Hello all, I’ve planned on attending APT for about a year now due to all the benefits that I can think of. My parents keep pressuring me to check out other flight schools in my area that are cheaper because they say I have not looked at all of my options yet, however, I feel I’d like to go to the “Harvard” of flight schools!
long story short, I’m looking for the benefits of going to ATP versus any other Flight School. I’d love to here everyone’s personal joys of going to ATP versus other schools.
Dakota,
Quite honestly, I think you should check out of schools to have a solid comparison. Go to my “Flying the Line” section and look for a post titled “Questions for any Prospective Flight School”. This is a list of questions that will help you avoid the sales pitch when talking to a school and cut straight to the facts. I strongly suspect that those cheaper prices at the local schools are based on FAA minimums and not what it actually takes a real person to get the license. I would also suspect that while the local schools might be rather decent at getting you a PPL, that they very rarely train higher level students, especially CFIs.
The joy that I got out of attending ATP was true cross country experience in well maintained airplanes, great instructors and perhaps most importantly, passing all of my checkrides on the first attempt and graduating on time having paid exactly what I was told I would.
Chris
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Dakota,
AS Chris said, your parents are correct and you should definitely do some shopping around. The biggest thing I would mention to your parents (regarding cost) is I can pretty much guarantee that if you look at virtually every other flight school’s website (on the cost page), inevitably you’ll find some small print saying “these prices are based on the FAA minimums for each rating”. The FAA mins are not a “goal” they’re the legal mins which quite frankly no one accomplishes. ATP’s numbers are guaranteed and based on the actually numbers the majority of pilots are able to complete the program with. Do your research but make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.
Adam
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