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Is ATP Flight School worth the investment?

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Is ATP Flight School worth the investment?

Old 07-31-2016, 09:39 AM
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This post is probably too late to save you from spending more than you should on flight training. If you don't mind going part 61, you can get your private for around $5-6k in 45-55 hours. Check out 82J Ferguson aviation academy in Pensacola, Fl. Ferguson Airport | your western gate to the sunshine state. I spent about $36,000 over the course of three years to obtain a commercial rating with 250 hours. The most challenging part was building time after private rating. I highly recommend getting on board with a local flying club and splitting costs with other pilots to keep your expenses at the range I was able to. Let me know if I can help in any way. 8 years experience over 2200 hours TT.
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Old 08-01-2016, 05:04 AM
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Originally Posted by SkychaserJeff View Post
This post is probably too late to save you from spending more than you should on flight training. If you don't mind going part 61, you can get your private for around $5-6k in 45-55 hours. Check out 82J Ferguson aviation academy in Pensacola, Fl. Ferguson Airport | your western gate to the sunshine state. I spent about $36,000 over the course of three years to obtain a commercial rating with 250 hours. The most challenging part was building time after private rating. I highly recommend getting on board with a local flying club and splitting costs with other pilots to keep your expenses at the range I was able to. Let me know if I can help in any way. 8 years experience over 2200 hours TT.
This is exactly what I am doing right now in Michigan to get my Private-Commercial. I am about 1600$ for 13 hours plane with instructor. Maybe 1700. Either way I am flying 2 times a week on average.

I looked into other ways, didn't fit the budget.
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Old 08-18-2016, 09:33 AM
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Originally Posted by LTdan View Post
I would highly recommend NOT going to ATP. If you do go, you'll be trained by a 90 day zero to hero instructor, who was taught by another 90 day instructor. I was not a student there thankfully but in my experience with ATP, the experience and knowledge of the instructors is weak. They train for checkrides so don't expect any above and beyond knowledge. Also, they are not customer oriented. ATP cares about your money and that's it. They do not care about your training experience.

The airline partnerships are pointless, every regional in the country is clamoring for pilots. Any pilot with the hours and the certs can get a job. No one will be impressed because you have ATP on your resume. Just the opposite is more likely.

For retired military, look for a 141 school where you can use your benefits to pay for your training.
I flew with ATP, and I agree with what you have said. You will fly nice airplanes (most are all glass cockpits with dual G430's, G500's/G1000's, TIS, RAIM, WAAS, and nice leather interiors) and you will enjoy the flying part; most of the time. The part about baby instructor instructing baby students is right on. My little sister went to ATP too. I don't want to throw names out there, but if anyone wants to know more details send me a PM. The CFI's for the most part DONT CARE ABOUT YOU, just your hours. They will tell you to your face, "YOU'RE JUST HOURS TO ME!" Naturally, but I mean the customer pays a lot for the course and the least you can do is actually care about their success Now, there are some really great CFI's at ATP, and usually those are the ones who are ending their time at ATP as a CFI.

I have seen some really low things take place at ATP, and I have friends who were done the same way. Cant say every location or CFI is the same way, but what I can tell you is that they are money oriented. They will be your buddy until your last payment (4 or 5 payments of like $12,500 or $15,000 or something like that) is made, and then you better walk the straight and narrow like your life depends upon it. They will look at everything to try and kick you out to make room for the next contestant.

Overall it was fun, I enjoyed a good bit of it, but it's hard when you get re assigned CFI's frequently and they all teach differently (even though they went to "stands" or AKA standardization school) and so you deal with little things like that.

I enjoyed ATP aside from the BS that comes with the CFI's who think they know it all as they now have a CFI and you don't. Don't trust anyone up there, as they will backstab you in a heartbeat if it will help them. When they say jump, you better jump. When they say do something, you better do it. They will charge you a late a fee or this fee and that fee as the CFI's get money out of it.

I really mean I liked ATP, I was proud to be with ATP....right up to the point where they backstabbed a few of my friends as well as my sibling and I. They don't mess around, and they bark out orders and expect it to be done. You have online videos and quizzes to do, you have to memorize their training supplements to a T, and you have to complete the sims. LIKE COLLEGE, YOU DONT NEED TO PAY MONEY TO PARTY. YOU WANT TO PARTY, DO SO WITHOUT TAKING ON A HUGE FINICAL OBLIGATION. With that said, have fun, and good luck!

One of the CFI's I had got hired at Envoy with 300 hours TT, which is way ahead of when most CFI's at ATP go in for an interview of around 500 hours TT. I am not sure if it was because he was an ATP CFI or not, but take it for what it is. Other CFI's I had would get calls from all types of regionals wanting them to interview. So you do get called, which is cool. Anyways, I will share more specific incidences if anyone wants to know more, just PM me.


Hope this helps.
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Old 08-18-2016, 11:51 AM
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Originally Posted by bedrock View Post
Get a PPL first, so you can judge your aptitude and desire to fly, before you plunk down serious change at ATP's. The biggest problem with ATP is in a fast paced program, you don't have time to internalize what you learned. How fast you internalize is the question. ATP dispatchers will treat you like dirt and customer service is bad. They have an attitude that you are the pilot, we are the company, so we tell you what to do---not you are the customer, how can we please you.

I only did their CAPT program in 2003 (35 hrs multi-IFR) after I was out of aviation for a while and applying for a job which required multi-engine currency and good IFR skills. I flew ATP's planes over half the country in mostly IFR. Dispatch had me running around last minute scrambling for enroute charts and approach plates as they kept changing my route, so i was delayed hrs trying to find an FBO on field that sold charts and which was open on Sunday evening. Keep in mind, this airport was big and I had no car, so it was miles of running on foot. Then they yelled at me on the phone, when I as late. They had good, well maintained planes and the other ATP student was a good pilot. But this was after I had 1200 hrs of experience. If you put the work into it, that means study, study, study AND you can keep up with the pace, I think it can work well. You get gobs of multi-time in a real world environment, flying their planes hundreds of miles in all weathers (not icing). No other school I know of gives you the opportunity to get that experience and confidence. Get the PPL elsewhere first, though.
I agree, I had my PPL before I went to ATP. That also lets you judge the quality of flight instruction a you have something to base things on. Their crew cross country phase is awesome! But I agree, flight ops is a DA operation. The fast track program has your time at ATP all planned out. IF you get behind, and you will; each day puts you closer to the chopping block that you get behind. That's regardless of the cause for the delay. For example, CCC at ATP should have you flying multiple airplanes around the US and each leg you should be changing flight crews. It is set up to work like an airline environment would work.

My CCC went like this:

I was assigned a crew partner I knew from my school, which was cool, but the base we were assigned to depart from was not our base and was an hour-hour and half drive one way in good traffic. Flight ops wants you to check in at 6am and be ready to go. Well it was windy and the minimums are like 20 knots on the winds, if ATIS reports 21 then you can't go. They will hold you until it hits 20. That meant that for 3 days we sat at an airport 1-1.5 hours away from where we were based at to only have to drive home 1-1.5 hours to turn around and get up early again to repeat the BS. Finally the weather was good, and we get on our way. Well, I never changed partners but we did change airplanes. So what that entailed was getting stuck with someone for about 2-3 weeks that on day one was "tolerable" but I was looking to get away from him. He thought he was better than everyone and especially me. This guy would file below the MEA, listen to a WX briefer but not LISTEN to what it said, he would not follow ATP CCC SOPs, he was lazy, careless, and wouldn't listen to me. When he was getting slow, I would call out, "airspeed!" and as the stall horn went off as we approached the IAF; he did nothing. The stall horn is an action horn! When it came to making radio calls, he sucked yet he was a former ATC. He just sucked the more I flew with him. There was an active rocket/missile launch going on in a MOA and the DA that he is filed for an altitude that would have sent us through the hot zone. I told him to change that once I saw it, and he blew it off. We get there and ARTCC informed us to climb. He didn't want to climb. He was afraid to climb. He liked 5,000 and below. Partially had to fight guy to climb above it. Anytime we landed, we were to complete an instrument approach. He would do the visual, and log it as an instrument approach, that was until I put my foot down after a few times of noticing that. Coming out of Houston going back to the Dallas area I filed for 10,000 feet. I had never flown to 10,000, but had been to 9,000. He was certain the airplane would fall out of the sky, and I knew that was silly. Once I proved to him that 10,000 feet was not much different than 9,000, he kind of relaxed. Then we went to one airport, it was to be our last flight together essentially. It was his leg out and mine coming home. The weather had been IFR with weeks of hard rain. It did not look good for us going and coming home. Despite telling flight ops that, we departed. We were flying to Louisiana and had filed for like 7,000 feet. We were up just after 7 am and had leveled off at 7,000 about 10 minutes into the flight, when my crew partner looked at me and asked me to request 11,000 feet. I thought I was hearing things, but he was serious. We got 11,000 and 5 minutes later were level at 11,000 feet. Well we land and he did a balked landing and it was rough. Weather was not in favor of a flight westbound anytime soon with fast storms approaching and so I was the PIC now as it was MY leg. I was the shot caller. I said we were staying, but nope my DA crew partner decided call flight ops and tell them that we were ready to go. Like I knew it, we weren't going to Dallas due to weather, so I suggested flying to Houston to dump their airplane and airline us to Dallas. That was too hard, and they were CERTAIN that the weather was going to be perfectly VFR despite what the forecasts were depicting. That's pretty stupid if you ask me. We get notified that we were flying to a small town in East Texas, which sounds like no problem considering I live in East Texas, however I knew all about that airport and knew what was forecasted. That was not the place to be considering what the weather was going to do; ground us. I told flight ops and my CP but listening to me was too hard. We get there, its pilot controlled, and busy as storms were coming and people were getting in before they couldn't. He made 2 radio calls (his job is the radio/navigation, gear snatcher,etc) the entire time once we changed other CTAF from Houston Approach. Two. It was hazy, sunset, and of course MVFR. My CP is a city guy, and never really spent much time out in a small town environment or airport, and trying to explain to him he needed to be more aggressive on position reports when trying to fly the approach was not team work. It ****ed me off that he cared so little considering the factors involved. Well we land, and flight ops thinks that small-town USA is like NYC, DFW, ATL, LAX,etc. I told them there was going to be NOTHING but they just knew it all, and I was once again ****ed off. No rentals, no taxi services, nothing. Airport was outside of town and required borrowing an airport work truck. Hotel was actually nice, which made the next 5 days better, but still sucked. Every morning per flight ops, we would be up at 6 am talking to them and despite telling them it was LIFR/IFR and we weren't getting out of there that day; they made us check out and sit at the airport. We repeated this for 4 days and had to check back into another room. YAY ME! This airport has a really small waiting area and sitting there for 5 days sucked. Turns out on the 5th day flight ops called to say the weather was bad and we were getting a rental to drive back to Dallas. REALLY!? It took them FIVE days to agree with me!? So point is that ATP flight ops is just as clueless as a brand new CFI. I might be a student pilot to them, but I am pilot and I am a human. Just because flight ops thinks they know more than I do, does not mean they can be stupid or rude.

Anyways that is a short version of what to expect from flight ops.
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Old 09-01-2023, 11:11 AM
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Default APT or Other Aviation

I am interested on APT but seeing mixed reviews. To fly a Boeing or Airbus is APT the best option or is there another school you can reccommend? How is Aviation Academy?
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Old 09-01-2023, 01:15 PM
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Originally Posted by JessNYC View Post
I am interested on APT but seeing mixed reviews. To fly a Boeing or Airbus is APT the best option or is there another school you can reccommend? How is Aviation Academy?
i went to ATP in 2004 and used to be one of their biggest fans. Their pricing has gotten out of control though. Unless you just happen to have the cash there’s no way i would recommend anyone finance that amount anymore. I don’t care how much you’re gonna make first year at a regional, it’s just nuts. Find a good fbo that has proven results. If you dedicate yourself to it you can get all the same ratings in the same amount of time for prob half the cost.
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Old 09-01-2023, 10:05 PM
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Originally Posted by Brandons72vette View Post
My CCC went like this...:
Sadly, the concept of paragraphs wasn't invented until 2017.
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Old 09-02-2023, 04:19 AM
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Originally Posted by JohnBurke View Post
Sadly, the concept of paragraphs wasn't invented until 2017.
I have friends to whom I periodically ship a box full of paragraphs. Unfortunately, they sit on the shelf, unopened
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Old 09-02-2023, 01:27 PM
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I've been trying to get a hold of them to see about ATP-CTP course availability with no luck. I've called their landlines, left voicemails, and messaged via their site. No response. Are they just insanely busy and booked out?
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Old 09-02-2023, 02:50 PM
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Originally Posted by JessNYC View Post
I am interested on APT but seeing mixed reviews. To fly a Boeing or Airbus is APT the best option or is there another school you can reccommend? How is Aviation Academy?
Since this guy/gal wanted to revive this thing... It doesn't matter where you go to complete your flight training to be able to "fly a Boeing or airbus" someday. ATP flight school works if you can commit fulltime, are self-motivated, do not need someone to be holding your hand the entire way, AND you need to find a way to finance the cost. However, they are extremely expensive for a Commercial Pilot Certificate that is equal to all others obtained in the U.S. If you have the means to pay for training out of your own pocket or other options for funding, avoid ATP.
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