Pro-Pilot Playbook Podcast #30 // Choosing a Flight School

[Music] hello welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast i'm your co-host sean and i'm joined here yeah i'm mike martin here yeah yeah and uh working hard working hard down in florida i see that you're in florida again i just got back from florida i've actually been gone all week and uh yeah we missed the podcast last week folks the pro playbook here where we bring you insights into your aviation career the the hacks the uh the tricks the uh you know all the little tidbits of information to get through your flying career faster

and cheaper and that's right we usually we have been doing these weekly but i tell you last week the uh the work is just opening up you know a lot of you know a lot of what i do is contract stuff and it was just coming out of the woodwork i couldn't resist it and then yeah yeah we actually i spent the weekend in fort lauderdale last weekend with the family the owner let let me bring the wife and kids on the jet which is nice yeah man been running around making money all week and

then ended up in town you didn't get until last night you got home real late yeah i got home at like 1 30 in the morning last night yeah it's been and then the kids were out of school today because we got like six feet of snow out there i don't know it's i'm exaggerating but it was a lot of snow it snowed all night it was down to down to one lane on the interstate driving home at one in the morning and they just couldn't keep up with it anymore but uh yeah i ended

up friday night ended up in in tampa uh there so yeah i was there for the big game here oh man yeah so awesome i didn't go to the game because i didn't have an extra 20 grand for a ticket but we still it's kind of it was neat knowing all that was going on right next to you you know oh heck yeah man i get perfect weather down there too for football one at 73 or something oh god it was just beautiful it was gorgeous yeah it was on saturday night we were all hanging

out he had a bunch of friends over and stuff saturday night it was it was like 10 p.m and 72 degrees outside and he's got this little creek this little babbling brook running through his backyard he just bought a new house anyway we are rambling this is not where the show yeah yeah yeah yeah today we're gonna do some more listener questions but we're going to combine some uh some of the questions coming in are you know more simple and uh i took a few minutes and i put three of them together here uh everybody's

kind of asking the same thing actually two people were exact acts asking exactly the same thing and uh you know you saw from the title the podcast choosing a flight school right and what we're gonna do is give the uh the forty thousand foot overfly on this one our perspective just some of the big you know nuts and bolts to it um in the program we sell we get into explicit detail breaking each one of these things down and um getting into it more but i think we can do a lot of damage just with

you know some of the quick overflow the big ideas yeah that get people here but uh so i'll i'll read the first question it's probably the the most uh got the most meat to it here this comes in from luke and uh good morning my name is luke i'm currently getting my private pilot's license i'm doing this from home but next fall i would like to move out of state and attend a flight school curious on if you guys have any suggestions or know of any flight schools with a good track record i would also

like to know your input on how much time i could save going to a flight school let's say in texas versus going to a school where there's bad weather like washington state thanks for your time i also appreciate you guys sending your uh uh what's he saying here i appreciate you guys spit all spending your time helping people with their questions and providing great information to your pot on your podcast just want to let you know your podcasts do help people like me awesome i didn't even read that last part before when i screened it

before the uh yeah luke thank you very much yeah that makes us feel good yeah we've been getting a lot of nice emails lately i mean almost every day now we're getting so if we haven't gotten to your question we'll we'll try to and we've been trying to i've been trying to get back to people too you know when we have time to try and try and get caught up but uh as you were mentioning it it got busy you know this coming up here this is president's day weekend coming up is a huge huge

weekend for uh for rich people to travel because of the uh you know it's a three-day weekend and it's in february and people like to go to warm places kind of thing so yeah but there's also a lot of skiing to be done too i mean that is huge out in colorado and all those ski resorts you know yeah this is a very big weekend for them i know two pilots right now they're in park city yeah yeah it's a big deal cool yeah but uh back we're digressing again man so uh uh i can

address the weather question um i got a couple comments on that so you know having been a flight instructor myself at sporties another good flight school in cincinnati ohio they're known for they have a catalog or now it's all internet based but back in the day they became famous for scaling uh pilot supplies so they have a uh they have a catalog and uh they you know used to be you had to buy gear just from a local shop in an fbo somewhere you know and they'd have just a few items and then they took

it out to a whole nother level and became kind of the premier supplier uh pilot supplies sporty's pilot shop uh but then they also got in the flight school business and they had a huge operation cincinnati and that's where i did a lot of training and sean's been out there too and seen it very nice place but we did have i mean you know how it is man i mean november december january in cincinnati when i was teaching people we would have a lot of ifr days and ifr meaning instrument days which you would say

well if you're doing your instrument rating that's not that bad problem is is uh all these prop planes you know they don't have any de-icing equipment on them a jet you just take off and you heat up the wings and away you go but in a in a prop plane if you're flying invisible moisture below freezing so in the clouds below freezing you could pick up ice on the wings and uh there would be uh times where we you know many days in the in the winter where it was cloudy uh and the ceilings were

too low to even do pattern work and uh the temperatures were freezing so it would be no icing conditions and we would go i mean i can remember 10 straight days where we could fly you know so obviously that's a deterrent yeah we had a simulator when it is instrument um you know there's certain things in your instrument training that may or may not be as uh you know if it's actual outside you may get more done in your training that day if it wasn't actual you know if you're just trying to shoot a whole

bunch of approaches practice approaches or something that could be done vfr uh without using approach control and actually being on an ifr flight plan you could you know argue very easily you get more done now as you progress into your training absolutely you want to see the real stuff you want to see how the system works yeah yeah yeah totally yeah so but and then when you're starting on your private which this guy's not i think he's already working through that but when when you're on a private license you can't fly at all it doesn't

matter what the temperature is if you're tired getting getting is private yeah right right so i mean there's something to be said you go down to texas they have very good weather there a lot of sunny days uh obviously the most flight schools probably the entire world or in florida yeah sean's sean's in cincinnati digging out a foot of snow and i'm on the beach right it is uh though we do have some low ceiling uh low ceilings today maybe but it was a nice sunset about an hour ago now it's getting dark but but

uh the weather in general here it's not just warm it's it's very good there's a lot of vfr days here and you know out west there's there's a lot of environmental prescott excellent weather there too i mean um so it is a factor in deciding um but you know our operation at sporties wasn't shut down when it was ifr and we couldn't fly i mean we did have simulator and you'd do ground score and all that thing but i mean if you're if the name of the game is speed which is important and sean's going

to touch on that uh better weather is in general better it wouldn't be my only factor in choosing a flight school but it definitely is one what do you think sean yeah no it is important but there's some other things to this that you probably want to look at before you even get to the weather thing um you know you say you're working on your private so i don't know maybe you're doing this part-time while you're working or something but right one of the first things if i'm if i'm choosing a flight school that i'm

going to go into and get all my all my certificates and ratings at um you know one of the things i'm going to be looking at is how many airplanes they got how how is he how busy is this school are these things constantly rented out do you guys have how many instructors you got here are these guys full time or they uh show up on the weekends kind of guys that are doing this as a hobby because they're retired now or something or you got some go-getter guys out here that are out here seven

days a week trying to build time and and are you know you know pumping people through sure those are great factors big factors um how many you know what is this uh like a mom and pop school that just caters to uh middle-aged men trying to get their private pilot's license to take their kids for a ride or right is this and they only you know 99 out of 100 students are getting their private license there or is this place pumping out pilots like last week we just had two people take their commercial check ride

you know i mean what kind of school is it right totally that's important but uh well you know what yeah we'll go ahead and jump right into it so that there is one other thing here the the type of training that mike and i push in order to do this because the longer it takes for you to get that you're probably already learning a little bit of this on your private right now the longer you take to get all these certificates and ratings the more money it costs you in more than one way for instance

you're working on your private right now you've probably already figured out if you were flying once a week driving over the airport you know hoping that one day a week is good weather and your instructor didn't call in sick or something whatever and you get in the airplane you're going to spend it's typically an hour long lesson hour of hobbs time the engine running on the airplane uh you're going to spend the first especially in the beginning the first half of that lesson reviewing what you did last week right so because uh you know it's

just different you know we all start from the beginning when we start learning how to fly cars it's not like or fly cars fly airplanes it's not like driving a car where you sit there and watch your parents do for do it for 16 years so by the time you started driving you already had a good wherewithal of what's going on right you know everybody starts from the beginning in an airplane and um imagine if you were trying to learn how to drive a car once yeah one hour once per week it would take forever

right yeah airplane complex there's different rules there's different things so um accelerated training is where i'm going with this whole spiel absolutely that's the thing mike and i push that's uh one of the big basis the the program is built around is uh accelerated training the faster you go the more money you're gonna save the more you're going to retain stuff it's just a better deal absolutely yeah and don't take our work for it look at for example how the pros do it so uh skip past all this primary training which we're talking about and

look at when you go to learn to fly a jet right in the jet world uh you go away and you work eight hours a day sometimes longer uh working on that airplane systems learning everything about it then you're in the simulator you're in the simulator five six seven hours a day debriefing rebriefing um and sometimes with one day off in it and you know every every two weeks or something i mean um because the pros know that's how they do it look at airline training very intense uh uh you know sean can speak to

that i mean uh uh they they do it the same way wouldn't you say yes yeah absolutely that's how they do it as a matter of fact most of the airlines use like a flight safety facility or whatever they just lease one out for themselves and right but where why were mentioned you know your local flight school though most likely is not set up for or possibly even heard of the idea of accelerated training now there are some big schools out there that do this there's uh there's even some medium schools and there are a

few a couple i've ran into over the years mom and pop schools that have started doing this actually that's where i learned of accelerated training i was i was in the air force at the time and i was working on uh getting my instrument rating and i found this company over in minnesota that i could get it in 10 days i mean there was prerequisites you had to show up with i forget what it was maybe so much simulated instrument time already but you uh 10 days instrument instrument rating three days they did a commercial

rating that's accelerated training now in those 10 days every day you're at the airport flying you're at the airport eight hours a day um maybe you spend four hours in the airplane but the other four hours you are sitting in there absorbing stuff uh looking through books talking with your instructor and maybe they got a little instrument simulator there you know which they did a little nebraska at this place um you're reviewing stuff for your check ride you're literally everything eat drinking and sleeping airplanes and that rating even when you go out to lunch you're

out to lunch with your instructor usually talking about this or that flying but so that leads me to the next two questions this was three people's questions in one show riley writes in hey guys i recently discovered you guys on youtube all researching what my next step uh for my future career as a pilot should be i'm 19 years old i'm a 19 year old pilot in alaska which is uh that's interesting i think oh yeah i think there's one airplane for every 10 people in alaska or something or maybe it's one airplane for every

five people in alaska but one in 10 people have a pilot's license because a lot of people just fly without a license up there because it's so fast you know right all right so the the more i've researched and going back to the question more i've researched and landed and talked to different pilots the more i've been leaning towards fast track schools like atp and what riley means to say there is accelerate training not fast track i know the training can be a little less than quality maybe maybe not but the idea that i could

come back to alaska right now back in six months with my multi-engine commercial seems too good to pass up i'd love to hear what you guys think should i try a fast track school or should i stay local and save a little money well we just went over if you stay local you most likely are not going to save money you're just paying a little more money over a longer time and it may have the appearance of saving money but you're not saving any money um uh we'll get back to that sorry i keep going

to these standards right and then the next question from elle actually his handle on youtube is i'm probably going to say this wrong el vito el vido uh hey i'm thinking on going to atp flight school you guys think it's worth it because the program is a lot of money but it looks like the fastest way and also a well-known flight school all right elle you are right there well known flight school they have this atp school if you have you could google them right now they have uh they have kind of they've been blowing

up i see their ads on youtube everywhere and everything they've taken this accelerated flight training and got it very organized yes they have they have uh facilities or locations all over the country um you know one of their biggest schools down in florida they literally have an air force avail of training aircraft in the air all day long all the time right they're doing the accelerated training um i don't remember offhand they um i know we mentioned it in the program because we had all their stuff pulled up um how long they're oh i remember

they they want you to show up with your private pilot's license though yeah so the the first question that that guy'd be a good candidate right because he's working on that now yeah so yeah back to the atp thing though mike and i both like atp we've mentioned them before we think they're yeah i've trained there yeah i've trained there too actually yeah we found that out on the buck we both got our back in the day before our atps restricted atp uh we're gonna do another episode on that actually breaking that down right uh

mike and i both got our atp back then uh the airline transport pilot's license um certificate which is done differently now that's not something you guys are necessarily gonna have to worry about that'll be done at the airlines for you guys um somewhat but anyway they are a great school um and right before we went on the air here mike and i were talking about you know like well do we fully just we fully endorse it right like our go-to and and i don't have a problem with that whatsoever it's just i do know atp

has competitors right and uh you know american flyers is one of them they're one of the big name brand schools that do this right but uh like i mentioned there are some smaller schools out there that you can the term for this is accelerated training you could google accelerated flight training and see what kind of results you get back you may find somebody out in arizona actually i think there is one of them in arizona it's a lesser known name brand school and uh you know you may be able to do it 30 cheaper than

going to atp yeah yeah i i will tell you though i mean it's been great training you this is a good uh video here to do an endorsement for me because i i you know what it looks like sean is i'm on one of those crime shows where i'm a victim and i'm afraid they're going to see me but so i'm talking but you can't really see my face yeah it got dark on this quick yeah sorry about that i'm going to go find some some light here but yeah i i actually did my atp

at atp and was very impressed with uh their their procedures and how they handle things um and uh yeah you may say you know all they teach you how to uh exactly pass the test which i mean maybe that's the case but man i'll tell you it is it was very efficient and i you know i only did a short program there but i went there stayed in a hotel i think it was a week long or something and then did the uh did the training and you know i felt really good they have a

ton of locations the one that i went to was in bowling green kentucky but uh uh it is it's an efficient operation i can say that for sure um but but i i agree with you uh i think anyone can do the job as long as they have the manpower uh your comment about the uh the number of planes that's important i actually just had a situation this week i was supposed to meet a buddy uh that is in a uh uh flying club and that's then they do instruction there and uh he wanted me

to go flying with him private pilot and we were all set up to do it the weather was perfect and he called and he said oh yeah the plane was in for an oil change this morning and they found something wrong with it now it's down so if you're if you're trying to get your training done quickly and you you know you're in an operation with one or two airplanes and they have a maintenance issue sometimes you utilize a week or two you know depending on what the what the issue is with that so um

atp is not like that they got you know tons of aircraft they have multi-engine aircraft um and they've been doing this a long time so yeah i mean let's yeah i would encourage the the viewers to check them out they also have uh uh some financing options too yes uh that they work through their programs which is another really uh hot topic that we get email about is about money and things like that so yeah yeah so does their main competitor i believe their direct competitor is american flyers and uh they similar operation is atp

they have airplanes everywhere i don't i don't know if they have as many locations as atp but some of those atp locations are just testing facilities anyway they're not even i don't know know if they have you know all the airplanes but american flyers also have um financing options and both american flyers and atp are are connected with some of these regional carriers so on the back end the way these schools work is you go there it's you know it's a significant chunk of money it's probably i think when we were pricing them out mike

about a year ago was like 80 grand or something and that's after you have your private you show up and it's 80 grand and then you're done within a few months you have all your civics and ratings you get your your certified flight instructor rating your cfi and then you start teaching for them in their airplanes it's built into the program so you already know the whole gambit you just went through it all the syllabuses and everything and now you start teaching them and right now you start getting paid to fly while you're gaining hours

and then on the back end like i said they're hooked up with some some uh airlines and stuff but th this is the key to getting through this thing this fast and cheap as pro as possible this is the biggest hurdle you know these the flying is expensive and uh as you get out there and start doing it yeah if you start doing this trying to fly once a week stuff you're going to nickel and dime yourself to death and it's going to take you two years to get your private pilot's license um when if

you went to an accelerated school you could have it done in less than a month um but uh yeah like i said i think i already mentioned uh you know in the program the pro playbook program we we sell we actually have it all listed in there on how to possibly turn your uh we call it the pro pilot method and it's turning your flight school your little mom and pop flight school into an accelerated school and right it's about you know getting with the schedule of the airplane blocking an airplane off so nobody else

can have it getting a flight instructor some go-getter guys out there seven days a week uh telling him what the plan is and getting him to agree to be with you every day for however many days and uh yeah and you can turn your local flight school into an accelerate flight school at it significantly less dollar amount than running off to an atp which is also you're gonna have to stay somewhere you know if unless you have one in your backyard you go down to florida atp don't forget about the expense of um you know

living in a hotel for a little bit and they might have some deals set up with some local long stay places yeah yeah oh yeah yeah i i think all those things have to be considered and uh uh spending what you know you see that high price tag and you're like well but you know when you look at if you if you finish much faster than you would uh in a conventional place you may actually be saving money but you know yeah a lot this is a very core part of our course and you know

we're not trying to pitch the course but really for the price of the course it's less than even one hour of training in an airplane and uh this is a big big part of what we go over in that so if anybody's on the fence and getting it and you're serious about your flight training it would help out a ton because it addresses all this stuff oh yeah yes and the lighting's much better in the course i'm right right [Laughter] oh man um yeah i don't know the other big thing with schools is um i

don't know if we want to get into this how how long are we in did this already i can't see how long there's no counter on the recorder uh anyway i was i was going to mention 141 versus 61 schools oh yeah maybe we ought to do a whole you know what let's just do a whole episode on that yeah yeah because there is a difference there and it's a notable difference if that's something you're going to be doing yeah you're looking into them so right um yeah most of these accelerated schools just to drop

this hint out um on 61 verse 141 uh the accelerated schools are moving way too fast to do anything with part 141 they're all part 61. yeah if that gives you any hint on which which way to go all the colleges the colleges are are 141 they have to be that's part of the part of the uh requirement for that our r atp right but uh yeah i think we answered everybody's question basically yes location's important moving slow is gonna cost you more money not save you money oh real quick uh somebody said something oh

riley said uh something about atp i know the training could be a little less than quality but the idea that i could leave i don't know where where riley got that from i i've never yeah i i've never heard anything about low quality right right i didn't experience that either so yeah it's probably okay i think it's more of a cost thing you know is what you'd really be looking at uh uh what they charge and what somebody else would charge now if you're now somebody may have told riley that while you know looking at

colleges or something um you may have had a college say something negative about atp but um there's nothing negative about atp as a matter of fact i mean like mike you were just saying or i i had said they got a whole air force of airplanes and you were talking about the maintenance event right in order to do this you basically have to have an airplane for at least an airplane for 0.5 of every one of your students there because you're going to be in an airplane half the day um yeah if one's if one's

busted or going into maintenance you just get in the next one which is the exact same airplane only it has a different number on the tail because they literally have like uh down there in vero beach that flight school they got like 60 little cherokees sitting on the ramp they're all exactly the same exactly the same paint they're just one number off all lined up whatever yeah those guys come out there and we call them bogeys they're out there learning how to fly around vero beach airport we're coming in oh yeah oh god they're everywhere

yep patterns full on two different runways and they're trying to slip the jet in in between these knuckleheads yeah yeah they're bogeys bogeys everywhere that's right bug smashers that's what i call them all right so i think that wraps this up if you guys have a question you'd like us to answer here on the podcast and there is somebody over there on the left in the dark i promise yeah yeah was it the lights on the bridge back there something i see what is that uh yeah it is the the pier they uh got some

led lights yeah yeah running out of pier here yeah so uh yeah it's it's it's actually uh the camera doesn't pick it up too well but there's still a little bit of light out here but uh officially this is your fault though i was ready to start about 45 minutes ago and you aren't ready yeah i know sounds good at least we got one in and you know we didn't miss a week this week so but we do really appreciate all the viewers and we're trying to stay consistent here and uh this week to make

up for it we'll drop it there you go yeah yeah let's do that all right but yes yeah thank you i'm interrupting you again thank you everybody for tuning in and sending us questions we appreciate it if you have a question you'd like us to answer on the podcast you can email us at podcast propilotplaybook.com and until next time keep flying get to the airport and we'll see you here back in a few days with another episode yeah have a good one you