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CFI Program at Aerosim?

Old 06-19-2013, 11:49 PM
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Has anyone attended the CFI program at Aerosim in Sanford, FL?

It looks like their CFI-A is Part 141 while the CFI-I is Part 61. Just the initial CFI goes for about $11,000 which seems a bit steep.

I contacted them and they told me it was a 10 week full time program just for the Initial.

They apparently do 1 hour preps and 1 hour debriefs following each flight (which they of course charge you for) but I'm mostly interested in finding out how the ground portion is like and if it's worth giving these guys my money. I've heard they are good and very respected in the industry which could always help a bit on the resume.

It's also a place I'd like to get a job at afterwards in order to build my 1500 hours for the ATP reqs.

Any comments from previous grads, or people currently attending would be greatly appreciated!
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Old 06-20-2013, 11:03 AM
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That sounds really steep for the CFI, although not out of line for a structured part 141 program. In speaking with some instructors last year, Aerosim was hurting for instructors, so spending all that $$$ on a course just to get pref hiring status might not be necessary.

My personal recommendation would be to call your local FSDO and ask about the local instructors that do a good job preparing initial CFI applicants and then do some research on those individuals. I did my CFI part 61 with a well-regarded instructor and did very well on the practical while spending a fraction of the money I would have spent at a 141 school. I think I did it in about 8 weeks on my own.

Another thought would be going through with another candidate so you can split brief/debrief time and cost. This also gives you another person to teach to and study with without paying a lot of $$$ for an instructor's time.

Also, if you are currently flying recreationally, consider spending some time in the right seat beofre beginning your CFI training.

From my own experience, the CFI/CFI-I provide the best opportunity to save big money if you spend a lot of time preparing on your own.
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Old 06-20-2013, 04:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Da40Pilot View Post
Has anyone attended the CFI program at Aerosim in Sanford, FL?

It looks like their CFI-A is Part 141 while the CFI-I is Part 61. Just the initial CFI goes for about $11,000 which seems a bit steep.

I contacted them and they told me it was a 10 week full time program just for the Initial.

They apparently do 1 hour preps and 1 hour debriefs following each flight (which they of course charge you for) but I'm mostly interested in finding out how the ground portion is like and if it's worth giving these guys my money. I've heard they are good and very respected in the industry which could always help a bit on the resume.

It's also a place I'd like to get a job at afterwards in order to build my 1500 hours for the ATP reqs.

Any comments from previous grads, or people currently attending would be greatly appreciated!
The nice thing about this program is that the checkride is in house. No back and forth with the FSDO arguing over airworthiness of an old clapped out arrow.

Anyone who has ever had to go though the FSDO can vouch for this, it can be pure hell and very political
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Old 06-20-2013, 08:50 PM
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Originally Posted by dogismycopilot View Post
That sounds really steep for the CFI, although not out of line for a structured part 141 program. In speaking with some instructors last year, Aerosim was hurting for instructors, so spending all that $$$ on a course just to get pref hiring status might not be necessary.

My personal recommendation would be to call your local FSDO and ask about the local instructors that do a good job preparing initial CFI applicants and then do some research on those individuals. I did my CFI part 61 with a well-regarded instructor and did very well on the practical while spending a fraction of the money I would have spent at a 141 school. I think I did it in about 8 weeks on my own.

Another thought would be going through with another candidate so you can split brief/debrief time and cost. This also gives you another person to teach to and study with without paying a lot of $$$ for an instructor's time.

Also, if you are currently flying recreationally, consider spending some time in the right seat beofre beginning your CFI training.

From my own experience, the CFI/CFI-I provide the best opportunity to save big money if you spend a lot of time preparing on your own.
Thanks for that info, much appreciated. Looking into American Flyers CFI Academy here in Santa Monica, CA. CFI-A and -I in 30-40 days. Heard nothing but great things about them. I agree with what you say about Aerosim (and other academies) hurting for CFI's at the moment.

Wondering if this is just a temporary supply/demand situation or if it's gonna stay like this for a while....
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Old 06-20-2013, 08:50 PM
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Originally Posted by tinman1 View Post
The nice thing about this program is that the checkride is in house. No back and forth with the FSDO arguing over airworthiness of an old clapped out arrow.

Anyone who has ever had to go though the FSDO can vouch for this, it can be pure hell and very political
I see, so you mean done with a DPE?
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Old 06-21-2013, 02:48 PM
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Originally Posted by Da40Pilot View Post
Thanks for that info, much appreciated. Looking into American Flyers CFI Academy here in Santa Monica, CA. CFI-A and -I in 30-40 days. Heard nothing but great things about them. I agree with what you say about Aerosim (and other academies) hurting for CFI's at the moment.

Wondering if this is just a temporary supply/demand situation or if it's gonna stay like this for a while....
Aerosim isn't hurting for instructors at this time. The wave comes and goes. But for now, there isn't much movement. I'd say 10-15 instructors have little to no work.
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Old 06-21-2013, 06:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Da40Pilot View Post
Has anyone attended the CFI program at Aerosim in Sanford, FL?

It looks like their CFI-A is Part 141 while the CFI-I is Part 61. Just the initial CFI goes for about $11,000 which seems a bit steep.

I contacted them and they told me it was a 10 week full time program just for the Initial.

They apparently do 1 hour preps and 1 hour debriefs following each flight (which they of course charge you for) but I'm mostly interested in finding out how the ground portion is like and if it's worth giving these guys my money. I've heard they are good and very respected in the industry which could always help a bit on the resume.

It's also a place I'd like to get a job at afterwards in order to build my 1500 hours for the ATP reqs.

Any comments from previous grads, or people currently attending would be greatly appreciated!

If you are wiling to go all the way to FL to Aerosim, then you should look at American Flyers at KPMP.

They do the CFII as initial & then add CFI A as an add on. They used to have a good training program at one point, pls double check again.

Used to cost approx $5,000 to $5,500 for both CFII & A, double check the current price.

This is something worth looking at, there are a lot of cheap housing available nearby.
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Old 06-22-2013, 08:17 AM
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Originally Posted by Da40Pilot View Post
I see, so you mean done with a DPE?
Nope. It's done in house with a company check instructor.
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Old 06-22-2013, 08:20 AM
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Originally Posted by Ash Williams View Post
Aerosim isn't hurting for instructors at this time. The wave comes and goes. But for now, there isn't much movement. I'd say 10-15 instructors have little to no work.
I'd say that's largely due to the regionals hiring only those with ATP mins. There seems to be a bottleneck of instructors who are working towards the mins or waiting out the age requirement. If the regionals were still hiring with less than 1000TT and no age restriction then that place would be emptying out.
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Old 08-14-2013, 05:17 AM
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Hello all, I am posting to this thread in order to offer my viewpoint on working at Aerosim after having recently left the company after 18 months.

I applied to Aerosim a couple months after going through ATP's "quickie" MEI/CFII/CFI program and was surprised to get a phone call within 3 days. I accepted the job not really having anything to compare to other than what I went through during my "quickie" program at ATP. Right from the start they throw you in a 2 week "standardization" class (or 'standz' as they shortened it to) where you are tested almost everyday on mostly mundane operations policies and required to pass with no less than a 90 on some tests. There are some legitimate tests regarding procedures for people who were new to flying the SR20 (at the time this was their primary trainer) but other than these I found the entire two-week process to be nothing more than a "welcome to hell, we are here to nit-pick your every last move until we fire you or make you quit" indoctrination ceremony. I needed the job badly enough like most others who managed to make it through so I stayed with the program.

The training in the SR20 was easy enough until the company put me through a stage-check oral and stage check flight followed by a "SR20 end of course check" with a "senior standardized instructor". I busted the oral because I did not subtract 1gal of fuel "for taxi/run-up" as per the AFM on my proposed XC nav evaluation and was delayed almost a week before I could re-check. Upon recheck, everything I had prepared was tossed aside and I was dressed-down for about an hour by my evaluator about how he knew more minutia about aviation than I could handle and on about how the airlines really are - and how the evaluator "got *******ed by Regional Airline X" so on and so forth. The flight evaluations were completely ridiculous in my opinion. Upon finishing one - you were put on ice again to be checked out on basically the same flight profile - only by a different type of manager who considered his/herself more important. This entire process took almost 5 weeks, and in hindsight was a completely unorganized ridiculous process organized and run by immature control freaks.

When I finally hit the flight line I had no idea how to run their bassackwards computer records system known as MISA as none of this knowledge was given any thought in my 2 week indoctrination program. The only thing that was mentioned was that "the program is a pain in the ass" or "just ask someone else for help". This MISA program will at some times take up an additional 15 minutes of your time waiting on the server to respond or the Windows ME platform to unfreeze which completely screws you if you have back-to-back events. I usually just copied the students password and completed all the MISA records at the end of the day. Also if you do ask for help form another instructor, often they wont know how to solve your problem and then your off to be curicifed by the curriculum manager (one of the MISA gods). Some new-hires were fired for not being able to grasp this antiquated system and instead of counseling by the "curriculum manager" these people were instead terminated.

Also soon after being on the flight line I realized had eyes on me constantly. I was accused of breaking their flight ops on several occasions by a large imposing fellow who identified his middle-managerial position as "Director of Flight Operations". On no occasion was he able to identify exactly what I was doing or did do, but it seemed like he was harassing/scaring the new instructors into submission should the thought ever cross our mind to do a touch and go on a runway less than 5000' (one of their seemingly ridiculous rules). On another occasion I found myself in a debate with the "manager of flight standards" over ceiling being reported in AGL or MSL (the guy was trying to convince me that a TAF/METAR/ATIS reports ceilings in MSL AND in 10' increments). These people are seemingly incompetent and from dealing with them are unable to grasp the multitude of rules they force upon the line instructors at SFB.

Oh, and about the rules ... the Aerosim Ops and Employee manual are both about 6" deep in paperwork and are designed around other peoples mistakes (or operational infractions that are actually identified). Instead of being discreet and taking incidents on a case-by-case basis, the mentality of the 6 middle-manager staff and the chief pilot is to just make a rule forbidding whatever transpired to cause the incident. The managerial structure is wrought with needless positions: 6 "group captains" who are divided into groups of 2 and managed by 3 "group leaders" who report to the "driector of flight operations" or chief pilot. In addition there is the aforementioned "director of flight standards" who has a Napoleonic type lackey at his beckoning who is directly in charge of managing 3-4 senior standardized check pilots in addition to the rest of the check department. Walking anywhere near these offices or near the check department is assumed to be a bad thing. You are a liability first and a flight instructor second in these peoples eyes. Forget going to the check department for any counseling regarding a questionable operational procedure or flight training task - they might feel the need to ground you for supplemental training instead.

There is also a "safety manager" whose sole duty is to create a statistical analysis of monthly incident/accident power-point presentation at our mothly 'mandatory' safety meeting. Here instructors get the same information about airport ops from the previous month - take a ops/regulation test (if you fail you get to visit the "safety manager" the next morning) - a visit from the SFB tower manager who *****es about all the traffic (it's class C, what do you expect?!?) - and a lousy ra-ra-ra award presentation for the biggest suck up instructor from all 3 groups and "instructor of the month" pageantry (you get a parking-spot up front if you win this prize, but don't use it if the school has sold out the building to local business execs to try to impress them and get them to invest ...). There's also pizza that's handed out at the end of this particular "safety meeting" if your're into feeling like you're back in 5th grade and the compensation for all this is minimum wage (1hr), for a meeting that always runs long (+:45min in some instances). Recently the company has started making line flight instructors attend another "group meeting" that is basically the same information dispersed in the monthly "safety meeting" with the addition of yet another safety "quiz", only if you fail this one or don't pass with an 80%-90% you can be grounded from the flight line until successful completion. This meeting is also uncompensated time - often at inopportune times depending on your schedule and days-off. IT IS MANDATORY.

OH, and days off rotate monthly and usually if you do not work a 6th day your student will get scheduled with some other instructor taking that flight time out of your logbook. There was about a 4-month period where I worked everyday and only had days off when all of my students were in stage-check evaluation. You also will not know the next days schedule until 5-6pm the night before, and usually are scheduled incorrectly which could result in a disciplinary action for not following up when you are flying with other instructors students (you think they could just schedule it correctly the first time?!? I mean that IS the schedulers job right???) Usually scheduling is pretty helpful - but there are a couple of old chain-smoking buzzards who work there and have nothing but contempt for instructors. They care more about their next smoke-break than doing their job.

I digress .... The check-department also gets a piece of your time bi-monthly by making line instructors sit through "instructor re-education" meetings. This was all created earlier in 2013 after the muckity-mucks who run the entire company discovered how poorly they negotiated their contracts with the Chinese (Aerosims main source of business - contracts negotiated on 'Milestone' payments designed for the company to be paid in three stages based on the student making to the last lesson of each stage ... no pressure to pass your student when he doesn't have it yet - nope, not at all.) These people had higher expectations of these students and instead of carefully interviewing and selecting the Chinese cadets who had the aptitude and English skill - they took each and every last applicant. This resulted in serious overflight costs cadet termination prior to the cadet even reaching stage 1 PPL as well as a deterioration of confidence in the Chinese of the Aerosim instructor cadre to train effectively. Essentially the blame was shifted to the flight instructors and we were all hit with pay cuts as well as the previously mentioned "re-training" seminars ... which are yet another complete wast of time in my opinion. All that transpires at these meetings are a bunch of p-o'd instructors complaining about how awful their student is. These meetings are also uncompensated.

In an additional attempt to control flight operation and prevent any possible overflight - the Chinese students "Line-Oriented-Flight-Training" which includes 77hrs total PIC required was recently limited to airports within 50NM of SFB only ... reason unknown as a SR20 can cover a 175NM round trip in under 2.5 and squeeze some approaches and holding in without much trouble. I was again dressed-down by the imposing "flight operations manager" about an XC flight that was planned by my student to shoot some approaches and return in 2hrs - where I was told (in front of everybody within earshot) that "that's not how to train ... I know you guys are just riding along ...". Handcuffed - you bet, completely ridiculous in my opinion.

FURTHERMORE there is a ridiculous "backseat" policy imposed on the students requiring them to observe so many hours of SR20/172/PA44 flights, ground briefings, FTD's ... and often these guys just show up and fall asleep. If your student doesn't have his "backseating" done by end-of-course, the blame might be placed on you for delay of flight training. Also, earlier in the year there was some turmoil among the line flight instructors as we were mandated to backseat up to 15+ hrs of stage-check and end-of-course oral examinations UNPAID. There were only a few instructors who had the time to complete this by the deadline and several threatening emails over suspensions and grounding were disseminated. Eventually the FL department of labor became involved and the issue suddenly vanished.

Moving on ... operating in SFB's class C environment also adds to the counter productive mantra at Aerosim. Expect to spend 30+ minutes holding short, obtaining taxi clearance ... and so on ... getting back in can also be exciting to say the least, especially when 20 other company aircraft have the same due back time as you. Your 2.0 scheduled block will ultimately result in no more than 1hr of training.

Oh, don't be late either ... the current flight supervisor as of 08/2013 is a complete sociopath who will do anything in his flight supervisory powers to ground you or make your day miserable. This person is another of what I would classify as an "airline failure" who came back to Aerosim more than likely because he couldn't handle being in a subordinate position. Expect to have your name screamed out in front of everybody (again, no discretion here) on a daily basis if you are unable to adhere to the smallest of company procedures.

When I tried to gain access to their holy fleet of PA44's and utilize my MEI priviliges I was told to expect to go through the same rigmarole I went through in Cirrus training. If they don't need MEI's they put you through the 10th degree in a simulator eval that you get a 141 "pink-slip" in if you bust where the "standards manager" changes CG on the sim mid-flight and has you perform single engine - no gyro - NDB circling approach among other things. They would rather have instructors without their MEI pay the 3-4 whatever thousand dollars or sign a contract to train them than deal with someone who already has their MEI. Instead I was asked by one of my many unter-managers that I needed to get 172 "standz'ed" which involves a 10 hour unpaid TCO and requires that you "backseat" 5 hrs of PPL Cessna 172 events (again with the "backseating"). I found this ridiculous as I got almost all of my ratings in a 172 PLUS its all unpaid!

The things that are worth it are working weekends and nights when all the middle-managers are gone. During these times the place is super-chill (compared to before 17:00 M-F) and most of the guys are really easy to get along with. I currently work at another flight school with primarily Chinese cadets that has refreshed my enthusiasm for flying.

When I left Aerosim I wanted to tear up my certificate and never fly again. Thankfully I'm at a place where the management wants you to work - feel comfortable - and be effective. My pay is commensurate and I can access my schedule and block time out from home or on my iPhone - WOW! I have no regrets about leaving Aerosim as they made the last year of my life pretty miserable and I will be very surprised if the company manages to stay solvent in the coming fiscal 1-2 fiscal years. I realize I am ranting and possibly a little unnerved at my experice at Sanford but BUYER BE WARNED - there are other options out there and I understand the grass isn't always 'greener' so-to-speak, but Aerosim has got to be one of the worst environments for new instructors out there.

PM me for anymore details, I am happy to oblige. KS
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