[Music] hello welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast where we bring you tips tricks hacks and shortcuts to managing your aviation career from start to finish uh my name's sean richie and i'm a corporate pilot with 25 years of experience and i'm mike martin i'm a corporate pilot also with uh 25 years of experience and we uh we put together this podcast as a kind of a add-a-long it goes to uh a program that we started called the profile playbook and uh we figured this podcast was a perfect platform to get out get out
some some of the smaller pieces of information or actually we drop a lot of stuff from the course we sell but uh something we've started doing here that's become pretty popular is answering our listeners questions and um this one comes to us we got one today yeah you read the uh the title on the video you clicked on it but uh should i get an atp on my own before i start applying here to airlines or corporate gigs and stuff like that um if you have a question for the podcast get this out there real
quick you can always send us an email at uh podcast at propilotplaybook.com and we'll answer it on the air like this you can also yeah yeah and oh and i think i mentioned this in the other podcast but the podcast is now on pretty much every platform that podcasts are available on whatever you listen to or or you can watch us on youtube also but you could even tell the alexa devices to uh oh and the one in my office just set up when i said that but you can even you can even tell your
echo devices to uh listen to the podcast which i thought was pretty cool my kids love it yeah yeah so uh the question today is um comes from andy andy's in uh tennessee and uh he says i'm gonna lean over here so i can read this but uh thanks for the podcast number eighteen guys a similar situation for me see my times below he said and uh andy has 1635 total time 143 multi-engine time okay uh oh i didn't see this before 107 of that is turbine time wow so it's got got itself in a
jet that's correct yeah yeah it looks like a jet stream uh jet stream 31 32 and about 13 hours in a citation uh so he's been doing some right seat work somewhere but uh so he says do you think i should pay for my atp out of my own pocket i would at least it would at least give me an accomplishment during the downturn and he's talking about the covet environment we're in right now right depending on when you're watching this and uh could make me more mark marketable for future opportunities or should i wait
for a potential employer to pay for it i noticed i actually meet the sun country requirements except that i don't have an atp i'm 55 and a part-time cfwi so a full-time flying uh would job would be a retirement job for me i know i would start at the bottom but at this point in life i have to be careful with the large pay cut lifestyle wise i prefer the private business slash corporate jobs over airlines but wouldn't rule out a good opportunity cool so for anybody that's uh maybe we should give them a little
background on what what an atp is mike because there could be some people out there watching that uh have no idea yeah they have no idea what we're even talking about here yeah yeah so atp stands for airline transport pilot and it's basically the last of the aviation ratings that you can receive uh other than what's called a type rating which is an individual rating for each jet um and you know it's the commercial allows you to fly for money but the atp allows you to fly as captain at an airline and uh there's a
bunch of hour requirements for that type of thing and uh you know a lot of employers want want you to have that and all this has to do with weed out things for hiring you know when they shuffle through the resumes uh who who's got uh who how to differentiate people wouldn't you agree sean oh yeah yeah yeah basically i mean one of the few things you can do with there is a certificate or pilot's license with actually a certificate is what the proper term for it is or name of it is for a pilot's
license but there is a commercial certificate and uh that has nothing to do with being an airline pilot um it's the atp or airline transport pilot's certificate that is the that's the highest certificate you can get in the pilot world yep yeah and um back when you and i went through this mic it was a little different you know for every pilot's license you get for every certificate you get you have to take a written test and a practical test practical as in get in the airplane and fly with an examiner to make sure you
can meet all the requirements and do all the things that are you know in the recipe to get the uh get the certificate right um and then the written test is from a bank of questions and you go to a that's a separate day separate whole thing you study for and then you go take this written test on a computer at a testing facility back when mike and i did it you just went and took that written test yeah you could just go do it actually i don't even think you need to have a sign
off from an instructor no and that was typically you know what the airlines wanted uh they wanted you to have your show up with your written test done and so today though in order to take that written test there's there's some extra steps involved and they call it the atp ctp or certified an atp certified training program this thing involves like 40 hours of classroom work i believe it's 10 hours of uh simulator time in a real simulator like yeah full motion yeah yeah yeah and which means very expensive yeah exactly and and it's the
classroom stuff doesn't even have anything to do with the test prep it has it's it's kind of crazy it really um what they mean isn't that just how we're talking about how it used to be and how it is now i heard that all this was changed as a result of that colgan aircraft is that the that's what really screwed things up right yep i think this was uh you know another one of the little things on the list they did after that crash um yeah yeah you can guys can research that crash if you
want it's pretty bad but it was i was icing related right yeah it was yeah tail plane icing actually yeah and it turned out a lot of them they didn't know what they're doing there's a bunch of failed check rides and all that and the fa dug in and then the the reaction was okay let's let's increase the qualifications here for some of these people yeah right right okay where the 15 the hard 1500 hour rule came from and some other stuff um yeah yeah yeah i got on my first airline i got on my
first airline um i'm not even sure i had a thousand hours yet uh you know i got on as an fo flying at beach 1900 so it's uh it's changed a lot yeah that's for sure that's for sure so i guess the the quick answer we can analyze this further but the correct answer is you know uh anytime you can use an aviation what we call opm you use it which stands for other people's money right oh yeah yeah so if you if you have an employer that's willing to to train you or pay for
your training obviously you would do that i mean um so i've got six jet airplane type ratings each jet airplane type rating is a two week to two month long course it's intensive simulated training that cost i mean with expenses some of them can be 40 50 60 000 even if you go up to the gulf streams they're gonna be a hundred thousand for a type rate um i haven't paid for any of those employers paid for all of them however when you're coming up through aviation especially at the very entry level like when you're
talking about an atp and stuff um yeah there is employers that will pay for that but can you get those jobs and when things get a little tight which you know we're in a temporary tightening of the market or softening in the market so to speak for pilot hiring um then when you have it's supply and demand right so you got this job available if you got a whole bunch of people trying to get one job well they're going to sort through and the employers look at it on an economic basis too they say okay
uh how many applicants do we have uh should we spend the money on getting these guys ready for their atp or should we take people and find the right person and then train them so i think i think you know to answer this guy's question um looking at some country's website and i pulled it up here real quick they do have an option to to hire and train you and it looks like his hour requirements if he's just eligible for an atp which it sounds like he is um if he can get hired there they'll
pay for a training as long as he has a current written within the last four at least four months left of expiration so uh hopefully i'm sure i'm thinking that this individual checked that i think before he called so maybe he doesn't quite meet those requirements or uh what but or maybe he thinks he maybe he's already applied and they haven't called him if that's the case yeah go ahead just uh well actually yeah we were looking at it together before we got on here but yeah no it was the next line that's if he
already had his atp written done um didn't it say i believe you read like the next line down for those who have the time requiring the atp ctp on it didn't it say something like case by case basis or that's what i was going to say so the new thing is now is you show up the the kids coming out of school that went to an aviation university already have this thing done but in the non-covet environment when everybody was hiring you know like compass and envoy and go jet all these companies if you didn't
have you had your 1500 hours but you didn't have your atp written done yet they would pay for it they sent you to one of like you know atp which is and that's confusing but that's an actual name of a school also but they have a program sporty's pilot shop here in cincinnati has one it's it's 4 600 bucks and they use the simulator yeah yeah they use the simulators up in wilmington ohio um and uh anyway that's the atp ctp i'm talking about but if you got hired by the the cu one of these
companies they would send you there first before you went to your initial training uh which is all of your you know the company policy and and the simulator and then once you then you would take your check ride you already had your you show up at training with your written done after they sent you that course and then you uh at the end of your school your initial training you get your atp in in your second command type rating on your certificate right uh i thought that you had read on atp's stuff there that they
will pay for the atp ctp yeah it says uh restricted atp eligible applicants and it lists the time which it looks like this guy bet and then one of the requirements is current atp written with at least four months until expiration if no atp written successful applicants will be given company paid atp ctp training to complete the written there you go right there right there so andy andy there's the answer your question now i don't know if you were really seeking out sun country because i got a feeling that uh you know well right now
everybody's kind of it's wishy-washy who's hiring um the freight operators the majors freight operators are hiring fedex and ups are both hiring now uh but it's only mattered and i heard of one regional i was just talking to mike before we got on here who it was i i'm second guessing who the regional was but there is one regional carrier that i know of that is hiring actively hiring right now um i heard yeah because charters picked up domestic charter yeah so it's it's starting to come around again and uh like i said just a
podcast or two ago my prediction was 18 months to two years and we're gonna be spun back up full now we just had the election and that's miraculously there's a vaccine coming out yeah yeah there's the vaccine coming out but anyway we're going to be right back in the pilot shortage and everybody's going to be paying for the atp ctp but that's the answer to your question do not pay for it on your own that is uh that's nuts that's ludicrous now one thing i will say he's like kind of indicating an email he's a
little stagnant right now and things are downturned you know that and if it is something i and i i'm totally guessing i've never met the guy but you know it it sounds like a second career guy maybe he's got a few dollars i mean you know if you can get this done for four thousand dollars and it gets you back into the uh learning mode and and you know uh get get you in you're in a little rut right now you want to do something positive that's kind of what it sounds like he's saying in
the tone of his email it's not a bad thing if you want to spend the money and you got it um it's it's gonna if you have an applicant that already has it you know they're gonna pick that person absolutely right right i i would start by applying though without it and see if you get a call if you don't you know maybe you could do that to improve it all right the other thing the direction of his email uh it sounds like he's leaning towards because of his age and you know he wants kind
of to find a laid-back corporate job it sounds like um you know you might want to you know focus a little more towards that route than than getting an airline job you know if that's what you want to do right you said he's in tennessee where where is he at uh yeah murphy's borough which is oh yeah yeah yeah suburban nashville yeah so there i mean uh there is a ton of private jet operators there at uh uh bna and then john tune there's a bunch of jets there a lot of the celebrities have airplanes
there there's a charter operation there i can't think of the name of it that's pretty big uh contouring or something yeah yeah yeah so you know you start nosing around down there and uh you know see if he's already got a little bit of jet time yeah maybe you end up in the right place at the right time because you you know to be an fo and a corporate jet you're not going to need an atp and then there you go your career launched you know so sure yeah you know there's some other things to
look at too besides sun country uh if that's the kind of route you're looking you know you know i'd check some of these other uh you know the regional you mentioned some about a pay cut i'm guessing as a 55 year old guy you've got uh you're an expert in some type of uh career field and and moving to flying's it will be a significant pay cut at the beginning um if you're uh if you are a single guy i would uh maybe look at you know the um you know southern air or you know
some of these freight companies here uh you got atlas and southern air you could they'd be happy with your time to get you into the right seat of a 737 or they got some seven sixes they've got triple sevens and you'd be flying around the world and i say single guy because it's uh it's like 12 days on and uh you're you're gone a lot but within yeah within two years your wife from kazakhstan yeah within two years you'll be upgraded and um and yeah and you'll be a captain doing that and you'll be making
you know i think it's well over 200 grand easy um so that's that's a good deal even as an fo you're going to be you know pretty close to 100 or if not over with you know all the per diem and all that kind of stuff so that's something to look at yeah but yeah lots of opportunities out there and i would not for me personally uh i would not use money out of my own pocket for that right right and you know i would just just a little patience here just a little you know
i i don't think it's not it's not you and i came up when this it was extremely difficult to get started and this is nowhere near that i mean and you know we've been saying every episode i know the last one i don't mean to seem like a broken record but the pilot shortage is probably going to whips all back because they needed all these pilots they couldn't hire enough then cove had hit and they stopped hiring not only did they stop hiring that they laid off in some cases um and now all of a
sudden demands gonna come back and they they haven't compensated for that so in this we but when we did the last episode there was no vaccine information now it's it's pretty much came out that pfizer has a vaccine it's going to be started being released in phases in december um and i mean that puts us like summer could be gangbusters with flying because i i feel like there's so much pent-up demand everybody was doing their driving vacations last summer summer's always when everybody's traveling business travel people are itching to get out there what i mean
it could just explode and then all of a sudden now we don't have enough pilots and i mean they'll go from laying off to massive hiring back to laying off you know how it is yeah so i i yeah i don't know i'm with you sean i don't know if i'd go at best money um if i if money's tight right now i don't know that i'd go invest money in this you might be more apt to just keep your uh keep nosing around for a corporate job in the meantime and then just wait this
out for another few months and things you may get a call right right okay all right well i think we uh i think we hit it from all angles here uh patrick or andy andy thank you thank you andy for the question and uh remember if you have a question you can submit it to us uh podcast at propilotplaybook.com and i don't know i think that's all i got great about you what about you yeah we're good that sounds great yeah sounds good this is a positive uh episode things are starting to turn around so
everybody hang in there and send in your questions thanks for watching [Music] you
