My name is Matt and obviously I am new here. Well as the title says I am in the position to do a career change. Currently I am Active Duty Navy and will be retiring in October 2023 at the age of 40. My career with the Navy has been all aspects of aviation maintenance from being a wrench turner to verifying and releasing aircraft safe for flight. I hold a BS in Aeronautical Science and my A&P certification. Being a pilot is something I have always dreamed of doing and now is the time to pursue it. I am going to be going the zero to hero route and leaning towards Aeroguard as the school to do so. From my research so far besides the school being fast paced, the hardest hurdle is not having an income for the time in school. Luckily the military has a program that allows you go through training for up to 180 days will still being paid as active duty. With that 180 days and my allowed 100 days of terminal leave sets me up pretty well to be very close to finishing the program while still maintaining current quality of life.
With having a school pretty much selected my next step is do a class 1 physical to ensure I am physical good to go prior to enrolling into the school. Then onto figuring the finance portion out. I am sure I will have plenty of questions as I dig further into this career choice and will be sure to utilize the forms prior to asking anything. I look forward to this new adventure and getting to know all you.
Frankly I’ve never heard of Aeroguard and I’m really not here to bash any flight school. That said I would encourage you to do your research.
Full disclosure this is ATPs forum and all the mentors are successful ATP grads. We’re not salesmen nor do we receive any compensation if you enroll or not. We simply were all where you were, did our research and concluded ATP was the best route. Why? Because ATP pioneered the zero to hero training program over 35yrs ago and the airline partnerships and agreements. Since the pilot shortage became a reality a number of schools popped up across the country modeling programs after ATPs highly successful Airline Career Pilot Program. The difference not one of them can match ATPs record of placing literally THOUSANDS of pilots with the airlines over the past 4 decades. None can match the fleet size and resourses, 7mos accelerated time frame, location availability, nor ATPs reputation for excellence.
Again I’m not familar with Aeroguard nor am I saying they’re not a good flight school. What I am saying is this is a critical decision that can and will affect your career. There’s a reason why when faced with this decision more people choose ATP and that’s simply because it’s a proven product with years of success.
Welcome to the forum. Full disclosure, this is ATP’s website and all of the mentors here went to ATP Flight school. That being said, I have only heard of Aeroguard in passing and have never met a pilot that graduated from there. They might be a perfectly great school, I am just not familiar with them.
I would encourage you to do your research and compare them to other schools. I recommend using this list of questions when speaking to any flight school: