Thanks all for the info. They actually told me they would "help" me get my MEI which means at a reduced rate.

 

Negative. You have a couple options concerning the MEI. After 250 hours of dual given at the school, they will train you for the MEI. You can choose to enter in a 1 year contract and incur no cost to yourself, or you can pay for it (employees get a 25% discount on aircraft rentals) and not have the contract.

As for the student load, someone mentioned 8-10 students at any given time, and that would be correct. I don't know what starting wages are ($15.32/hr two years ago when I started), but there have been a couple across-the-board raises in the last couple semesters. There are also raises each year from your hire date, as well as raises after 750 and 1250 hours dual given with them.

As for the benefits, they're a great bonus to the job. Someone mentioned 6 credits per semester free, including masters classes. Health insurance is TOP-NOTCH, especially their family coverage. Retirement plans are great as well.

Cost of living can be argued either way. People come out from California and are amazed how cheap places are. Others recognize it as being more expensive than a lot of other areas in the country. If you look around and are willing to commute 15 minutes to work, your options are greatly widened, since a lot of the housing around the airport is high-priced.

There have been some management shake-ups in the past few months, as well as a lot of departures to the airlines, but it's still a great place to work, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find another place to instruct that treats you as well as Riddle does.

 

Everything Timmay said is 100% correct. I am currently instructing there and just got the MEI upgrade (the MEI rating is free if you sign the contract). The overall package would be difficult to match anywhere else.

 

How many hours a month do you fly? Do you get paid for ground school(pre/post) or just flight time.

 

You get paid for contact time, whether that's oral/ground, sim, or flight. I'd say on an average month here you'd fly 60-80 hours. Summers are a little slower, I was closer to the 50 hour mark last month. If you put in long days, it's not a problem flying 100 hours/month when you're loaded with students and the weather is favorable. The one thing to keep in mind is that ERAU is pretty intensive in their simulator training, especially in the instrument course, so most of those students will have two sims for every flight, so the flying is a little tougher to come by with them. It's all the same pay either way though.

 

So what does the $$$$ amount come out to per month?

 

I dunno if this has been written here yet, but they announced several different types of sign-on bonuses... you should look into it for the specifics (I don't remember exactly and am too lazy to ask my source again :P), but it's about several grand for a 12 month contract. It does include the MEI.

 

With all the goodies like retirement, insurance, etc. taken out, my checks average $850-$950, 2x/month.

 

That's funny you should mention that. I keep hearing rumors about sign-on bonuses these last couple days as well, but I haven't gotten a straight answer on what new-hires are receiving. All I know is I've heard a couple old-timers here complaining they wish they had gotten the same treatment that the new instructors are getting.

 

I'll add one more thing to the mix.... I had instructed for about 2 years prior to going to instruct for Riddle-Prescott in 2003. And I'll tell ya, I have never seen so many flight students who seriously had no business flying airplanes. I don't know if it's because they didn't feel like they needed to put in any effort or what. It seemed that the majority of the students there felt like they were destined for great things, and since daddy was an airline pilot, they were supposed to be one too. I had no problems teaching students how to land an airplane until I went to work there, and somehow when a kid (or his dad) is paying that much for training, it reflects poorly on you...