Has ATP ever considered opening a school in the DC-Northern Virginia-Southern Maryland area? There are tons of student pilots in the area; demand would be very high. Richmond is WAY too far for any sensible commute. There are some flight schools around here and decent towered airports (like Frederick and Manassas), but they are rather modest operations and aircraft are often heavily booked or unavailable to allow any intense training regime that ATP offers. Of course, there are serious challenges to training here: three Class B airports, the SFRA, prohibited and restricted areas, national parks and wildlife refuges, lousy humid air, the Appalachian mountains to the west, the ocean to the east. But that’s also great practice for student pilots to prepare for x-country flights, radio communication, NOTAMS/TFRs, tricky checkride questions, etc. Besides NYC, is there any more complex place in the NAS to navigate than this mess? This area also boasts a large concentration of young, college-educated professionals and ex-military folks, where career change is very common. Somehow I squeezed out my PPL here and I’m very interested in ATP, but for family and financial reasons, I would need to stay in this area, at least for the training and instructor phases of the journey. Welcome your thoughts…
Nathan,
ATP did have a location in Manassas, in fact Adam and I trained there. For all the reasons you mentioned, it was closed and moved to Richmond. All of the restricted airspace meant that the student’s time was not being well spent and it simply was not a good training environment.
Chris
There’s Wilmington DE