Should I train with ATP?
 

Hi, I am currently a junior in college, and I am wanting to have a career in aviation. I have discussed this with my family and my dad's philosophy on my career plans is "if you're going to do it, do it right". To him this means going to ATP in the Phoenix area. What worries me is neither of us know many pilots that can speak on ATP and I would love to hear from pilots that went there or know anyone that went there. As of right now I have been going through forums and reading the good and bad. All comments are appreciated!

Do you have a college degree yet?

You're going to need that, and if you're just starting out it would be very prudent to coordinate college with flight training, to minimize delay and unnecessary cost.

Also do you have a private pilot certificate? I would absolutely get a PPL before committing to career training. At an absolute minimum, do enough flight training to solo.

You can start flying now. A young man I'm helping started flying starting his senior year in college. Eighteen months later he's got his 4.0 4 yr degree and will be taking his CFI in a couple of weeks. You can move quicker if you start flying while you're still in college. Make it your job, hobby, and girlfriend, and the effort all of that requires, and you can do college AND start cranking on your flight training. I started my PPL in May after my freshman year and by the following October had my Comm/Inst/MEL/CFI as well as being a full time college student. I'm not a good student or that motivated but I in eighteen months I knocked out 255 hrs and a year of college credits. On that timeline you'd be pursuing your first CFI job in September 2027.

No.

That is all.

NO

Do like 10min of interwebz search

It’s bistro pricing for Burger King training

I will 3rd the no

I have no first hand experience with ATP. But I do often fall down the rabbit hole of ATP-related threads on the r/flying subreddit.

It's entertaining reading, and I encourage you to poke around for yourself and draw your own conclusions. My general takeaway is that ATP will work, but there are faster/better/cheaper options out there.

Have heard more negative than positive about AT
Sling is cheaper,
Maybe the Mom and Pop type places may be a fit as wetl. You are going to invest six figures for the training alone, make sure it counts.

How serious are you about the idea of becoming a career pilot? If you're going to pull the trigger on ATP, you better be S E R I O U S.

I heard once that a good number of flight lessons to do is 3-4 a week, and it makes sense. Enough that you're not having to re-learn stuff you forgot, but not so many that you get burnt out. ATP says "what's burnout? Is that French?" You will fly every day that the weather and your health allows. They don't even want you to have a job or other classes or anything else going on in your life, because you need to be eating, sleeping, breathing flight school. The reward is that you go from hour zero to Multi-Engine instructor in nine(ish) months, which is an absurd timeline for seven ratings, IMO. And yes, it's expensive. There are people who spend way less to do their ratings, and there are people who spend way more. But there aren't many who do it that quickly outside of ATP.

As for the quality of the training you get, it probably varies from campus to campus, and even instructor to instructor. But ATP students pass the same check rides, allegedly to the same standards, as every other flight student in America. I've met many ATP alums over the years (I would say about one in three pilots under 40 are ATP grads), and among them there have been good pilots, and bad pilots.

ATP is definitely "doing it right" in the way your Dad probably intends. But if I were you, I ask around for a reputable mom and pop operation. It won't be as fast, but you're treated less like a cog, and you'll probably save some money, too.