BAW0343 wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2010 at 2:19pm:


If I were you, I'd take cost more into consideration, especially at ASU. Tuition/expenses there is now about 33k a year for out of state, plus another 60k or so for their aviation program. On average, Mesa pays their first year right seats about 25k a year. At these rates, you'd be borrowing about eight times more than you should, so expect to still be paying for that with your social security retirement benefits.

tcco94 wrote on Nov 8^th, 2010 at 8:04pm:


The intent of the law was aimed directly at regional airlines.  It was part of a knee jerk reaction by Congress because of the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, pushed for by families of the victims.  Everybody ignored that the crash was not caused by low time pilots, both had thousands of hours, but it made the families feel like they had made a difference. 

That leaves the problem of getting pilots that 1500 hours.  There are three choices, military, getting paid to fly, and paying for it yourself.  In the getting paid for it category there is always corporate, crop dusting, banner towing, instructing, even flying boxes.  Some of the side effects will be a shortage of qualified pilots for the airlines, which could cause an increase in pay.

tcco,

I took a look at that article, and I will try to help make sense of it all.

To fly aircraft for hire, you must have a commercial pilot's license, which you can do with a minimum of 250 hours.  Before this year, a commercial license was the only requirement to fly as a first officer on a regional aircraft.  The next step is the ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) license, which requires a minimum of 1500 hours.  The new law passed by Congress mandates even first officers must now be an ATP, where before only the captain had to be. 

Obviously this has been hotly debated by the aviation community, as an unreasonable burden on pilots, airlines, and schools.  The article you referenced is about the FAA advisory panel reccommending that university trained pilots (Part 141 flight school) could be exempted from the ATP requirement.  However the same do gooder politicians that created the law in the first place have been adamant that there will be no exceptions to the new law. 

End result, even the FAA is trying to go to bat for the aviation community, but Congress has made up their mind on the issue.  I watched some of the Senate hearings on the Colgan air crash on C-SPAN ( ), and most of the congressmen and women on the board were not open to what was being said.  They were sure it was a training issue, although it has been shown the pilots were both multi-thousand hour pilots.  They just were not paying attention and it bit them.

This is a really unfortunate situation.  We have a group (Congress) who doesn't understand anything about aviation, creating rules that will affect everyone involved in commercial aviation, because they were pressured by a group of grieving families. 

Here is the link to the NTSB report on the crash.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20090213X13613&key=1

tcco94 wrote on Nov 8^th, 2010 at 10:48pm:


Actually the crash had more to do with pilot situational awareness and airspeed control.  They simply got too slow on the approach and failed to recognize the problem and react accordingly.  It is a total bummer about the new rules, and maybe they will get repealed at some point.  It is just one more hurdle to clear for anyone to be an airline pilot.  On the bright side, maybe more people will get deterred from becoming a commercial pilot and that will help you.

tcco94 wrote on Nov 8^th, 2010 at 11:39pm:


You wouldn't say that in 10 years, when you're collecting food stamps just to feed your family.

I'd look a whole lot into public, instate universities and file the sh*t out of your FAFSA and scholarships.

Yes military aviation is extremely competitive, but if you get surgery now and be graduated with a 4.0 and commercial license, I'd think you'd be relatively competitive for flight school (given that the surgery holds).

Even if you don't end up as a pilot candidate, ROTC w/scholarship only has a 4 year active duty service commitment. While you're in college, they'll pay for either your tuition or living expenses (whichever is greater) with allowances for books and whatnots. If you budget yourself well, you might be able to come out with only 50-70k worth of debt. Which is not too bad, since if you send yourself into third-world poverty, you might be able to pay that off by the time you complete your service commitment.

The military will take your entire academic record into consideration. So if you have some time left before you have to apply, get your grades up (way up) and show them that you're committed.

Even if you don't receive a scholarship, you can still join ROTC. If you're not on scholarship, you are not obligated to sign any service commitments until your third year. So, if you do well in college, they will give you a scholarship later. If they don't, you can dis-enroll without penalty.

But again, ROTC is not a full ride. It will cover the larger portion of your costs, but not every last penny. If you don't get their scholarship sorted out before you enroll in college, do keep in mind that they may still reject you later (while in college) unless you can prove that your chosen field of study is worth their money and you're able to payoff whatever debts you accumulate with an O1's base pay. ROTC will help quite a bit, but you'll still have to minimize your costs.