These days, I start my day with a cup of coffee and reading useful articles here. I’m aiming to start ATP Seattle next April.
I have few questions for those who have experience from ATP.
I’ve heard that crowded or Major airports often have waiting times on the taxiway, So the time actually spent in the sky is reduced.
There are two training locations in the Seattle(Washington) area.
From my limited understanding, one location has a smaller less busy airport (Tacoma Narrows Airport, TIW) and the other is a much larger and busier airport (SNOHOMISH COUNTY AIRPORT, KPAE/ PAE) But when I google this, it’s the same airspace D class.
Also PAE has larger airplanes that come to this airport, how is it the same airspace D class as TIW?
Does anyone have more information on this or experience in flight training at these facilities? Any recommendations on what is better for training?
I’m sure there are pros and cons to both but for an inexperienced pilot with 0 time, what would you recommend?
I train in a class C airspace. They say if you can fly here, you can fly anywhere. I noticed in class D, it’s more “laid back” and the pilot phraseology is used much less often. Maybe someone with more experience than me can chime in.
I honestly do not think it matters much. I did my initial training at a small, uncontrolled airport and was very nervous to talk to controllers when I started flying out of a bigger airport. I knew others who had trained at large airports and were nervous about coming to uncontrolled fields. As for the airspace designations, that has more to do with the amount of aircraft and the overhead airspace than it does the type of aircraft.
Hopefully Tory will chime in on this, he is from around that area.
I wouldn’t think too much on this. Yes they’re both Deltas. Yes PAE has more commercial traffic, BUT ACTUALLY not so much right now because of COVID. All the planes are parked right now. Plus, Horizon used to operate a satellite base there but it’s closed until further notice.
Even if PAE was fully operational, it is still primarily a typical Class D airport. It has parallel runways. GA is normally designated to the shorter one, larger commercial on the other. If you want a good example of a busy Delta, ATP used to operate out of HWD south of OAK. Now THAT was a busy Delta. Take a look at it sometime. Class D, up to an abnormally lower than usual altitude, under a C, under a B. Now there’s an airport that regularly experienced long taxi times. ATP moved that location to LVK primarily for that reason and others. LGB is another busy Delta under LAX Bravo.
One of ATP’s most well known and largest locations, IWA, has three parallel runways. I don’t know what the wait times are there BUT it is one the largest locations.
Point being, while wait times vary between locations, they’re all getting the job done. Even when I used to teach in HWD. We made it work. Again, PAE is nowhere near as busy.
All things being equal I’d go for busy. Communications are sometimes a huge challenge for people. Diving right in gets you comfortable sooner. That said it’s really not a huge deal and I’d chose the location that’s more convenient.
Thanks for your honest opinion. I’ve been listening to radio communication via live app and I can’t tell what they are saying at all! I worry I won’t be able to communicate with a small or larger tower lol.
There are many apps, videos, etc that will allow you to access and listen to ATC comms. The problem is until you actually start flying it’s incredibly difficult to put what is saying into context. I understand the spoken word very well (I received English awards in school) but when I listen to friends in finance speak about the market they might as well be speaking Greek or Chinese. I obviously understand the words but there’s no context. On the plus side once you do start your training and you have an interpreter (aka your instructor) sitting next to you translating you’ll be amazed how it all starts to make sense.
In short don’t sweat it. You’d be better served by starting to work on your written tests before you begin your training.
I would not worry one bit about not being able to understand pilot-controller communications, it is full of if aviation specific terms. If I happen to hear two doctors speaking, I can guarantee that I will not be able to understand their technical terms as I have not been trained in that area. I really would not spend any time trying to learn ATC communications now, that will come in time as you go through your training and is a more natural way to do it.
I did most of my training out of KPAE, and I have liked it. It’s not too busy but busy enough to give you a decent challenge when talking on comms to start,
I am in the CFI stage of the program and I am doing the training out of TTN (Trenton, NJ) which is a Delta Airspace, smacked between two Class Bravo (Philly/Newark & JFK) Airspaces…talk about communication and route opportunities! It’ll come as time moves through the program.
Maybe the new ones do. I was only there for CFI academy and flew the old six packs as those are the ones I had been flying for the rest of the program in SoCal.
Hey Joshua thanks for the info. I’m leaning more towards KPAE anyway so I’m extra glad to hear from someone who is at KPAE! I’m starting from zero time. I originally planned on starting Between February to April of next year. Do you think that’s a good start date? What month would you recommend I start? also do you think 10 months is a reasonable time to complete the program considering the bad weather in Seattle?
