A friend and mentor of mine, a Captain at Southwest, recently sent me the following article:
“Just before the current semester, [Metropolitan State University of Denver] was authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration to offer students who want to be pilots the opportunity to earn a restricted airline transport pilot certificate. That means a person will need 1,000 hours of flying time rather than 1,500 hours to be a first officer, or copilot.”
Thoughts? Is this something that could potentially affect ATP graduates as well? I figured it would be worth looking into, at the very least!
MSU’s program is a full, four year program. Yes, the hours are reduced, but it takes many years longer to get said hours, so there is no time advantage at all.
As ATP is a flight school and not a university, this program will not apply to them.
The 1,000hr R-ATP is nothing new and has been available for several years now if your training is done in conjunction with a approved degree program. I see this as really nothing more than a plug for one of the local schools and the year plus time savings is an exaggeration and surely doesn’t compensate for the additional training timeline a university program requires.
Adisson,
This article is a little misleading so no worries. It’s just the classification of the flight school that changed. If the 1500 hr rule is repealed or reduced from the FAA, now that will be BIG news.
-Hannah