Hi, I am curious if anyone has any experience at the Tacoma, Washington location. Did any factors hinder your progression? Weather, aircraft, instructor availability, general management, etc. Any information on the location would be helpful. Thanks.
Grant,
I’m certain some current or former Tacoma students will chime in but know ATP works very hard to maintain their standards at ALL their locations. While they can’t control the weather, I can assure you the other factors you’re concerned with will be as good there as any of ATPs locations.
Adam
I’m currently training out of the Everett location, but I’ve been to the Tacoma location a handful of times. The weather does tend to affect training progress up here in the Pacific Northwest, especially in the winter months. Since I’m not a student at that location, I can’t speak from personal experience on aircraft or instructor availability affecting progress, but I was just there a few days ago and noticed they have about six or seven single-engine trainers and maybe three or four Seminoles for multi-engine, which seems like plenty compared to my location, but I do also know they currently have about 35 students spread over maybe four or five instructors, which is a lot of students for each instructor to handle. As far as the actual facility, the airport seems really nice, although it can get busy sometimes with traffic, and ATP has their own hangars and maintenance staff on site, which is convenient. I hope this helped.
Kyle
Yes, that does help. Thanks
Hey Grant,
First off, sorry for the delay. I am currently a student at TIW and didn’t notice this post until now! As you can imagine, TIW (and PAE) do have a fair share of weather issues. I started the first week of February in the ACPP with my Private. Because I had my private, we dived straight into some instrument flying so the weather wasn’t too much of an obstacle. We had to contend with freezing levels and low ceilings but I managed to stick with the program right on schedule. The TIW location is pretty great, IMHO. We’ve had some fantastic instructors in the location and the facility is nice and new. The 172’s are part of the latest batch of G1000s that are only a year or so old and the TIW location has onsite maintenance. The A&Ps are also very friendly and helpful if there are last second questions or concerns. To me, the onsite maintenance is a HUGE benefit over other locations. The airport is also really nice - its smallish but has a great tower and plenty of instrument approaches. I live in Seattle and commute to the school daily and although its a long drive, I am always against the traffic so it goes pretty smoothly.
If you have any other specific questions, I would be happy to help answer them. When I did my crew cross country flights, I was surprised to visit other ATP locations where the students and instructors had different experiences with their program and the company. My partner and I have been very happy with ATP but the biggest complaint I have heard from other locations is that maintenance takes a lot of planes out of service and severely delays some locations. Having the maintenance at our location makes all the difference in the world.
Thanks,
Jeff
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I just had a flight cancel due to a maintenance issue on an Airbus. These are highly complex machines, even GA airplanes. MX issues are going to happen, no matter how much preventative maintenance is done.
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@GMills - I’m at TIW as well and agree with pretty much everything Jeff has to say. It’s a great airport to fly out of – you get the advantage of a towered field and being on the edge of busy airspace in Seattle, but it’s only 3-5 minutes to the practice area and the controllers are quick and efficient so you’re not wasting time. Really happy with the instructors, the fleet here is very new, our MX guys are awesome and glad to answer questions, and we have a brand new facility that just opened in January. Also a lot of great students who’ve provided a lot of helpful advice for me as I’ve prepped for checkrides, skill checks, and so on.
But yeah, that weather can be a killer sometimes. Pro tip: try to not start your private in winter. Ugh. Great for accumulating actual instrument time though… when my CFI interviewed with the regionals, they couldn’t believe how much time in the clouds he had logged.
Hey Jeff,
I look forward to probably meeting you in just a few weeks! I am also starting the program with ACPP from July 2. Reading your response was extremely helpful and encouraging as I begin to really posture myself for my start date. Currently being at the same location I will soon be at and being 5 months ahead of me in the program, I wanted to ask you a quick question: I am more of a tactile learner so the online modules have been helpful, but they have not yet been embedded in me and most likely will not until I actually begin my instrument training in the plane. The same was for my private training, but I picked it up extremely fast as it was paired with my flight training. Do you see this as being any kind of issue at first or do you think that it is fairly normal that things won’t begin to click until you begin to fly?