Well, first, lets be honest. You work for ATP.
Absolutely. I have always been honest about that here at JC and anywhere else I post.
I have worked for ATP for a year and a half now.
From a PR standpoint, ATP doesn't care about their students once they are signed up, and after they finish. The only thing that matters is keeping the next few students in line to sign up. .
On my own personal time, and we all know how precious that is, I have brought graduates in to sim to keep currency. I have sent letters of reccomendation out. I have put 10 hours of ground in when the syllabus calls for 4. The only time I won't go out of my way for a student is when they put no effort in for themselves.
Arlington was one of my more amusing stops on my cross-countries. We stopped in to swap planes and some grub(What a burger). We hiked from the ramp to the ATP build(so fracking far btw). We went in to check the weather real quick, noticed some books, etc. No biggie, just got the weather and got lunch. We got back, preflighted the new plane, and this ATP Instructor comes running out(again long hike), Tells us a DPE is all pissed we went into the weather room, and accused us of modifying a online Iacra for a student he was doing a checkride on. We didnt do anything, just checked weather. The Instructor told us to hussle back, as soon as we got there the DPE had left a few min earlier and refusing to give them their licenses until he spoke to us. Idiots. .
Well then I guess we have actually met. I don't know that I was anything but cordial with you guys that day. It was a comedy of errors...The DE left his door unlocked, you guys walked in when everyone was flying, assumed it was a weather room, he comes back and sees someone has been in his office and wants to know who. As I knew no student of ours could have gone in there, it had to be a XC student. I don't recall him ever actually accusing you of modifying any IACRA though.
Again, not the best impression of GKY, and certainly not typical.
They advertise they can train VA's, too bad it costs more, and only at one facility, nothing like jacking our VA's. .
It costs more because they get more actually. Being a Vet, I would never work for a company that treats servicemen and women poorly.
You being a CFI, I am sure you must have had some students getting dispatched into thunderstorms, or in our case hurricanes. One flight, we couldnt come home to RIC because of rain, but it was ok to send us to LZU to swap the plane out, rain, tornado warning, wind shear and all. All for maintenance Smart eh?
I have seen times that the forecast weather was not the actual weather yes. Dispatchers are not the guys in the cockpit. The student should make the final decision on go/no go. I have seen students tell dispatch no without any sort of retribution.
Your a CFI at ATP, How do you like Jim's micromanagement. Cutting back on benefits for you CFI's? And then as soon as one gets hurt/dies(FLL Midair last December) you become expendable contract employees. How are the ZAON MRX's? I remember reading an article about how ATP was toughting them as TCAS. Feel safer? Or do you guys have the TIS planes down there?.
Mainer was a friend of mine and I take that very personally. He was a wonderful person. ATP made great efforts to improve safety as a result. The PCAS system works fine. We do also have TIS in our newer Seminoles. However, TIS is a ground feed in busy airspace only. PCAS interrogates other Mode C transponders.
Jim has always been completely fair with me. Not sure what you mean by micromanagement.
Yourself I see is at 135 mins...Granted you may like being a CFI...But can you yourself get a job with the hours you got? Its a hard market, everyone is hurting. And fooling these kids into spending a small fortune to get ratings fast and nowhere to go is counter-productive. They have a few years before they can hope to get an airline job, take their time.
I do indeed love being a CFI and have passed a few jobs so far. As far as your airline prophecies...they're worth as much as mine. I can lay down a holy mailstrom of counter arguments and even deeper informed information to counter, but in the end noone can tell what and when things will change. I like to look at who got hired first from the last downturn, and it was those who were prepared, not the ones that waited until a full hiring spree and faced possible furlough on the other end.
There are plenty of guys who went to ATP, finished, and say the same things I do. You don't think ATP management doesnt read these boards? post in this boards? Maybe they dont, but what takes them 5 min to spin a good tale to their story could return them in thousands in profit. ATP is a business, and unfortunately they don't see their students as customers, but rather students they can kick around as they please..
There are plenty that are completely happy as well. Believe it or not, most of the students I have ever asked about Jetcareers have no idea it exists or have seen it and think it is a whine board, because, well there is often alot of people giving one sided stories.
Truly I am sorry your experience was bad. I go out of my way to help my students. There is not an instructor here that does not care about their students.
Do not think I have not been on the other end of it either. If you have not seen my story before, I did not train at ATP, at all. The FBO route is not peaches and cream...very very far from it. After training elsewhere and working at ATP, I wish I had gone to ATP because of the structure of the program alone. The program only works with an instructor that follows that program AND, and this is a big AND, the student puts forth the effort...not out drinking his or her butt off partying with friends instead of glued to the books. In my short time here, I have seen that program become even more structured, and more check put in place to ensure the instructors are fllwing the syllabus to a tee. Not to mention, they got rid of people who were not here for the right reasons, which can be found abound at an FBO I assure you.
But in afterthought it was a bad decision. I started in the spring of 08. Back then the jobs were still there, even had a buddy at colgan say get your commercial multi and I had a job. By the time I finished in October, things were bad. Fuel was expensive, pilots were furloughed, jobs became scarce. My wife got pregnant while I was at ATP. Our first, my daughter is now 7 months old. Im unemployed, but I get to stay home with my daughter. Ive been trying to find work in the area as a CFI, but alas, economy blows in Detroit. ATP is a great program if the demand for jobs were great, and achievable. But they just arent right now, and that's why I recommend folks hold off, there are plenty of other avenues to get your ratings cheaper. If you got your private, join your civil air patrol, very few places can beat the price you can rent a plane, plus CFI's can't charge for their time. 
), got on with airlines and then were furloughed right away. Again, some guys I know got on with companies like Eagle about a year earlier, like '07, and are already not in a bad spot on the seniority list and have acceptable salaries. 