Transpac or other flight schools?
 

I'm a CFI and soon to be CFII looking to move schools. I'm looking to average 100 hours or more a month and have been looking at CAE, Transpac and some other flight schools that can get me that. Was wondering if anyone had recommendations for any flight schools that could fit my needs of getting hours fast. I don't care about location, pay, and QOL can be crap i'm used to it. I've heard transpac has changed a lot but wanted to hear outside opinions/experiences.

I interviewed with them two years ago but I decided not to take the job.

Yes, you will get a lot of hours. Be warned that the Phoenix area is HOT in the summer. But when you give IFR training it will be done at night so the heat won't be a problem.

Here is another thread on them.

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/f...n-academy.html

One post in that thread really jumps out at me:
05-30-2017
"Once upon a time transpac was the place to be. I have heard the new owners/management is absolutely terrible."

your mileage will vary but I had a really good time at Transpac! (now aeroguard) I got a lot of hour and was able to move on to a regional after a year (ATP unrestricted). As long as you don't have your MEI you will be fine lol.

Why is it beneficial to not have an MEI?

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Transpac is now called Aeroguard

http://www.flyaeroguard.com/

Why did they change their name?

With an MEI, at least at Aeroguard, you will spend a lot of time in the sim and you get less flight time than you would with a CFII. They pretty much change their name for reputation/rebranding, they change it every dozen years or so, they used to be Pan Am flight academy, then Transpac, now Aeroguard.

They must have a pretty bad reputation.

The students crash quite a bit unfortunately.

Yikes! Are the students being rushed through the curriculum, causing them to be crash-prone? Is it a communication issue? (I know the students are Chinese and may not speak English well enough.) Is there too much of a culture-clash?

I worked there up till recently and honestly it isn't as bad as people say, yes they have the accidents that have happened could have all been prevented by the instructor, it almost always involved the instructor not taking controls at the appropriate time.

I'm going to agree that your response is partially true, but there are so many other accidents where other reasons are to blame as well. Inadequate training prior to solo sign offs, loss of SA, poor maintenance/bad luck, high density airspace without ATC separation, etc.

The January 2010 crash was a student on a solo flight who fatally stall/spun into a field. If I remember correctly he was getting forced lower from clouds and got overwhelmed while trying to return to KDVT.

Feb. 2011 crash killed three, two students and an instructor who I knew. CFIT at night into terrain North of Phoenix during an IFR training mission.

May 2013 midair crash which killed 4. The airspace is so crowded in the training areas it's unreal. I remember one FAA Examiner from the local FISDO who refuses to perform checkouts in any of the training areas.

The 17 some odd other accidents involving both maintenance and pilot error are easily found on Google. Not just a bent wingtip or bent prop, but lots of entire hull losses.

At least all the accidents that happened when I was there recently were due to the what I mentioned. I did feel a lot safer about the midairs, the school purchased a bunch of Stratus's and foreflight for everyone, so every flight and traffic on their iPad, Luke SATR makes a huge difference. At the end of the day, yes training foreign students in the busy Phoenix airspace is without a doubt more risky than most other instructing jobs, but thats just the nature of the job.

The school has gotten better about rushing students through solo due to those crashes, management came out and said if you don't feel comfortable don't sign them off period. However on the flip side they do push the students into the solo stage. Once again, it comes down to the instructor, one of my coworkers had a student who has pretty bad and they instructor refused to sign him off, management trusted him, put the student through a flight review, the student didn't meet standards and was sent home. From my time there, the instructors who got into problems were the ones who put logging flight time ahead of teaching their students properly.

Yea I don’t think anyone should avoid the school solely on the reason that there have been a lot of accidents. Just come in eyes wide open, do your due diligence and maintain your standards.

The company has a bottom line to maintain, and you have a clean record to protect while teaching high risk students. The rebranding is obviously a PR move and while the company would never admit to pushing students through, they exist to maintain a profit.

GL

"High risk students" is the key phrase here.

Transpac/panam/aerogard (et al) has long been a foreign-pilot student-mill. Three students and one instructor in the airplane, just land to swap students. Instructors have record numbers of student-failures for practical tests; it's common for students to have multiple failures on each of their certificates or ratings. Deer Valley is the busiest general aviation field in the country. A lot of student operations out of there, very little intelligible English on the radio or the general area.

When a school only allows four of their aircraft to be used for solo flights, and most "solo" flights are done with the instructor on board ("supervised solo"), it doesn't speak particularly well to the confidence of the school.

I hadn’t heard of supervised solos...wow. It sounds like preventing more hull losses, and possibly making sure they actually do what they are meant to. I remember that students on solos would go fly circles over wickenburg on their “long XC”, and another instance of them running the tach out on the ground.

It's also about pushing students through who have no business being in the air and aren't competent to solo an aircraft. There are major ethical implications involved with sending students to a practical test who aren't competent, and who will fail over and over again.

That some are willing to be a part of that just to jack their logbook hours up enough to move on isn't something one should be proud of.

In my time instructing there, supervised solos wasn't a thing. However the school did put a tremendous amount of effort into the solos, they had tons of rules and guidelines, the biggest issue was the students were on a timeline, they had to solo within a certain timeframe and both the students and the instructors knew this. I thought that was the biggest danger, forcing every student to solo in a certain timeframe, because as mentioned by JohnBurke, a handful of these students were not solo ready. How more crashes don't occur is an absolute, hands down wonder.

After flying out of a field where these yahoos show up regularly, I can only say a lot of these guys should never be flying in the US airspace.
I had 2 or 3 near close calls because of complete BS traffic calls they made just because they repeat them from memory, not because they actually understand what they are saying.

Like, "midfield right downwind", when they are actually upwind.
I hope these schools will be sued out of existence. They push through students who aren't even close on the "english proficient" requirement, and their DPE buddies accept it.

What they SHOULD do, is that the US embassies in China should conduct the visa interviews in English, not Mandarin/Cantonese as they do now. That would weed out the worst candidates. Read the interview of that cowboy deportation case. The guy was here to get his ATP, and his English was at "Policeman is best american" level.

People have died, and will keep on dying, because of them. Disgusting.

I totally agree with some of that, sadly a lot of it is the instructors not correcting them on bad calls like that. 99% of instructors at large foreign student flight schools are young guys looking to get to the regionals ASAP, fastest way is through those schools, so their hearts and minds are really not committed to producing good, competent students. And every single student is business for the school, so while they may be incompetent and not able to fly, getting them through their stage checks means pay check for the school, its a backward system.

Isn't there an English test with different levels, level 1, level 2, etc.?

Is the FAA just turning a blind eye towards all of this? The people who should be jumping all over this is the FAA.

FAA English proficient is simply ICAO Level 4.
And yes, they should.

Are such English tests being administered to the student pilots? By whom?

By the DPE.

Also by the instructor for the student pilot certificate:
https://www.faa.gov/pilots/become/student_cert/

The english proficient issue was recently brought up by the FSDO, even going as far as saying they would 709 students who came to their attention for english issues, now whether or not they will actually enforce this is a good question. I think a lot of problems would be solved if the students did have better english skills before starting their training.

If the CFI is the one giving the English test, that is a huge bias, and a recipe for disaster. And I am curious how a foreign student pilot "comes to their attention".

Towers report students/pilots who are unable to communicate effectively to the FAA.

I work at Westwind and have several good friends from college that work across the parking lot at AeroGuard. I moved to Phoenix a year ago to finish CFI and work at transpac, but ultimately came to Westwind instead. Feel free to message me if you have questions about th schedules, quality of life, pay, interviews, or pretty much anything about both schools here at deer valley.

brocklee9000,

How many hours do you guys/gals average up at Westwind? Finishing up my MEI on Wednesday and trying to figure out the best place in the valley to instruct.

Thx.

I've only had instrument students since I started working here. I'm averaging 50 flight hours a month. A guy who started with me is doing 60-80 a month with PPL students (the solo stage always makes your hours dip for a bit). I think PPL is where the hours are greatest at westwind. Aeroguard will get you more flight hours with IR students, but you won't start off with IR. My friend over there with PPL students is also getting 50 a month, and my friend who is a program manager and check airman is getting fewer than that. The IR instructors get 80-100 per month. However, the pay is significantly better here. I'm billing 120-150 hours per month at $30/hr as a CFII. I take home in one paycheck what my friend across the street takes home in a month.

Honestly, I'd say work wherever is closest to you. If you're up here on the north side, apply to westwind and aeroguard. If you're on the east side, apply to CAE, UND, etc. Aeroguard also has a location in Chandler. I'm assuming you have other CFI certificates right, since no one is going to hire with MEI only. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Aeroguard offers insurance benefits, westwind doesn't. Some schools are salaried and set your schedule, others are hourly and let you have free reign over your schedule. At the end of the day, they're part 141 programs and are predominately foreigners, flying in the heat and sharing really busy airspace.

My school has people commuting from opposite sides of the valley, like as far away as Tempe or Gilbert and Chandler, and I honestly can't fathom why. Just as I wouldn't advise commuting or moving for a regional, I wouldn't do the same for a CFI job. The time and fuel costs will really add up over time. Of course, that's assuming you're already here in Phoenix. If you're out of state, obviously disregard that part and just apply to every school. ATP/ASU and UND are at KIWA. CAE is at KFFZ. Aeroguard is at KDVT and KCHD. Westwind is at KDVT. Lufthansa is down at KGYR, they have a nice setup (but require much higher mins). American Flyers is at KSDL, and ATP has a small branch there too. And then pretty much every airport around the valley also has part 61 operations. There is a ton of flying to be had no matter where you go. What it came down to it for me was: location (I live very close to KDVT), the pay (I'm making a lot more than the other offers I got), and how you feel like you'll fit in with the company.
Good luck

What about L3 out of Florida? heard they're a good flight school that run a good operation and give their CFI's plenty of hours. I'm moving in August and can't decide between Aeroguard (Transpac) or L3 Airline Academy.

Have you considered US Aviation in Texas?

I haven't heard of them. Just looked them up and seem like another good option.

Where do you live? It seems more and more big 141 programs are being inundated with a lot of students, mostly foreign but also domestic. In Florida you’ve got several such as L3 and Flight Safety. In fact one of my students started at flight safety before he came out here. There’s falcon in Georgia. Texas has several as well; USAA is probably the biggest, there are also three or four down in the San Antonio area such as VT-AAA and some others whose name I can’t remember. Phoenix has all the big ones, some of which I detailed in an earlier comment. California has schools like Sierra and IASCO. And then there’s Hillsboro up in Oregon (and a Las Vegas campus they’re trying to get going). Anyway, I ask where you live because with the influx of foreign training in the US, there are a ton of schools with a ton of students. Some even have benefits and upgrades to turbine training or in the case of flight safety there’s a track to FSI if you wanted to work on that side of the industry. I have heard for years “don’t move/commute for a regional if you don’t have to,” and honestly I think the same can be said for CFI. Really the big advantage we have here in Arizona is the sheer amount of fair weather flying days (this week and maybe the next week or two are about as bad as it will get, with each afternoon predictably having thunderstorms). So unless you’re dead-set on a total change of scenery or your have some friends already instructing at a particular school, I wouldn’t necessarily pack up and relocate. And there’s something to be said about instructing where you learned, depending on the pay and hours of course.

I live in the Salt Lake area of Utah. Theres not too many great schools out here as well as the tough weather coupled with dangerous terrain. In the Winter its low level inversions with temperatures on the ground reaching single digits. Summer and Spring you can fly till 5 PM then you have to shut down flight ops due to the immense amount of Thunderstorms coming in. Utah is just a tough spot to instruct, but a beautiful and awe inspiring place to learn. I'm from Oregon and fairly familiar with Hillsboro I just can't afford to live in that part due to it being expensive as all hell. Arizona and Florida seem to have a massive influx of students and great flying weather. The problems I've heard with Transpac/Aeroguard is management, language and learning barriers, and crappy equipment. I haven't heard much about L3 but I've talked to management and they seem much more helpful then Aeroguard. I'm still looking into the Texas flight schools.

I went to UVU so I'm quite familiar. I don't miss the winters at all. And I seriously considered Hillsboro a few times (even had a job offer and almost moved there), so I know what you mean about cost of living. I don't know if Prineville or Redmond are any cheaper than the Portland area. So I guess at this point, just apply to them all. Hillsboro offered me a job and offered CFII if I committed to 600 hours of dual given. Falcon, I think, will cover all three CFIs but I can only assume it's got a hefty commitment that I wouldn't want to be bound by. American Flyers wanted a 12 month commitment in exchange for CFII, so I declined that. Once you have CFII, they will all want you. A lot will even offer things like relocation or perhaps some housing allowance or dorm-style housing. Wherever you go, pay attention to the fine print. For example, if I went to Aeroguard and took the bonus, CFII upgrade, and relocation, I'd have to work for at least 12 months or pay back prorated portion of those incentives. Which is fine, that's a pretty standard arrangement anywhere in aviation.

I had an instructor that worked at Aeroguard and he was saying it went completely downhill after the management and chief pilot overhaul. I guess the big draw is the hours I could get per month once I got my CFII. If I went to Florida I would have no idea how the weather and months work in terms of flying I just know its a good place to instruct. I'm still trying to get a grasp on people who've gone through Aerosim/L3 and how they liked it. ATP I've heard is another option in both the Florida and Arizona areas. Things I'm looking for is modern equipment and 100+ hours per month. Other then that I could care less about pay and all.

At AeroGuard you can get great hours...but only in IR. PPL is getting about 50/month (not counting while your students are in solos). Seminoles fly a lot but the hours aren’t high for instructors, I hear. You will fly PA28 archers with a Garmin 430, some have HSI and some have regular VOR gauges. They have a small fleet of G1000 planes but that’s knot in the Pathway side. You have to be CFI/II/MEI for that at a minimum. I’m not saying that as a slight against AG, by the way. I just wasn’t sure what you meant by “modern.” They give you a ForeFlight pro subscription and dispatch a Stratus with each flight, so that is a pretty decent supplement to the 430 gps. AeroGuard has always had that “man it used to be great but now it’s awful” thing going on. Nothing has changed really, just the name. And the fact that Skywest owns half of it. One big incentive there, is if you want to go to Skywest, you get a $17,500 bonus after going to Skywest.

A few of my fellow CFIs went through ATP or at least ASU who outsources training to atp. They have nicer newer Skyhawks and all G1000, and I think UND is too. CAE has a mix of Piper and Diamond with G1000. Here at westwind, all IR is done in G1000. Aside from a few old N/P models for time building, I don’t think our oldest plane is more than 15 years or so, and some are only a few years old. And just for what it’s worth, I never would recommend ATP. We have four or five guys who finished at ATP and came here as soon as they had CFI, because they didn’t want to stay there. General consensus is that pay and conditions aren’t great. Also atp will send you wherever they have a need. I have no idea which locations are getting new instructors but it’s not Going to be Arizona.

Just to add to this mostly accurate post, flying at aeroguard does vary from month to month depending on variables such as monsoon season as well as what phase you will be training in. Ir training nets the most hours, cpl varies since there’s some x-country but a lot of sims sessions.

Also SkyWest does not own half or any portion of the school. How ever those g1000 archers you mentioned are owned by SkyWest leasing inc and leased back to AeroGuard for the Pathway program they got going on.

For real. This week, I’ve been lucky to get one flight a day because of these storms. I mean you expect them to show up every afternoon with the gusts, but you see the taf every morning and the discussion and they don’t mention thunderstorms and you get a little hopeful...