Honest Review

Student Experiences
1

Hi everyone,

So this is the student experiences section so I want to give a blatantly honest review I have with ATP and be as non-biased as possible.

I don’t want to be specific about which location I attended but if you divide the US straight down the middle, im on the eastern part.

I attended ATP for about 3 weeks. While at ATP I flew twice. Many students at my location hadn’t flown in over a month, due to lack of plane availability as well as other issues that knocked us off planes. For example, check rides and Evals (which I get to a certain extent- but remember we are all paying the same amount) and shockingly intro flights for prospective students. If a prospective student visits ATP and says he wants to fly tomorrow at 11am and you have the only plane in the center at 11 am tomorrow, good chance your going to be knocked off your flight (which is something I honestly was extremely shocked that ATP was doing this). I get it, business is business and new money coming in is great but I am a hard paying customer as well.

Throughout my time at ATP nearly every flight I had was called “Standby” which means that you will fly only if the person before you cancels or no-shows. I drew the line when I was standbying multiple times for A block the earliest flight of the day at around 6:30-7am to only show up to the airport and not fly but expected to be in the training center all day.

Many many many students were failing behind by months, and there were students on month 3 with no private yet due to the plane priority and not having enough planes available.

My instructors were extremely extremely dedicated and excellent teachers. They taught me like I had the IQ of a 2 year old meaning , they literally made it almost impossible not to understand what I was doing in the plane. My instructors and leads I have to say were top-notch and caring and said I could reach out to them any hour of the day for advice.

ATPs teaching methods in my opinion are excellent but you really need to be mature and a self-motivator or you are not going to do well in the environment.

In my opinion, I think ATP took way too many students in respect to their plane ratio in many locations. I hope ATP figures out a way to fix this issue quickly.

From a business aspect, when I left ATP I had my money owed sent back to me in about 7 days which was top notch.

Overall I think ATPs instructors and teaching methods are excellent but student to plane ratio is very very very bad.

Again I hope it gets fixed and for anyone considering joining ATP I hope this review helped you out.

4 Likes
2

Lubberto,

Appreciate the honest review. Do you have a different flight school lined up? What is the game plan?

Thanks,
Chris F

3

Lubberto,

We’re sorry to hear of the difficulties you faced during your program. We appreciate the feedback. It can be used to help make the training experience better in the future. Where are you headed next?

Hannah

4

I also have my honest review and hope it helps others understand and prepare.

Firstly the instructors were Great but quickly became overloaded with students to an unmanageable level and standing-by was expected by management no matter the time of day or how far you travel.
Weather and some plane delays occur and understandable but then… the airport at my location that ATP uses was shut to pattern work for 2 months and it is still only open periodically today.

I understood this was not caused by ATP however, there was no economic solution or assistance provided by ATP and the closure ballooned the time lines, during my time there.

Students had to transit to an alternate airport approx 30 min away (approx 1 hour round trip).
Transit time ate up Valuable ToL traininng hours going back and forth and it was an instructor/ student problem (as mentioned my intructor and others really are great and tried to do the best for students, sometimes at their own time expense).
Morale at the school sank and none of the multiple solution requests by students were accomodated.
Of the hours allowed for TOL/ Solo Prep, 8-10 hours of my time was eaten up in transit time going back and forth to the alternate.
Then the time allowance for Eval and Solo flights was insufficient to be completed at the alternate location adding costs and or loss of crew time @ 1.5 time $ rate.

After putting in so many hours of study/ work I was getting more and more frustrated at the increasing delays and costs and instructor shortage.
There was not an option to pause training until the airport pattern opened.
Other students had not obtained their PPL 5 months into training and I couldnt afford to have that delay.
At 2 months in and already 32 days behind the program, I decided to withdrawl.

The big kicker, the Invoice if you do not complete the fast track program…
I had to wait the full 15 days and was expecting it to be bad but not this bad.
40ish flight hours, debriefs, added Sim time and a few ground classes came in at over $20,000 for PRE Solo.

Please make sure you understand IN FULL the contract you are signing.
ATP does not have to meet their 7 month time commitment or added costs due to events but if for any reason health, family, dont fit ATP or dont really like flying and you leave before completion, it will have expenses on top of what you might be expecting.
I was 100% commited and lived ATP requirements solid for 2 months but a unique situation and additional events/ costs beat that out of me.

ATP is obviously a great fit for some people and the amount of people they get through proves it works. The instructors, planes and the timeline if met are reasons to choose ATP just make sure you can and will be able to stick with it.
I also hope my comments help ATP management better prepare for similar events and understanding in the future.

1 Like
5

Bradley,

Thanks for the feedback. We’re sorry to hear it didn’t work out for you. Did you explore the idea of transferring locations?

Hannah

6

Great question Hannah.

Adam

7

Hi Hannah,
We looked heavily into two other possible locations but unfortunately we just could not make the move work in the timeframe.
Thank you to all mentors who give their time and information.