on school choices as well, but preferably in California, Texas, Colorado, or Florida. I’d like to be competitive when it comes to getting hired, so I’m willing to do whatever I need to do to get there. Long hours and hard work are no problem to me because I work 80-110hrs per week in my current industry. I’m working as much as I can including my off week at work to save up as much money as I can before I quit sometime early next year. Any advice is appreciated and thank you in advance.

Edit: I just ordered 2019 Far/AIM, aviation weather, and Airplane Flying Handbook (Federal Aviation Administration): FAA-H-8083-3B on amazon and will be reading those in my spare time to try and be ahead of the curve.

If you do come to California, we have insane waits for dpes

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Looks like both CA and TX are having issues with that unfortunately. Where in CA are you from?

Sacramento. Dpes are scheduling for late December/early January right now

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Where in Texas are your relatives? We can get a DPE in houston in about 10 days.

DFW area, so ideally I’d be going to school around there

Oh wow, I guess we’ll see after I go to visit a couple schools

There is a huge flight school a little north of Dallas called the US Aviation Academy.

Personally, i would get through my cfi quickly as possible.. then start college and build time as a cfi...

Reason being .. if you started at superman speeds, and everything worked perfectly, you'd be 6-8 months from cfi, another 12-14 months of instructing...3 years at a regional before moving on thats almost 5 years before you would need that degree... but no matter what you do, you can't speed up the flying process any more than that, but you can work on school while building time and working for a regional... do as much as you can online...

USAA is one of the flight schools i mentioned in my post. Wanted to see if anyone had any exp with that school. I figured as long as everything goes right it would be 27-36 months from start to finish hopefully.

I don't know about them personally, other than they train allot of foreign nationals...36 months until you are applying at regionals you mean? That seems like a do-able goal.