I am 24 years old and a prior Scout in the Army for four years and am about to finish my BBA majoring in Finance. I have always wanted to be a commercial pilot and am looking at going to flight school with ATP in St. Louis. What are your opinions on credentials? Is this a credited or highly regarded school that can get me in a pilot seat with a commercial airline. I want to hear opinions from all pilots on this. This has always been a dream of mine and now I am going to go after it.
One thing to note about the responses you will get, all of the mentors here went to ATP and were successful in the program, and credit it for their success as pilots today. There are very few pilots on here who did not go to ATP.
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I’ll agree, this will be a biased set of answers for you. Just to be clear, it is an APT forum.
As for me personally, my mentality looking at ATP was it is a huge operation that’s been operating for years. This company also hosts a lot of partnerships with air carriers of all kinds.
I sincerely doubt a lack of quality would produce a company that has been as successful as ATP has with the professional partnerships ATP has. There are other avenues out there, few that can offer everything ATP can. Last I saw I think it was something like nearly 30,000 flight hours a month.
I’m currently in the CFI academy stage of the program and I’ve been happy with it thus far. It is a challenging program, but it is well structured, and you are given a lot of resources to assist you on your journey. I don’t think the program is a perfect fit for everyone, but if you’re willing to put the work in, I find it to be a great system.
Good luck on your goals!
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Dillon,
Welcome to the forums, this forum is filled with Student Experiences and FAQs. If you haven’t already, I would highly recommend visiting those two threads and ATP’s facts page on the website.
ATP has been in business for 35+ years, and still building strong (Check out the hard facts). Averaging 32,600 flight hours/mo. with a fleet size of 449…that’s pretty incredible to me.
I started looking at ATP when I was a sophomore in college compared to Aeronautical Academy, but financially at the time I could not attend. In 2019 I was working at my job and started looking around, found this forum and turned a dream into reality. I love every moment I get being a Flight Instructor for ATP and loved the experiences I had as a student, and so far as an instructor.
Brady
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Brady,
Thank you for your feedback! I wanted to do flight school a few years back straight out of the Army but could not afford my private pilots license. Now that I have an opportunity I feel like I am living a dream being able to do what I have always wanted to do growing up. I just want to make the right decisions and pick the school that will help me excel.
Dillon,
As the others have said, ATP sponsors this forum and yes, all of the mentors on here are ATP grads. We make no attempt to hide that and in fact, embrace it. I went to ATP because I had done my private pilot license training at a small local school, which took way too long and cost way too much money. I reached out to a cousin who was an airline pilot and he told me about ATP. I went because of the straight forward pricing and the fast pace of the program. I have been and airline pilot for sixteen years now, so it went well for me 
Are there other schools out there that will be able to help you get your licenses? Absolutely. But ATP has been doing this for decades and has produced more professional pilots than any other school. That being said, by all means do you due diligence and find what works best for you. I came up with a list of questions that I think you might find helpful when interviewing various flight schools:
https://airlinepilot.life/t/questions-for-any-prospective-flight-school/117/14
Chris
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Dillon,
The others have answered you really well so I’ll just be short and sweet. Literally thousands of Airlines pilots trained at ATP over 35+ years. ATP also pioneered the airline relationships and preferential hiring.
What more do you need to know?
Adam
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Adam,
Thank you! I am going to go through with them then. I just get nerve racked when picking the right flight school that will get me flying in the commercial airlines. This sounds like the one though!