JP1234

Top Six Reasons not to go to the Delta Connection Academy.
By Jeremy Prendergast. Graduated in 10/2005

Take this from a guy who went from zero time to MEI and Check Pilot.

• The biggest scam! The recruiters tell you that you need DCA to get an airline job. You are scammed into spending way too much money for something you DON’T need.
• The Schedule! They control your life. They tell you when you fly and that’s it! If you want to change your schedule, they charge you for it and make a huge deal out of it.
• Instructor Pay! Unless you like the fact that you pay for your ratings and then get paid $12 per hour, while DCA is making $40 plus per hour off of you.
• They Lie! I was quoted about $65K and it cost almost $100K by the time I was done. They literally nickel and dime you to death. This didn’t only happen to me, it happened to everyone in my class (11 of us).
• The “guaranteed job interview” is bull. After getting all my hours in (1,000) they scheduled an interview at Express Jet for over 4 months in the future. I was able to “do it myself” for an interview at American Eagle in less than 7 days. When the school found out, they cancelled my XJT interview. ***? Then they took the credit for getting me hired at American Eagle for there website statistics. I got me that job, not DCA.
• $900 per month student loan payment on First Officer Pay! This is self-explanatory….

flyforfun

i attended one of their conference calls. And i got a feeling that an admission officer and a Jet Blue pilot who was answering other peoples questions were BS us.

cfii2007

I interviewed with a well known flight academy a few years back.

Halfway through the interview I was told the position might not be open to begin with and was asked, "So how much of a loan can you qualify for?"

Stay away from these large flight academies........

ryan1234

Why don't we all just open a flight school and call it "(insert airline name here) Regional Jet First Officer Connection Academy"
We'll buy some cool "airline style" glass cockpit airplanes and a bunch of sims. 0 time to FO in 3 months for only $200,000!!!! We'll call it the "airline direct program", we'll set up some interviews (guarantee an interview) and pay some execs off to take some 200 hour kids who didn't know what a sectional was 3 months ago, to warm the seat in a CRJ to make our first numbers look good. If they need extra hours we'll charge them $700/hr. We'll get some 300hr CFIs to teach them, have a CP who was a retired "major airline captain".
The first 15 kids would pay for each airplane!!! I'm sure there is some idiots out there where daddy and mommy would pay or co-sign for them to waste that amount of money.... it's working everywhere else!!!

de727ups

Already been done....

See atpflightschool.com

Flyboydan

You actually thought you would be paid $40/hr??? Look at any flight school and you'll see a customer pays anywhere from $35-$60/hr just for the instructor while the CFI is actually only getting $12-$18/hr. Flight Schools have to do this in order to cover the cost of being in the flight school biz. It's better than charging $12/hr for thr CFI's time and $200/hr for the 172. Fuel and insurance costs A LOT of money when customers are paying by the wet-hour. If CFIs got paid $40/hr there would be no airline or corporate pilots.

ryan1234

Flight schools that rent wet tend to factor a full rich (nonsense) setting the duration of the flight with a surcharge as well, the reason most flight schools have the full-rich below 3k, is they believe it will relieve mx costs long term. Proper fuel leaning to LOP will use less fuel and less mx long term (as the ICP is lower). Most people in FL don't understand that running full rich on take-off is generally decreasing performace. A dry price with an instructor who cares serves better and lets the renter learn something about LOP power. Dry rental costs (incl mx, insurance, hangar fees, etc) without instructor on a '04 172sp non g1000 is only around $40/hr max, up charge by $40/hr, $20/hr instructor (to the instructor) + fuel = $140/hr to rent a 172.

planediveguy

Actually instructor pay went up last year. You get 20 bucks an hour now and 25 if you can teach CFI...

Wait and see what might happen, the shortage of pilots has been delayed with the downsizing and age 65 thing, but it will come back around and hit the flight schools hard. Then the wages will have to be adjusted...

Maddoggin

Maybe I just lucked out on my CFI job. But back in 2003-4 I got paid 25 bucks an hour for flight and ground school. This was a small operation as well but the owner believed in fair wages. At the time, and even now it still is pretty good for CFIing. Although I still think CFI's should get paid more.

cfii2007

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Sad....but true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!