My instructor was telling me earlier on last week that the best way to get to the regional airlines would be going to atp flight school and knocking everything out there rather than what I proposed which was getting your ratings and working for a 135 operations and building time there as a first officer and captain such as cape air.
He told me by the time you get those hours you won’t be as prepared/ Your knowledge won’t be as sharp as someone instructing and going to the regionals and the transition will be more difficult for the individual.
What is someone’s take on this?
If money isn’t really the issue, would it be better to go to atp and knock out everything as fast as possible or get some real world experience being employed from early and build time that way?
I’m a little confused (or maybe you are?). An appropriate question would be is it better to fly for a 135 carrier or INSTRUCT for ATP? Regardless of you path you still need to earn your licenses and ratings and yes ATP is the best ahs fastest route to get that done. After you’re done training then yes you’ll need to decide how you want to build your time. I agree with your instructor that instructing will improve your knowledge and skills more but ultimately that’s your decision.
Let’s clear up a few points here. No matter which flight school you go to, you cannot fly for compensation until you have a Commercial Pilot’s license, which takes at least 250 hours of flying. From there, most pilots get their instructor certificate and build flight time by instructing.
You could go the 135 route, but it seems that people that go down that path end up taking significantly longer and as your CFI said, not as well prepared.
Your CFI is right, flight instructing is the fastest, most reliable path to the airlines.
I have no idea on the 135 route as the vast majority of pilots go the regional airline route. I would follow the herd on this one, the regionals are usually the fastest way to the airlines.
Hard to give an accurate estimation since there are so many different types of part 135 jobs. It really comes down to how many hours a pilot flies per month, not what operation the flights are operated under. It’s still possible to accumulate 1500 hours in the same time frame as a part 91 flight instructor, but that doesn’t happen often.
The best example I can give involves a former student of mine. He instructed for a year, but decided to switch gears and fly part 135 in a Citation for an agricultural business in California. He has an interview at Compass next month. It has taken him 2.5 years as a professional pilot to get to this point. Not that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. That’s just one example. A lot of pilots choose to stay longer in 135 for several other reasons. One could easily extend the amount of time required to get to the airlines and many have.
That’s literally an impossible question to answer. Then you say the “135 route” do you have a specific job you’re looking at? I know people who fly 135 only a couple of hours on weekends. If that’s the job it will take you about 10 years. If you’re working for a busy operation and fly 100hrs a month you’re talking a year or so. Whether you’re flight instructing, flying 135, banner towing or crop dusting you need 1500hrs.
No more, no less.