OrthoPilot189

First, of all this is my first time doing something like this. I have never thought about doing a blog about anything that I have done in my life. But, I feel this is something people would like to know about and I see on Youtube many people are evening doing Vlogs about being a pilot or even a flight attending. I am not good at writing things. English wasn't a good subject for me during schools so, it possible my grammar might be off a times. Just warning you all.

A little about myself. I am 40 years old and have been a particing Orthopedic Physician Assistant for the past 12 years. Prior to that I was an Elementary School Teacher for a few years. However, while I was growing up and even in highschool all I wanted to be was a Pilot. At first I was looking at aviation colleges like University of North Dakota, or Embry Riddle, but my mom talked me out of being a pilot, even though I had already started flight training. Trying to make my mom happy I gave up my dream of being a pilot. Some 20 years later one of my friends at the hospital I work at started flight training. This reminded me that I had hours already so why let them go to waste, so I went to on of my flight schools and signed up for training. I heard all about the pilot shortaage and I new that I still had a good amount of years left so I decided to go the whole way. I became a flight instructor in December of 2018 and I have been one since getting the required hours I need for Republic and ATP. Now I official have them and I will be starting training with Republic in the coming days. As you all know the first step is ATP/CTP.

Today I received the information for my ATP/CTP course. I was lucky enough to get the oppurtinity to do the Republic In-house ATP/CTP course. In the infomration that I received it gave me the dates and times of the first few days of the course. My course will start on February 28, 2020 and end with me taking my written on March 9, 2020 the day before I start INDOC. During this time period Republic will be sending me to either CVG or STL to do ATP/CTP training on one of Flight Safety's sims. I heard that the benefit of this course is twofold, one you get more sim exposure and also instead of flying a A320 or B737 at ATP/CTP I will be using the Embrarer 170 sims. It should be interesting and fun.

At the present time I don't know my travel information. That will come in the next few days. I know this is a start of something the is exciting and something that I wanted to do all my life. Its a long training road ahead but I am ready for this.

If anyone wants to know anything about training as I experience please feel free to ask. I will try to update you as often as I can.

Skyhawkie

Congratulations on following your dream and joining Republic. I’m looking forward to reading your blog and I’ll be a few weeks behind you in training. Hopefully we’ll cross paths when I start.

sourdough44

All the best with training, along with the career change.

eastcoast20

All the best to you! I will be watching this thread since I will be following behind you in training by a few months.

Ravc208

12 yrs as an OPA! Man, hats off to you for leaving that for your dream job. My wife is a hospitalist/ geriatrics pa and her sister an pediatric Ortho pa, so seriously hats off to you for leaving that kinda lifestyle and $ to follow your dream.

All the best!

Superviking

Looks like we have the same class date for ATP-CTP. Now to try to cram my last 14 hours in till 1500 haha

deeznutz18E

Can you still do the PA gig per diem? Would be a good skill to keep current. God forbid something happens to your medical, it’s a solid career to fall back on until you can get things sorted out.

OrthoPilot189

Good luck on getting those last 15 hours. Once you get that last hour everything feels so much better. I was over the 1500 hr mark about a week an a half ago.

OrthoPilot189

Haven’t decide what I am going to do with my PA gig once I am done with training and finally on the line. Yes, I am still keeping my PA License active and up to date by doing all of the requirements that I need. However, I did resign from my present per diem position because I didn’t have the time to give them between getting ready for training and also doing my Flight Instructing. Presently, I am also taking course with Embry-Riddle for a MBA in Aviation as this is the field that I have always wanted to be in and finally, I am here.

OrthoPilot189

Yesterday, was my last day as a Flight Instructor at the school I work. The rest of the week I will be doing some fun flying if the weather decides to hold off. However, it doesn’t look like that as a storm is moving in for Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday I head to the airport to head for Indianapolis to start my ATP course. As I mentioned prior I was lucky enough to be able to have my ATP/CTP course in-house with Republic.

My class schedule for this course is as follows:
Day 1 - Ground School 0800 - 1700
Day 2 - Ground School 0800 - 1700
Day 3 - Ground School 0800 - 1700
Day 4 - Ground School 0800 - 1700
Day 5 - FTD at Republic
Day 6 - Travel to STL for SIMS
Day 7 - STL SIMS
Day 8 - STL SIMS
Day 9 - STL SIMS
Day 10 - Travel back to IND
Day 11- Take ATP Written Exam and rest for INDOC starting in the Morning

Following this I will start INDOC for the March 10, 2020 class. I will post the schedule for that in another post.
I might decide to also make a Vlog about this experience but I am not sure at the moment. Time will tell. Can’t believe that this is happening, I waited all my life for this.