There are several issues that professional pilots have with the concept of "buying a job":

1) Skill level. There are a LOT of valuable lessons to be learned in general aviation between 250 and 1000 hours. You cannot learn nearly as much in the the right seat of an airliner because 121 ops are conducted in a relatively sterile environment. You have radar coverage, TCAS, and class B to protect you from bug-smashers, system redundancy turns most equipment failures into a simple paperwork drill, and most weather is reduced to five switches: three anti-ice switches and the radar power and tilt switches. Insurance companies historically have required 1000 hours for commercial pilots. They base their requirements on real-world data accumulated over the years. They are about as unbiased as you can get...they WANT to take your money.

2) Those folks who have worked their way up have a much better appreciation for the rigors and challenges of our profession...we KNOW what we are worth. Low-time pilots get sucked into this attitude that they are lucky to have a job at all...they all figure out the reality in a few years, but by then it's too late. Many young people still have this perception that any amount of dues paying is worth it to get to that major job in the long run...may have been true when you could make $10M over your career at one of the big six, but those days are LONG gone.

3) Everyone but the military guys paid for the training needed for their FAA certificates. This is normal for licensed professionals in almost any field. However, pilots should NOT have to pay for airline or aircraft-specific training PERIOD. People who do are undercutting the rest of us. The companies would like us to pay $12-15,000 every time we upgrade to new equipment, and $2000 every six months when we do our PC's...not a place we want to go. I am not a a fan of SWAs type rating policy either.


If you have little or no 121 experience, I absolutely guarantee you that a few years down the road your opinion will be very similar to my own. If you take a $18/hour airline job, go in with the attitude that you are going to fix the payscale or WALK OUT at the next contract. BTW $18/hour on an airline payscale translates to about $6/hour for actual work time. You don't get paid unless the airplane is actually moving.

 

They make people pay to upgrade??? Thats gay!! And as far a type ratings go, are you refering to places where you buy time in say a 737 but you're actually flying freight for that company. I've heard that airlines won't even look at that sort of flying. Ive also heard that they don't care what type ratings you have. I always wondered why for the CAPT program you got DC-10 sim time(it was somthing big like a DC 10). What is someone with 300tt going to do with that?

But you're saying that pilots actually buy ratings for aircraft? THATS RETARDED! How does that even seem like a good idea. Its not the fact that fligh schools teach you how to fly, its that pretty boys with tons of cash have a 747 type rating at age 24. Now I know why you guys are ****ed. Everything is becoming clear

What would you recommend to someone like myself who goes to MPD, and want to instruct, but has listened to his elders and has decided that he should definitly do other flying so that they have "oh ****" experience. By the way, I dont think we get a type rating in the CRJ so dont kill me.

I know a guy who does the Air National Gaurd as a crew chief on KC 135. He doesnt get to fly yet and Im not sure what his job really entails, but is that "valuable" in terms of flying experience? It sounds like fun to me. He essentially gets to take a vacation every couple of weeks to Hawaii or Germany(he came back from Germany with enough beer to fill a swimming pool). If thats serving your country sign me up.

WOW this website edits the naught words! What will they think of next.

 

SWA airlines is known to only interview pilots who have obtained a 737 type. Maybe they got one before being furloughed by UA, but most have to buy it before thye can get an interview.

Generally a type rating is of little use unless the company specifically asks that you have one. Any typre rating would at least prove that you can be trained.

If you're already at MAPD, go ahead and finish and get your job. Then get a CFI and do a little of that on the side to improve your resume.

Any kind of military background is a plus when you apply to a major because it shows that you can function as a team player in a dynamic environment, but only an actual pilot job will count towards your minimum flight requirements (backseater, navigator will not count). If you can get a pilot slot in the ANG, drop everything and DO IT.

 

Actually, the CAPT program gets you the DC-9 type rating. Sounds cool, but the simulator is actually a MD90-EFD (enhanced flight deck, fancy way of saying glass panels). What does that translate to? You could work for the Saudis since they're the only folks (to my knowledge) that flies that particular plane; provided that you somehow get more hours to meet THEIR MINIMUMS which CAPT won't give you. But at 225TT plus X number of hours of what they call Pilot Monitoring time (watch someone else fly/sim) plus all the ground classes, the DC-9 basically says one thing to the airlines: you're trainable. That's it. No regional I know flies a DC-9. So essentially, you won't be using that DC-9 type rating. Looks cool on your certificate and you can brag about it to those flying buddies that don't have it, but besides a 30 second pow-wow at the bar over a pint of Guiness, that's about all it's worth.

The flip side is, people have gotten hired out of CAPT with less than 200TT with Pinnacle and ASA...if you can bank roll the expenses. Plenty of other people have done it at FBOs and going the CFI route without the DC-9 type rating. It takes a little longer, but at the end, if you got a brain, you're no less of a pilot than what CAPT cranks out. And you got more real world flying experience! My CFI for PVT outside of CAPT was a stellar example. He didn't go to any pilot factories and was so incredibly knowledgeable and a sharp stick with real world flying experience to boot. I was hesitant about the 225 hours of real flying you walk out of CAPT with from the beginning. I just figured they (CAPT + Embry-Riddle name) knew what they were doing. How wrong I was.

 

They knew EXACTLY what they were doing...they got your money, right?

 

Apparently so! But then again, they are out of business once the last class graduates.

 

I'd be curious as to why they shut down...were they losing money, or were they afraid they were going to damage their reputation?

 

I think it's more of a financial problem than a reputation problem. The program was designed to have 6 cadets per class per month. This was a problem from the start although they did fill a couple classes with 6. There were classes of 2 and 4 in the early months of 2004. I was told that the price would go up from $65,500 to $80,000 if I didn't sign up for the June 2004 class. So naturally I did. But then they allowed classes to sign up until November at the $65,500 level, which really peeved me off since I could have been making and saving more money before I jumped into the program.

People started to bail on the program here and there. Three people in my original class bailed. One after PVT, one shortly into INST, and one after INST. I believe almost an entire class of November bailed (3 out of 4). They then decided that they were going to increase the cost of the program to $80,000 now that they got some people hired. It never really made sense to me why they moved so fast with the price increase considering it got even harder to get cadets into the door. Some of us noticed an immediate decline in the quality of people walking in the door. Not everyone, but a lot. I even heard a rumor that one of the cadets was screwing a high school girl. How's that for quality for you? So we figured CAPT was letting in anyone with a check at that point. They used to work under the policy that their training is elite and that you WILL get through it, and if not, it's their fault. That tune changed quickly to "get her done" so we can get you out the door. And I noticed their quality of training went down as time passed. When I signed up, they were advertising 550 hours to total time (they played semantics and said that included pilot monitoring time a.k.a. watch someone else fly). They then expanded on that and said, okay, you're actually getting 250 hours of flight time. Then that got turned into 225 where they kept it. The program was originally advertised as 10-12 months. And the initial classes discovered that timeline was not going to happen when I walked into the program. That's when I realized I might be in trouble, but CAPT kept telling us that we would be the first class to be on schedule so I kept on trucking. And things just didn't work out that way. My class graduated in 18 months. They didn't run as efficient an engine as they could have. For example, I remember many weeks where my interaction with CAPT would be 3 hours a day. With their ground class requirements, that just draaaaaaaged out our training schedule. And the best is when you go to the flight line and you get NAC-ed (pronounced nacked), meaning No Air Craft...so flight training draaaaaaaged too. They then got this brilliant idea toward the end of my time there to run a 7 day operation instead of 5, which was spotty at best.

From a business prospective, I would think it'd be easier to get people in at the $65,500 level than the $80,000 level. You figure if you can fill a class of 6 at $65,500, that's $393,000. Once the price went up, they were getting 2 to a class. That math is easy: $160,000. I'm sure you can figure out what was happening there. So in a nutshell, they lost monthly revenue due to their inability to fill each monthly class to the capacity of 6 per class as per their business model. They also spent a lot of money catering to airlines who would come in and flat out tell us their minimums are higher than what we'll graduate with. The last two was NetJets (which was basically an invitation to the CAPT CFIs to jump ship) and AmericanEagle, who reduced their minimums for the program to 400/100. Still too high since you're walking out of CAPT with 225TT with less than 100 hours of multi.

They also had this funny standards policy where if you didn't pass a section of training 3 times (3 strikes you're out), you're out the door. I think two people fell into that category. But they shouldn't be flying to begin with from what I hear from the CFIs and DEs. And those two people, from what I understand had like 7 or 8 strikes in one section. Conclusion? People washing out = refund of money = bad for business. And it caused a world of politics for the rest of us since we were working hard to stay out of the strike zone, and these folks were getting leniency like nobody's business.

A lot of fat could have been trimmed from their operation but they wanted to do what they wanted to do. I could write a book or get hired as a fast track business efficiency consultant! LOL!

 

IMHO, the “fast track” programs are good for some people. Just like different religions are good for different people. Sure, there are HUGE benefits to 1500 dual given in a 172, and the $500 hamburgers in the Duchess, but there are benefits to fast track programs as well. Like Jesrober said, some programs incorporate CFI training into the curriculum, while others gear all their training to regional employability. Both have their advantages.

Pilots coming out of some “fast tracks” have 100+ hours of glass jet experience like the DC-9 that Flying Ninja mentioned. While true, the actual type rating is meaningless, it’s the experience in a large, complex, and glass JET that makes all the difference. It’s simply easier to learn a jet when you’ve already been exposed one. Imagine how much of an advantage that pilot has over the 1500tt CFI whose hours are in that 172 with no jet experience what-so-ever. (Except for that one time his friend snuck him into a sim for a few hours) That “fast tracker” has the one up honestly. He’s been in the jet/crew environment before. In fact that’s all he knows. Airlines are excited about this type of training because he hasn’t had the time to develop bad habits, he is moldable, AND he has exactly the right type of training. He’s flown a jet, albeit in a simulator, and he’s been exposed to jet speeds and jet systems.

What he lacks, once at the regionals, is real experience. This is when he will “pay his dues” so to speak. He’ll be glued to the right seat for a minimum of four years before he is even ELIGIBLE for upgrade. While the 1500tt CFI upgrades whenever the seniority will allow. (at some regionals this can be 3-4 years, but not necessarily and not so much the case anymore) The CFI spent 4 years getting the “time” in a 172, so too will the fast tracker, just in a different airplane.
Fast track programs aren’t right for everyone, granted, but the have their advantages to both the airlines and the pilots alike. We shouldn’t be so quick to shut them down.

 

No no no... you have it all wrong. Get with the program. All fast track programs are EVIL. People who run them are all EVIL. People who go through them are all EVIL.

Signed,
Fast track program graduate