My name is Tae Hubbard. I am about to be 29yo and residing in Metro Detroit area. I want to first say that I respect everything that you do in your profession and any information or advice you can give me would be worth so much to me.
Flying has been a dream of mine for quite some time now. I have worked in the finance/mortgage industry for 10 years. Due to some things that have happened in my personal life recently, I have found that it is now time to start making my dream a reality.
I have done some research specific to commerical airliner training. I would like to know if you have any recommendations for where I should begin and what a reasonable price point should be. I live in Michigan, where we actually have a decent amount of pilots and training isn’t hard to find. I am seeing (correct me if I am wrong) that Zero to Airline is costing about $98K. My fiance (by coincidence) just moved here from Miami a year ago. It didn’t take me long to discover that Florida is essentially becoming the mecca of aviation in the US. We are actually considering moving to South FL (in the not-so immediate future). I noticed the price for that area is being quoted at roughly $48K. Does this information seem accurate to you? This purchase would be out of my budget, so I want to have a good understanding of how much something like this should cost.
The idea of becoming a pilot gets me so motivated that I may overlook certain aspects to this. Just hoping that if you have any recommendations, feedback or tips, that you will be so kind as to share. Thank you for your time!
First and foremost, full disclosure, if you look up and to the left you’ll clearly see the ATP logo. This forum was created by ATP to assist people like yourself looking for answers and guidance. None of the mentors on here are salesmen, nor do we receive any incentive if you enroll. We are however all successful ATP grads who were once where you are and after our research determined ATP was in fact the best route (and still believe that to be so). Now that that’s out of the way, to your questions:
The words flight training and “reasonable” seldom end up in the same sentence. Flight training is expensive. Planes, fuel, insurance, maintenance and instructors all cost money. The current price for ATPs Career Pilot Program is $92k. That covers all your training and there are no “by the ways”. It also includes sufficient flight times for each phase that are realistic vs the legal minimums which are not. I’m not sure what schools you’re looking at in FL but I can 100% promise you if you place them side by side with ATP you’re not comparing apples to apples.
While ATP isn’t the cheapest (and never claim to be) they are in fact quite reasonable. There’s an old saying “you get what you pay for”. ATP had over 1200 students hired by airlines in the last 12mos alone (and thousands over their 35+yrs history). If there was a school that could do what ATP does for half the cost, I’m thinking they’d be pretty busy. Thing is I’m willing to bet they have less than a dozen success stories.
I’m sorry if I sound like a salesman but the reality is ATP was created by airline pilots to train airline pilots and they are the most successful program in the country. Want to save some money buying Kirkland vs Bumblebee tuna have at it but we’re taking about your career here. ATP doesn’t only train you for your licenses and ratings, they prepare you for the pace of airline training which frankly not everyone is successful at.
I recommend you spend some time visiting our FAQ section and ATPs website. There’s alot of great info in both. I also encourage you to do your research. Is the school in FL legit? Maybe but $48k is alot of money to gamble with.
ATP is about $105k including testing fees and equipment. They were instituting a Fuel surcharge due to extremely high gas prices that added costs on top of this. I don’t know if it’s still implemented.
I find it extremely unlikely to find 0hr to all CFI certs for under $60-70k in todays market. It’s likely 0hr to Commercial certification.
I worked at Wayman aviation and ATP in south Florida back in 2018-19. There are pros and cons to both.
ATP is a solid choice for those that are older, can afford it and have the maturity to deal with an accelerated program.