Skip SE and go right for the ME?
 

Interesting question I was asked the other day and thought I'd offer it up. Disclaimer - I did things the traditional route - Private-SE, Instrument-SE, Commercial - SE, CFI/II - SE, ATP -SE (weird I know), ATP-ME, MEI.

Anyway, for a person that has no desire to instruct and only wants a flying career would it be a better choice to forego the single engine training in favor of conducting all training in a twin? Financial means aside of course. Interested in getting perspective before I formulate a response :D

There may some economic benefit to to doing some commercial time-building in a twin.

If you find yourself a 2000 ASEL CFI and are faced with buying 100 ME hours, yeah in restrospect maybe you should have done 100 hours of twin towards your COM. Since each time building hour is going to cost you about $70 / hour for the ASEL anyway, doing it in a twin gets you twin time for an additional $60-70/hour. You're trading some ASEL total-time to do that but you can always CFI for ASEL later.

Also it's common for GA twin jobs to require 50-100 ME hours for insurance reasons...having that in your pocket out of the gate means more opportunities to get paid to build even more twin time. 200-350 hours ME is often competitive when hiring is somewhat slow, and getting that first 50-100 is hardest.

It would be 2x the cost.

I think it would make more sense to transition to ME after you are instrument rated. There is already enough to learn when you are first starting out. Why make it more complicated?

I'm doing all my Instrument time and time building in a multi. I don't think Instrument flying is that much harder in fact I think it makes me that much better of a pilot because I need to be 10 steps ahead at all times. I think each person needs to make a personal assessment and determine if the multi flying is going to be hard enough just by itself.

Its not any more difficult than learning to fly a single in my opinion. You learn what you fly. There are Eagle-drivers and P-3 pilots out there with just over 250 hoursTT. I did all of my training accept my PPL in a twin. I now have more ME time than I'll ever need to get a job at any airline down the road and great flying experience. Now I don't have to worry about finding that coveted low-time ME job (although it would be nice). I always recommend getting as much ME time during training as possible.

I'll have about 175 Multi once I'm done also Chris. But there are some who simply can't afford to do everything in a multi or those that don't grasp flying that easily so a multi is the last thing they need.

And those have arguably been through one of the best flight training programs in the world. It is amazing what they pack into those few hours.

Flying a twin is more difficult than flying a single which is usually why it comes near the end of the initial training and is so highly coveted by employers. I have no doubt that a person could train in a twin from day one and be successful. I also feel that if that were the regular track that we would see an even higher dropout and failure rate. If you can do it - both in ability and financially - then you have overcome what seems to be one of the largest hurdles in the initial time building phase to get you on your way to a career in aviation.

USMCFLYR

That of course begs the IFR rating question, would it be better to shell out the $140 an hour for the G-1000 Cessna 172, or the $85 on the 1976 M model complete with the ADF, to get glass upfront to ease the transition to a flying career.

I'm biased as I got the IFR in a beat up N model 172 (that caught fire a few years later and was a total insurance loss...). My first glass was at a regional. I'm just trying to give some credible guidance to a career changer. Well aside from, "have you considered law school?":rolleyes:

You don't need to pay for hundreds of hours of ME time, do it after the IR, but I would get 100 ME if you're going to even bother.