What are the thoughts about this school? I'm working on my CSE...

 

There are plenty of worse schools out there.

 

I haven't heard anything bad about the school...I plan on going to the ATL location in the future...

-LAFF

 

I plan on attending either the JAX (Jacksonville), SUA (Stuart), or FXE (Ft. Lauderdale) FL location.

atp

 

I've noticed a lot of us out here having positive things to say about ATP. I'm on the other side of the fence here. While I never trained there, I was in a position once to hire a lot of flight instructors. And as a group, ATP had the poorest prepared flight instructors I saw. In fact, it got to the point where when an app for a new hire CFI would come in and if it showed his CFI training to be at ATP, I'd just file it in the round can. I do not believe you can get the depth of knowledge required to be a CFI in just a "15 day" course. I saw ATP CFI grads with no lesson plans, no experience in presenting material, and barely passable commercial flight skills. I may be biased because it took me and the instructors I trained about 60 - 90 days of full-time work and over 300 pages of lesson plans to complete our CFI/CFII/MEI program, but I believe after that experience I and they were very well prepared. It shouldn't be easy. And you shouldn't be able to just copy someone else's work.

I don't think it matters to much where you get your basic certificates and ratings - private through commercial. However, when you're getting your CFI at a school that promises it in "15 days" and then the school wants to ship you to a "specific" DPE (to avoid a certain FSDO districts) where you essentially "read" a pre-prepared lesson plan and take a warmed over commercial check-ride, I think you need to ask if you're doing yourself a disfavor. I know getting certificates and ratings is expensive as h*ll. But as it has been said out here many times, there are very few shortcuts, and taking shortcuts as a CFI can get you killed...literally and quickly.

 

I think its normal for a CFI with little practical experience teaching to be not as good or even comparable to one with actual 'classroom/in cockpit' experience...I'm certain if you took a look at a majotity of those ATP CFIs after they have been instructing for 300+ hours you would see a completely different person.

There are always exceptions - some 250 hour pilots are better than some 2500 hour pilots.

-LAFF

 

As rickair stated there are worse schools out there, plus ATP is a no BS school like others are, it's very straight forward, no surprises. The only bad thing that you can say about ATP is that you do a lot of long cross country flights. Yea you get to fly a plane together and learn resource managemtn as a crew but you won't be learning how to fly much since most of the time you will be crusing instead of practcing approaches and takeoffs. Not as many takeoffs and landings. There are pros and cons to every school. Although ATP has very few cons.

 

yea one thing I like about ATP program is the LONG cross country flights they do. I think you learn alot more doin XC flights then you would flying a twin out to a practice area and doing what you need to do there or even shorter XCs.

 

My biggest question would be for evaluating a school is if after completing the course, am I a desirable hire. And how many of the CFI's turnover is due to hiring from regionals and other airlines.

 

Being desirable is nebulous...Just do your best and be yourself - you'll have more confidence in interviews / flying if you don't try to be something / someone you're not...

-LAFF